ActRaiser

"Colonization, baddie-killing and a downright sassy amount of wheat."

ActRaiser is a very valuable but somewhat obscure childhood memory of mine. All I can remember is, at a very young age, playing the game in three in the morning and then waking my parents up in jubilant ecstasy after beating the game, whereupon I was soundly scolded and then sent to bed. In the twilight hours of teenagership, however, I have access to not only an unlimited bedtime but also this classic of a game once again. ActRaiser doesn't fail to impress, but still plays host to a fairly prominent amount of flaws and faults. The game does not fall under one genre at all, but simply a meld of two popular ones: sim and action-platformer. Taking some of the elements of the best of these genres and then simplifying them so that the game does not become too elaborate, ActRaiser gets the best of both worlds. Nothing translates perfectly, however, and both of these sections suffer from their own occasional pitfalls.

The sim/town-building aspect of ActRaiser is the main draw of the game, and also what sets it apart from any other generic platformer. (If you disagree as to the validity of this statement, go play ActRaiser 2. Thoroughly regret doing so and then apologize for doubting me.) There is something infinitely more fulfilling about the building of a tiny little empire than anything else in this game, despite its simplicity, linearity and sporadic frustration. In this mode you take control of a somewhat incompetent little angel with control over all sorts of terrain-working magic: sun to dry away the snow, thunder to burn the trees down, and if worse comes to worst, an earthquake to undo it all. Sometimes you'll be confronted with a relatively remedial puzzle (WHAT? My town has the plague? Certainly these CURING HERBS won't help!) that seems mostly like filler so that you can visit another town in order to find the solution. The building is much more fun, or so I find.

Under your guidance, the people of whatever little hamlet you're working over will proceed to thrive and prosper...once you get past the whole monster angle. Your job as the naked little Cupid is to defend your village from these monsters by shooting dinky little arrows at them until your populace is ready and able to seal the monsters' lairs. Things fall apart a little bit in this department because the hit detection is a little dodgy and controlling the angel can be hard. It never becomes truly difficult, though there will be moments where you are utterly inundated with bats who are eating your villagers and white dragons peeing on your buildings and you will just want to scream and throw your controller. These little experiences, fortunately, are kept to a blessed minimum. Finally, there's plenty to find in every inhabited area, so keep coming back to places after making discoveries in other lands.

To get to the sim sections, however, you have to plod through the platforming sections of the game. These are quite simply not as fun as the sim sections, and probably just about as dumbed-down as well. Control of your character is very slippery, even more so than the angel, which results in running into plenty of attacks and impaling yourself on spikes/getting a free lava bath. Worse yet, a lot of the boss fights are alarmingly difficult...unless you like to 'cheat'. There's a certain easily-accessible called Magical Stardust that absolutely wipes out any boss in the game within three casts, utterly obliterating the difficulty factor of ActRaiser's fighting. Convenient if you just want to get back to the simming, but it deprives the game of a lot of its challenge. Then again, a lot of that challenge comes from trying not to ice skate into a pit of lethal crap, so take that as you will.

Ultimately, the nature of this game does get a little tedious. All you do is attend a fighting level, then sim for about fifteen minutes, then attend another fighting level, and so on and so on. Fortunately, the game is very short, so this doesn't really have time to become too formulaic. (Its sequel, meanwhile, is far longer, which of course ends up being a thorn in its bloated and useless side.) At the core, however, ActRaiser is basically no-strings-attached fun.

And for its vintage, it looks surprisingly good. Granted, it does sample quite a bit of Illusion of Gaia (listen to all those sound effects! Enix really went all-out there!), and the music is utterly boring and/or it induces complete insanity. You'll want to kill yourself after hearing that damn town theme for three hours. The graphical package, however, is far more impressive. Bosses are rendered very creatively, with interesting designs never lacking, and there are no palette-swapped monsters in the game whatsoever. Attack animations are a little unimpressive, as is your character's rather stiff-kneed movement (and his incessant HA whenever he swings his sword), but ActRaiser really does the SNES proud.

The plot of the game, basically, is nonexistent. Just enjoy the mechanics and have fun with it. If you're tolerant of its imperfections, and can bring yourself to look past the rather grating flaws from time to time, there's a veritable classic waiting in the wings for you. Oh yeah, and lots of wheat. Don't forget the wheat, please.

Graphics: 8/10
Sound: 5/10
Gameplay: 8/10
Plot: N/A
Overall: 7/10

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 09/01/05