"Aw, Grandma! Mouse fritters AGAIN?"

Those in the crowd who have been gamers for most of their lives will probably hold a special place in their heart for Illusion of Gaia. Who couldn't? The game absolutely smacks of memorability, which certainly earns it quite a few points in its favor. IoG had a very different, quirky sort of outlook with its plot, characters and settings, with skewed but comical humor and poorly-translated yet oddly enthralling dialogue. Illusion of Gaia manages to pull together whales talking, weeks adrift, and world-threatening environmentally destructive meteors into one convoluted but gloriously good story. Fortunately, the gameplay also manages to reach the same caliber, making Illusion of Gaia not only fun to delve into, but fun to play as well.

The game functions quite well as an aesthetic tour-de-force, in addition to all its other positive aspects. Illusion of Gaia is teeming with life, with vividly-animated enemies and intimidating, fearful bosses. The color palette is one of the richest in any SNES game, lending all of the environments and characters a distinct and attractive look. Each town looks extremely different from the one previous, which really contributes an unparalleled sense of life to the Illusion of Gaia world. If anything is lacking in the graphical department, I just wish the human sprites had a little more animation to them. They walk with straight-laced, cardboard inexpression, and their faces or positions never change. Only Will, your protagonist, has any alternate animation sets, used while he is running or employing a special psychic technique.

Sound, on a similar token, is actually something of a mixed bag. On one extreme, Illusion of Gaia has amazing music. Each of the six dungeons where you'll find a Mystic Statue has its own distinct theme music, which reflects both your continental location and the graphical appearance of the level. Most of the towns all use the same music, unfortunately, but at least that theme is well done. Finally, the music during special sequences (such as the returning of a certain character's memory) is excellently composed and always appropriate. To reach into that mixed bag once again, however, the sound effects are underdone and weak. Borrowing many effects from its rather aged predecessor, ActRaiser, Illusion of Gaia's sounds are muffled and nowhere near as involving as the music. They almost sound NES-quality, which is very disappointing.

Bypassing the impressive presentation package, however, Illusion of Gaia is truly a joy to play and experience. The game begins, as many do, with our daydreaming hero whittling his life away at school, thinking about his long-lost explorer father. Silently he vows to meet his father, who vanished after an expedition to the Tower of Babel, once again. After the bell finally rings to dismiss bored little Will, he bursts out of the schoolhouse and is greeted by a beautiful seaside down. Smoke rolls out of the chimneys, seagulls arc through the air and the water churns and undulates. People mill through the streets, talking and carrying pots; girls play games and we even get to see a marital dispute as an embittered wife throws a jar at her gambling husband. This world feels so full of life for a decade-old SNES game. Will meets up with his friends, who make him put on a show with his unusual telekinetic powers, and then as night falls he returns home...to discover a pig, wreaking havoc in the front room. A princess has taken shelter in his house, but soldiers track her down and bring her home. Will's grandmother and grandfather give him a rather unusual meal of snail pie, and thus we have seen a day in the life of our young protagonist. A bit mundane, and a bit magical.

The game seems to strike this balance very often, which is what lends it all its homely charm. As we progress through the story, we are constantly thrown into situations that are both fantastical and very worldly. Will is seeking the six Mystic Statues, which allow him passage through the mythical Tower of Babel, and in order to collect them he must travel the world and delve into many treacherous locations. One dungeon, for instance, leads Will through an Incan ruin; he fights off reanimated statues and plays a mysterious flute melody at the edge of a windy cliff to unlock a door. The ruin leads him to a sailboat wrought of solid gold, seemingly trapped in eternal antiquity. His friends find him here, and after a gigantic angry fish rams them off the boat, we find Will and the aforementioned Princess Kara...drifting on a raft. The notorious raft scene, as it has come to be called, is one of the most detested moments in Illusion of Gaia, but I am actually very partial to it. There is something to be said about a game that has the balls to strand its two main characters on a raft, with nothing to fight and nothing to see but the rolling waves and the blinking stars, for ten minutes. Furthermore, this scene solidifies the resolved character of Will, the maturation of the once-bratty Kara, and the budding relationship between these two youngsters. I could understand how some find it boring, but it is crucial, so deal with it.

In another memorable segment, the party finds themselves underground, walking through a tunnel in another rather extended (but not nearly as long) narrative sequence. After bursting above ground, they find themselves in another network of tunnels, all of them leading to what appears to be a city of angels. These delicate creatures hole up underground because they cannot live in the sunlight, and despite their otherworldly demeanor they seem to be very much like normal people. Emotionless but still vaguely human, they dance and paint and express themselves just like normal people do. This environment is perhaps a bit unsettling, but unexpectedly insightful and innovative for a game that many bill as a generic action title.

And for all the bizarre adventures that Will and all his friends undergo, the game makes sure to remind us that they're just normal kids too. All of them have their own personalities: Erik is shy and a little frail, Neil is eccentric but brilliant. They celebrate birthdays, miss their parents and even fall in love. One girl, the aptly-named Lilly (who bears the ability to -- surprise! -- turn into a flying flower), celebrates her 13th birthday, and the intrepid Lance finds this a good opportunity to express his feelings for her through a homemade necklace. Like all bashful girls do, she changes into a flower and flies away, leaving Lance confused and nervous. If you've ever dealt with the sickly-sweet endeavors of romance, then you know how this feels; Illusion of Gaia drums up a significant amount of empathy for poor old Lance. Those very same necklace beads are used to guide Will through a complex dungeon in search of both Lilly and a medicine that is said to cure amnesia. Told you this game gets convoluted.

But before I drown all of you in oversentimental sap, I'd better change gears to the most important aspect of Illusion of Gaia: the gameplay. To start, this game features some of the most impressively-designed dungeon crawling on the SNES. There are plenty of puzzles, some backtracking, a little bit of fetch-quest but never enough to tire the player out, and of course a buttload of demon combat. The dungeons do grow a bit repetitive in design after traversing through them for an hour, but fortunately they usually end before the player gets too sick of them. You'll find yourself contending with all sorts of fiendish beasties, with little more than your flute to beat them off...until you discover the Dark Space. Dark Spaces, where you save and heal, are also host to two transformations that Will can undergo in order to meet several needs. The first, the flaxen-maned knight Freedan, can reach switches that Will can't and fire shining projectiles out of his sword. Shadow, an amorphous blue nightmare who you don't get until later in the game, seeps through cracks in the floor and dices enemies to bits with blades of energy. The transformation aspect makes for some clever puzzle design, though I wish Gaia had elaborated a little more on why she's giving you these new bodies to switch into. This metamorphosis element adds flavor to the game, but feels a little awkwardly implemented.

Regardless of which form you assume, combat is simple. Illusion of Gaia's combat is conducted in real time, where you beat the opponent into submission with your weapon of choice or one of your rather limited arsenal of special moves. Foes are diverse-looking -- the game almost never swaps palettes or recycles its creatures -- and full of nasty surprises. Interestingly enough, however, the game does not provide you with experience points or money for defeating your foes. In fact, it does away with both of these systems. If you want items, you either have to find them strewn throughout the dungeons, or collect any of 50 Red Jewels and trade them in. This ensures that you can't cheat the game by buying too many herbs. On a similar note, you gain statistical upgrades by clearing a room of enemies, whereupon you will receive either HP, strength or defense. Once again, Illusion of Gaia uses this as a check to prevent you from overleveling and making the game any easier to beat. This is fortunate, because the only really challenging part of the game is its bosses. Enemies are done away with fairly quickly, and even if they somehow manage to severely injure you, you can visit a Dark Space to replenish your health. Bosses, on the other hand, are far trickier. They have plenty of HP, unrelenting attacks that are difficult to elude, and of course you can't opt out of the fight to visit a Dark Space. This actually adds an element of intensity to the game that makes the boss fights that much more intense.

There are actually two segments of this game that I really dislike playing because the puzzles are tedious and the layouts are frustrating: Sky Garden and Mount Kress. Sky Garden is a two-layered airship, where you hop back and forth between the underside and the front of the level. An interesting concept on paper, but navigating the level is time-consuming and rather bland. Mount Kress, on the other hand, is just straight up crap. I hate that place. It's nothing more than a sloppily designed, frustrating, ugly filler dungeon so that the game can pad its length, and its lack of quality shows. Regardless, the rest of the dungeons are original and just downright fun; my personal favorites are Mu and the Great Wall of China.

Despite some occasional rough spots that will probably make you not want to play, however, Illusion of Gaia is a treasure. The game does almost everything right, bypassing those difficult dungeons, a decidedly spotty translation and a plot that gets a little carried away with the environmental messages. Aside from all these quirks, however, the game is conceptually one of the best the SNES has to offer. Its obscurity harms it, but it deserves to stand alongside Secret of Mana, the Final Fantasies, and other games of its era -- and we gamer kids know this better than anyone.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/30/06