Growing up in the 1990’s meant experiencing the joy of the Super NES and Sega Genesis first hand. Unfortunately, it also meant not having the money to acquire all those great looking games sitting on the shelf at Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Toys’R Us, etc… As an adult, I’ve made it a point to try to find those games I missed out on and give them a chance. One such game that I just recently played for the first time is the Enix / Quintet classic, Soul Blazer. It should also be noted that I played this via the Super Famicom cart (titled Soul Blader) using an English patch on a Retron5. I’ve found that Super Famicom games are vastly more affordable than their North American counterparts.
The Set-up:
You are the Blazer. A warrior sent by The Master to rescue the people and villages of the Freil Empire. The evil spirit Deathtoll has taken over the land and sealed the citizens away while also populating the world with monsters. Armed only with your sword, you must find a way to the World of Evil where Deathtoll dwells.
So, technically speaking, you are an unnamed entity, but the spiritual successor to Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia, does reference this game and refers to the main character as the Blazer, and that sounds much cooler than “Brando,” which is the name I used.
The Story:
Upon your arrival, the world is empty of all creatures, save the monsters sent by Deathtoll. You, the Blazer, must travel into the dungeons of Deathtoll and release the people/creatures of the world. As you do so, you gain new abilities and new allies that will be needed as you move on to the next region.
The story of Soul Blazer is fairly simplistic, but is at least a bit familiar if you’ve played other Quintet games. Quintet seemingly had a fascination with destruction and creation, and it shows up again in Soul Blazer. This isn’t meant to imply a negative, but merely to point out a clear interest the developers at Quintet had when crafting narratives. There is a narrative running through the game, and characters that you’ll encounter or encounter mentions of from region to region, but ultimately the strength of this game lies more in the gameplay.
The Gameplay:
Soul Blazer is played from a top down perspective and, as noted above, tasks you with freeing the creatures of each region you visit. Each region begins with your arrival in a deserted landscape. After exploring for a bit, you’ll find your way to a dungeon that contains monster lairs producing, you guessed it, monsters. Each lair produces a set number of monsters, and when those are eliminated, the lair turns green. Once this is done, you can walk over the lair to release a creature, trigger a change in the dungeon, or gain an item. More often than not, a creature will be released in the deserted area you started in. The game will show you where the person/animal is so you can visit them once you’ve exited the dungeon. Most of these will offer advice or, on occasion, a new ability. And the game is structured in such a way that you may need to exit the dungeon area, speak to someone, find a new item or ability, then re-enter the dungeon. This sounds tedious, but there three warp points in each region, one in the populated area and two in the dungeon area. Also, the dungeons aren’t overly large, so it’s truly not an issue to exit and re-enter when needed.
In regards to monster lairs, the game does let you know how many are active in your current area when you pause the game. This sounds minor, but is extremely helpful if you’re wanting to be sure you complete everything. Also, in the first half of the game, you will come upon monsters that you can’t yet defeat, meaning their lair will remain open until you obtain the means to defeat the enemies. Again, while this could be tedious, the game makes traveling from region to region very easy. You simply navigate to the region you want to go back to on a world map.
So, the question is, how do you defeat those numerous monsters lurking in the dungeons of Soul Blazer? Fortunately, the Blazer is armed with a both a sword and magic spells. You’re primary attack will be your sword, which will be replaced with a stronger swords as you complete the different regions. If you’ve ever played Zelda, then you know how the sword works. You push a button and it swings in an arc. I will say that in Soul Blazer, the arc is rather large, even hitting enemies that are partially behind you. The enemies sometimes have sketchy hit boxes so this is certainly welcome. Soul Blazer also includes a strafe mechanic. If you hold one of the shoulder buttons, your character will hold his sword out and continually face in the same direction regardless of the direction you’re moving.
As mentioned above, there is also a magic element in Soul Blazer, but it’s a bit odd. Your character has a light blue orb constantly circling him. It is this orb that provides your selected magic attack (there are multiple magic attacks to be found in the game). I was never a fan of this mechanic because it means having to line up the orb with whatever enemy you’re hoping to attack with magic. Ultimately, this meant that I used one specific, multi-directional spell for the entire game as I found almost all of the others to be unreliable. This is truly a shame because the magic attacks are all rather interesting, but are somewhat neutered by the odd method of attack.
Finally, there are multiple items to be found in Soul Blazer. There’s a standard healing item that will revive you if you lose all of your health, though it must be equipped to take effect, which is true of all items. There are story items that are used only in specific settings, such as the dream rod, which lets you enter sleeping characters’ dreams to access new areas. There are also items that buff your defense and attack, which are probably the most useful, and are certainly the ones I used most of the time. There are three “Red Hot” items that must be found to advance at the end of the game as they provide a magic spell that is key to fighting the final boss. These items aren’t too difficult to find, but do require some backtracking. There is a collection of items that, when all collected, can be traded for an incredibly useful item. These items can be very aggravating to find, given that at least two of them are placed randomly on the map with no indication whatsoever to indicate that they are where they are.
Conclusions:
The thought that kept coming back to me as I played through Soul Blazer was that I had forgotten how little hand holding games in the 16-bit era gave you. For example, the first boss. For this fight, you are in a room that has ledges on the north and south of the room which are connected by three conveyor belts. You begin on the south ledge while the boss is on the north ledge. The two conveyor belts on the outside move north to south while the one in the middle moves south to north. The wrinkle with this fight is that the boss turns to metal if you step foot on his ledge. You can get a hit in if you’re quick, but it’s tough and you’ll almost certainly get hit yourself. I tried this fight a couple of times and lost so thoroughly that I was convinced I had missed an item. Except I couldn’t find an item. Finally, out of desperation, I watched a YouTube video to see what I was missing. Turns out that the strafe maneuver I noted above, which you are specifically told about by a person you free in the village, is the key to the battle. You have to face the boss, hold the shoulder button, then advance on the middle conveyor belt, hitting the boss, then retreating to your side before he attacks with his fireballs. This way, you never touch his ledge and he never turns to metal. I think younger me would have figured this out, but current me had completely forgotten the strafe technique. Again, a reminder that this game was not going to go out of its way to correct me or subtly push me forwards.
The realization that my 16-bit skills were woefully rusty aside, I did enjoy this game. It’s not perfect, and I prefer the other Quintet games I’ve played (Actraiser and Illusion of Gaia), but it is a solid 16-bit game, and does deserve its reputation as a gem in the Super NES library. The rights to this game are apparently in question (the head of Quintet has apparently vanished as no one knows where he currently resides), so it’s not widely available (though we got a remake of Actraiser, which is also a Quintet title, so who knows). This is a shame given that this is a fairly unique game that has elements of both Actraiser and Legend of Zelda in its DNA. In spite of the limitations, I would absolutely recommend this game to anyone that wants to scratch a 16-bit itch or play one of the more interesting games on the Super NES.
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