Soul Blazer

"This game is much more fun than what it's supposed to be."

Even if it was Squaresoft that was most well known for RPGs in the USA during the prime time of the Super Nintendo, Enix was the most popular company over in Japan. Their biggest series is by far the Dragon Quest series, but of course Dragon Quest V and VI was never translated into English. But that didn't stop them to release a lot of other games over to the English speaking world, and guess what most of these games even made it to Europe. Despite them being released everywhere the games never really managed to get as big as Legend of Zelda: A Link to The Past or Super Metroid.

The most "well known" of the games Enix released was Actraiser, an action game made by the game developer Quintet where you took the role as God (or as the Master as the translated version of the game calls him) where you not only got a chance to defeat all the evil minions in the world but also got a chance to rebuild six different civilisations, by having a little angel helping the people to defeat the monsters and build houses. A year after that Actraiser had been released, Enix released another game which had the kind of same concept, but this time it was a pure action dungeon crawler. The game I'm talking about is of course Soul Blazer.

The game starts quickly by telling you that your master (it's not clear but this could very well be the same Master as the main character in Actraiser) tells you that you are on a quest to save the world from the evil Deathtoil who have destroyed 6 different places. In order to be able to summon this overlord of evil, you need 6 crystal balls that you find one each in all the 6 places. The first you do is to teleport to a room where there's a chest. When you open it you get your first sword, and now you can kill the goblin that you see.

When he's dead a new Goblin will teleport from the lair that you also see, and when you've killed this goblin another one will appear. After maybe 5 goblins the lair will shine green and when you step on it an old man will appear. He tells you that a lot of different creatures have been imprisoned the same thing on earth like he just was, and it's your job to release as many of them as possible. Even things like flowers and doors will help our hero on his quest. The old man will also join him by transforming into a blue ball which can cast magic as long as you have enough gems to use it.

After this you get to the city grass valley, but it turns out that there only thing in this city is an entrance to a dungeon. This dungeon is full of lairs just like the one you saw before, and all of them either needs to be free from monsters to release the villagers and animals of Grassvalley. Sometimes the lairs instead unlocks new paths instead of releasing anyone or anything. Anyway this is pretty much all you do in the game, you visit a new dungeon, find new swords, armor and magic, clean all the lairs from monsters and release people, animals, mermaids, gnomes and cats.

Early in the game you meet Dr Leo's daughter Lisa. She tells you that in order to find all the six crystal balls you must meet up with Dr Leo's pets: Turbo the Dog, Lue the Dolphin, Nome the Snail and Marie the Doll. Also each area has it's kind of leader that is sealed in a lair that is guarded with a big boss. When you've defeated the boss, this area is finished and you can then get the crystal ball and then move to the next area.

When you killed an enemy you get experience points, and when you have enough you will gain a level which only gives you more health points if I understood it correct. You can also increase the damage that you do to the enemies, and how much damage an enemy do on you by equip better swords and armor. Most of the equipment aren't that hard to find since they are in chests that are pretty much everywhere.

In Soul Blazer all you do is pretty much the same thing over and over again. You go into a dungeon, kills everything that moves, talk to the people or creatures you just released and then go into another dungeon and do the same thing, then you reach a boss and kill him, then you go to the next area and do the same thing, over and over again. This sounds really boring, but it's actually a really charming action adventure. While the game isn't the great in anything, it's just plain simple fun to play, and before you know it you've beat the game.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/27/09

Game Release: Soul Blazer (US, August 1992)