Actraiser

  Before I continue my journey to the rest of Quintet Trilogy after done with Soul Blazer, I paid my homage to the Trilogy spiritual predecessor known as Actraiser. When I was a kid, I did play some Java game on Ericsson phone with the same name and similar vibe, but the actual SNES game really meets more than the eye! In its original incarnation, Actraiser is a hybrid sidescrolling game that is way ahead of its time yet for some reason the Dev never interested to capitalize on it. Hopefully this article could help people to get into this SNES Gem or even the remaster which is known as Actraiser Renaissance.

 Just like Soul Blazer, Actraiser is a story of the struggle between Good and Evil encapsulated in Side-scrolling game. This time you get to play as the God of Light (Known as Master in Western release) who just lost in a fight against his Evil counterpart and try to regain his strength for a rematch. In order to restore his Power, The God of Light need to vanquish the Evil God minions plaguing the world and restoring the Humanity Faith on him. Thus in Actraiser you will spend most of your time exploring the Evil Minions lair in intense Sidescrolling action featuring various sorts of terrains and enemies with each 6 regions of the World Map have 2 stages of old school hack&slash.

 What sets apart Actraiser with its sidescrolling contemporary is the Light-sim Civilization Building minigame that serve as Intermission before another action sequence. In this part of the game, you dispatch your Angel servant to oversee a region and help your Human Subjects liberate the land from Evil Monster threats. In order to have your Human subjects kingdom thrive, not only you have to protect the population from the monster threats but you also have to guide their development to seal the Monster lair. At times you will have to intervene with the God Magic altering the landscape to help the Civilization progress or even help with your subjects specific needs which may require key items from other region.

This light sim minigame is actually very well thought out for its time and easily my favorite part from Actraiser. As it serve as the medium for the storyline fleshing out the setting of this action-focused game. Doing well in this bit also important for the main gameplay as the number of worshipper improves your characters statline to survive the brutal hazards that the Evil God minions prepare in their dungeon. To be honest, Actraiser would have been a mainstream success and might even help the Dev to survive until this day if Quintet had decided to improve the mechanics of this part of the game instead of abandoning it altogether on Actraiser 2 which look nothing like the first game.

 In terms of difficulty, Actraiser is a brutal sidescrolling game befitting its era as the stages you face will have plenty of aggressive enemy and hazards to whittle you down before you face the Bosses at the end of the stage. Then in the Final Stage you will be presented a Gauntlet of Boss Fights in which you have to face 6 of the Evil God minions before facing the Big Boss himself. While the minion boss attack patterns are simple enough, the attrition will get to you if you ever make any slip up. The most annoying Minion boss to face would be the Minotaur and the Snake, the former just leave no room for attack unless you cheese him with Aura Magic while the latter requires the most patience of all 6 Minion bosses.

 To be frank, I am thoroughly impressed with Actraiser not due to what it was able to offer at its time but the immense potential it had from the synergy of 2 different gameplay genre. Ultimately just like many entertainment works made in Japan, Actraiser wasted its potential possibly due to some corporate politics. One would imagine a Metroidvania that had hybrid sims like Actraiser which unfortunately no definitive successor on this one yet. At some point I will definitely pay a visit to this game's remaster which is known as Actraiser Renaissance and Sakuna which had some good reputation with similar gameplay.