ActRaiser

"Nothing short of amazing"

Actraiser is another awesome SNES RPG release by Enix of America. This game is a mix of a Sim game, where you play God to a town of primitive people, and a side scrolling action hack and slash game. Both areas of the game are very well designed and executed and go very well together.

You play this game as a lord in some place equivalent in this world to Heaven. Everything in the world is going just grand until an angel tells you that monsters are rampaging about because of a demon called Tanzra. You must put an end to this game, but this will not be easy, as Tanzra has sealed your power. You are basically the God of this entire world. You must guide the people to build their civilizations and perform the tasks that they cannot perform like defeating monsters. You can control a hell of a lot of things in this game. You can control the weather, building of the town, and using magic spells.

When the game first starts, you will be on the Sky Palace, which is the equivalent to Heaven in this game. You can control the Sky Palace to hover over whichever land you choose and can decide what to do from here.

When the game first starts, because of all the monsters, the world is uninhabitable. Your first mission is to rid an area of the world of monsters so that humans can once again inhabit it. This part of the game is the portion that is a side scrolling hack and slash game. However, even though this part of the game isn't the main part of the game, it is still done much better than most games dedicated to the hack and slash genre. Each level has a pretty complex design with multiple different elevations you can travel at. Each level has many different types of enemies including a boss at the end and a few different bonuses throughout. Once you defeat the boss in each area, that area is now safe enough to be inhabited by humans.

Once humans start to inhabit an area, you will have to watch over them. At this point of the game, you will play as one of your angels. A town will start with a temple build in your honor and a few citizens. The citizens will occasionally talk to you and ask you for certain favors. At first these favors will be simple like clearing bushes from the building path. These are where several more of your abilities come into play. Your miracle abilities include lightning, wind, rain, earthquake, and sun. These abilities all take a certain amount of SP. You must also direct the citizens in the direction to build the city. As the city size increases, the population will increase. However, the citizens are not completely safe as the land is now. There are quite a few monster caves throughout the land. These caves will spawn monsters that will torment the city. They will pick up citizens and try and kidnap them and destroy buildings. The angel that you play as has a bow and arrow that can destroy these monsters, however, they will spawn until their caves are sealed. To seal a cave you must construct the town towards a monster cave and once the town is build on top of it, it will be sealed.

After this, there will be another side-scrolling hack and slash adventure with another boss. After this, you must build more cities in other parts of the world. The game is won once every last inch of the world is developed for human use and completely free of all evil.

I said this game is part RPG because you also have to level up. Your level will increase every time the world's population reaches a certain number. When you level up, you will gain a higher maximum health and a higher SP.

That is a pretty basic description of what goes on in this game. As you can see there is an RPG part to it, but I wouldn't classify it as an RPG, and it also combines side-scrolling hack and slash action with playing God. The game is a great concept and quite fun to play.

Graphics
Graphically this game was about par compared to other SNES games. I can say for sure that this game has much better graphics than most of the earlier SNES games and quite a few newer ones, but the graphics were still nothing to rave about. The greatest part of this game graphically would definitely be the side-scrolling parts of the game. Usually the backgrounds and parts of the graphics that can't necessarily be interacted with are the best parts. The skylines in outdoor scrolling parts are very well colored and designed and give the levels a real sense of evil and disarray. The graphics throughout other parts of the game are pretty well done also. Most notably is the Sky Palace. In the Sky Palace there is a lot of depth perception to make the game look more three dimensional and more realistic. Other than that graphics were well-done and about average.

Audio
I found the sounds in this game to also be about average for SNES games. I didn't really like how Enix used some sound effects from their other games in this one however, which I did find a little too often. The music was pretty good, but didn't add a whole lot to the game play. The only thing I disliked about the sounds was the annoying pitch of the sound effects that occurred when text was popping up. It wasn't a huge deal, just a little bit annoying.

Storyline
Surprisingly, the storyline isn't very prevalent in this game. I felt that this game could have incorporated the storyline of this game a lot more to make it more interesting. The game is basically just ridding lands of monsters and building civilizations with just a little bit of storyline squeezed in between. A little disappointing, but the game play makes up for it.

Controls
The controls in this game were very solid. They are easy to memorize and easy to get a good feel for in order to get good at the game. Even though the game is pretty complex, the controls were quite simple in comparison, which is a good thing to have in a game.

Game Play
This is definitely the most amazing part of this game. The game play is very complex and very intricate, yet the game is very straightforward and easy for most anyone to learn to play. The people of the town will tell you when they want you to do something and you will have to do it. However, the game isn't so straightforward that it is very boring and unenjoyable. The menu interface is very easy to navigate also. The game itself is a mix of playing God like in Sim games and side-scrolling action and both of these parts of the game are better than most of the games of either genre. The fact that this game is such a wonderful mixture of the two is just amazing to me. The game play is slightly repetitive as you basically do the same thing with each land, and once one land is fully developed, there isn't anything further you can do with that land. This game is very fun and will keep you occupied for hours.

Replay Value
Though the game play is nearly flawless, this game isn't really worth playing once you beat it. After beating the game once, there aren't many things you can do to make the game play much different than the last time you beat it.

Final Words
Like most games made by Enix, this game is nothing short of amazing. The graphics and sounds were well done. Though this game is very complex in nearly every way, it is still a game that is easy to get a hang of. The game play is nearly flawless and is very enjoyable. I would definitely recommend playing this game and buying it while it is still readily available.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 02/13/06