ActRaiser

"A tale of six cities"

The premise of ActRaiser, as far as I can tell, is that you are a lazy arch deity, who can not even get something done without someone else first suggesting it. One day, a fat naked cherub comes to you and says “Master! Get off thine ass! There is work to be done”. Thus, you spend the next few hours making your primitive world more civil and livable.

Your ultimate goal is to re-populate six fallen cities. What’s standing in your way is an endless horde of baddies, who’ve sort of taken over the world while you weren’t paying attention. To reach your goal, you will inhabit the body of an armored knight to thrash through the major enemy strongholds, and send your cherub to each town to see what needs to be done there, while navigating the world from a floating palace.

The armored knight bits are handled as side-scrolling action stages. The graphics of these stages are easily amongst the best you’ll see on the system. Sprites are large and vibrant (without being overly bright), palette swaps are nearly non-existent, shading is done nicely, depth is given to everything, and mode 7 tricks abound. It’s too bad that such great graphical talent was wasted.

While not really bad, these side-scrolling sections are never really exciting, usually very easy, and the play mechanics are too simple even for those with simple taste. Your knight can jump, he can swing his sword, and he can use one magic spell (pre-determined by you before the start of the stage). The magic is unnecessary until the boss battle, so what you are left with is a lot of jumping and a lot of slashing during the penultimate stage. No real strategy is used to progress, just run through trying not to get hit and avoiding pits and spikes. Certain enemies demand hits taken, should you try and fight them. It boils down to you trying to kill them taking the least possible hits, by standing next to them and pumping the attack button.

Boss battles are a mixed bag. Pumping the attack button, like with the enemies in the above paragraph, is the optimal strategy for many of them. Others go down quickly when you use your magic spells. There is one spell that rains down projectiles for a solid 5 seconds, pummeling large bosses to their deaths after two or three uses. Then there are a rare few that require strategy and a good pattern. The one that stands out in my mind, one boss is a wizard that disappears and then reappears, he shoots a 3-way projectile and then bolts of lightning from some platforms above. It is a great challenge avoiding all of his shots, and it takes some experience to learn. When half of his life is gone, however, he changes forms, and the remainder of the battle is spent as another button masher.

”I, Minotauros, will knock you all down!!”

This is not what ActRaiser is about, however. These parts are but 5-10 minute diversions from the more time-consuming part of the game, town-building. These, in contrast, feature basic graphics, but nothing more would be needed for this sim-style mode of the game. The basic idea here is to control the sprawl of the town to reach it’s maximum potential. In doing so, the town’s population rises. Population is the equivalent of experience points, and gaining a level benefits both your cherub and your knight form.

Each town starts out in the same way: the people of the town want you to destroy some part of the landscape so they can spread outward. You start out performing “miracles” to get rid of bushes/rocks/palm trees/snow etc., because God knows you can’t build a town where these evil monstrosities exist, you must work hard to make every parcel of land look just as mundane as the next. You have a decent catalog of “miracles” featuring such things as lightning, sun, earthquake, rain and wind, each of these potentially affecting the landscape. While you’re doing all that, you can instruct the people where to start building their town. As the people build more, the population grows, as the population grows, the work becomes faster. Population starts at 2, and the work is slow at first, but by the time you are finished making everything look the same there will be enough people to make the waiting less tedious.

''It would kick some serious ass if you blew up those rocks over there with lightning bolts, Amen.

There are monster generators surrounding each town to serve as an annoyance. These dispense flying enemies that buzz around and attack your cherub, while occasionally going after some humans. The cherub is not defenseless, however - he comes equipped with a bow and arrows, thus he can protect himself and the townsfolk, but the monsters will immediately regenerate upon death. To put a more permanent end to them, you must direct the growth of the town to the monster generators, so the people can seal them. Yes, these people can seal monster generators whereas you can’t. These being the same people who can’t cut down a friggin’ bush.

All too often, your cherub chimes in, interrupting the action to tell you that the people have something to say to you. The game then cuts to the inside of the temple where 2 people are praying. Often they’ll give you an offering that someone might have found as they were building the town. Offerings have a wide range of uses, but usually it will be a one-time-use item, such as an herb to help the sick in another town, or a loaf of bread to feed to poor lost Teddy. Sometimes the people have something to say to you, and it is in these parts where there is plot advancement.

”We have the following to offer this year, my Master. My Master, these are called clothes. Please share our clothes with your cherub friend. PLEASE.”

An action part must be completed before working on each town, and once every monster generator in a town is sealed, the people will tell you of another main source of evil you must deal with as an action sequence. The two types of sequences really mix well, as once you’ve put a half-hour into a simulation type game, you will be itching for some action. Unfortunately, this doesn’t keep either of the two sequences from being lackluster in execution. Not only are the action parts simplistic and easy, but the same can be said about the simulation parts. There’s not really a lot to do, each town plays out like clockwork in the same manner, and the entire game can be beaten in around three hours, without ever having played it before. The game is fun, but minimally.

Offering some saving grace, the great video game composer Yuzo Koshiro has put together a harmonious soundtrack, augmenting the on-screen action perfectly, to break the tedium. Symphony style music is presented at choice moments. Side-scroll levels and especially boss battles feature some impressive songs. The music you will be hearing most often, the track that plays in the sim parts, sets the atmosphere for the primitive civilizations. Certain towns feature a different track subsequent with their “discovery of music”, and it, as well, is done excellently and gives a feeling of progressiveness to the civilization.

''And the 1200, B.C. Grammy award for best use of the hard, solid material goes to.... Grok, for ‘pip pow bip bop’!''

All things considered, even the stellar soundtrack couldn’t keep me from being a wee bit disappointed with ActRaiser. It isn’t a bad game at all, just that it has a reputation as being one of the best. Most disturbing is the lack of difficulty. You will be challenged sparsely, if at all, up until the final battles, and those are more annoying than genuinely difficult. Even they become easy after a handful of attempts. The simulation aspect failed to get me addicted to the game. Snippets of plot line are unintentionally funny more times than they are actually interesting. I refuse to care about poor dumb ass lost Teddy.

ActRaiser is a great way to waste away a day or an evening, and it’s worth buying if only for the fact that it’s hard to find. Decent gameplay is accompanied with amazing visuals and sound. This act, however, wasn’t raised high enough to meet my expectations.

Scores:
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Graphics: 10
Gameplay: 6
Sound: 10
Replay Value: 6

Overall: 7

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/02/02, Updated 06/22/02