It's tons of fun and I really took a liking to the character and story, it's like watching a decent cartoon. Gameplay wise the game only starts to shit itself once you get the tornado attack which is too OP.
I'll be more detailed. The sprite work is great. Everything else is extremely mediocre. The dungeons suck nuts, the combat is really shallow and not satisfying, the music is irritating most of the time, it takes forever to get the real game going and even then it's not worth sticking around to get to.
Irritatingly good? That doesn't make a lot of sense. Anyway, it's good. You also didn't mention the game's bizarre story, even though it focuses on that pretty strongly, which is strange. I guess you didn't like it, which is fine. But disliking the music is incorrect. Your feelings are wrong.
>The sprite work is great. Everything else is extremely mediocre. The dungeons suck nuts, the combat is really shallow and not satisfying, it takes forever to get the real game going and even then it's not worth sticking around to get to.
i consider blazer a much better game too. more thought provoking dialogue, juxtaposition of dungeon crawling and village resurrection. the focus is stronger whereas gaia meanders around. what gaia has is some great scenes like the boat one and the piggie.
It looks great. The sprite work is top notch - Freedan STRUTS and looks like a badass. Plus I like how the wind affects your sprite. Good music too.
I didn’t like the plot though the game does some interesting stuff with storytelling like on the part on the raft with Kara. Most of the time it’s sort of eye rolling like the famous pig roast scene and it ends with you (tragically?) bringing about modernity.
It’s probably my least favorite quintet game but I’ll always have a spot soft for it as I associate it with Nintendo’s Play It Loud era - a time I always felt the company was firing on all cylinders.
Nintendo must have really liked this game because they published it in the west (the US at least) and gave it a really premium package. Came with a poster (with an enemy chart on the back), the manual had a near full guide to the game and some places bundled a T shirt with it.
There was a time during the late-2000s were I saw the PAL version of some games being sold new with strategy guides, some countries had big boxes while other had something like pic related.
I actually regret only getting Terranigma since these costed like 40€ each and are likely very expensive nowadays (I think SoM also got one).
IMO this shit right here is one of the real reasons why they published so few RPGs in the west. Strategy guides + big manuals + the fact that they took more money to translate means a publishing cost that is astronomical compared to action games.
They really backed themselves in a corner with this shit, I have no idea why they insisted on releases needing to have guides. Especially in A-RPGs that don't really warrant it
In Nintendo's case, they saw what a huge deal Dragon Quest and other RPGs were in Japan and were trying to replicate that here. Hell, they even gave away Dragon Warrior as a gateway drug at a time that a "free" game would have been a huge deal for consumers.
their understanding was that the morons in america needed this kind of shit to get by. and would entice the average player to hop in. these magazine/guide type things were popular in japan and helped the genre thrive.
My biggest missed opportunity as a collector is in the late 90s, a Best Buy near me was liquidating a stack of Earthbounds for 10 bucks each. If I had any foresight I probably could retire now.
Damn, I remember this being heralded as a truly hidden gem and try as I might I could never find a copy. It had an extremely limited release and if you had told me that it had released in my state I would have believed you.
Glad to know that thirty years later a game I never got to play was never worth playing.
When you save your game and you choose not to continue your journey Gaia tells you to rest a while and you disappear, no longer able to interact with the game at all as the music plays and the stars drift by. I know now that you're meant to turn the console off at that point but as a kid I used to just stare at the screen afterwards for 20 minutes at a time and feel child anxiety about my own mortality.
When you're right you're right
It's tons of fun and I really took a liking to the character and story, it's like watching a decent cartoon. Gameplay wise the game only starts to shit itself once you get the tornado attack which is too OP.
I'll be more detailed. The sprite work is great. Everything else is extremely mediocre. The dungeons suck nuts, the combat is really shallow and not satisfying, the music is irritating most of the time, it takes forever to get the real game going and even then it's not worth sticking around to get to.
Been watching macaw huh?
>the music is irritating most of the time,
Irritatingly good? That doesn't make a lot of sense. Anyway, it's good. You also didn't mention the game's bizarre story, even though it focuses on that pretty strongly, which is strange. I guess you didn't like it, which is fine. But disliking the music is incorrect. Your feelings are wrong.
>The sprite work is great. Everything else is extremely mediocre. The dungeons suck nuts, the combat is really shallow and not satisfying, it takes forever to get the real game going and even then it's not worth sticking around to get to.
Soul Blazer is much better
How so? Blazer is the worst parts of Gaia's dungeon crawling and that's the entire game.
i consider blazer a much better game too. more thought provoking dialogue, juxtaposition of dungeon crawling and village resurrection. the focus is stronger whereas gaia meanders around. what gaia has is some great scenes like the boat one and the piggie.
It's more interesting than Zelda. My only complaint is that some of the action mechanics, and also some boss fights are annoying.
Everyone forgets the part where Will and Kara watch a man burn to death and barely even bat an eye over it.
To be fair he had it coming.
its a bit overrated by boomers. the dungeons are nothing special but i like the pace and narrative framing of going on this great odyssey.
>people in the 90s are boomers
why do zoomers come here, you have never played the games here
It looks great. The sprite work is top notch - Freedan STRUTS and looks like a badass. Plus I like how the wind affects your sprite. Good music too.
I didn’t like the plot though the game does some interesting stuff with storytelling like on the part on the raft with Kara. Most of the time it’s sort of eye rolling like the famous pig roast scene and it ends with you (tragically?) bringing about modernity.
It’s probably my least favorite quintet game but I’ll always have a spot soft for it as I associate it with Nintendo’s Play It Loud era - a time I always felt the company was firing on all cylinders.
Nintendo must have really liked this game because they published it in the west (the US at least) and gave it a really premium package. Came with a poster (with an enemy chart on the back), the manual had a near full guide to the game and some places bundled a T shirt with it.
There was a time during the late-2000s were I saw the PAL version of some games being sold new with strategy guides, some countries had big boxes while other had something like pic related.
I actually regret only getting Terranigma since these costed like 40€ each and are likely very expensive nowadays (I think SoM also got one).
IMO this shit right here is one of the real reasons why they published so few RPGs in the west. Strategy guides + big manuals + the fact that they took more money to translate means a publishing cost that is astronomical compared to action games.
They really backed themselves in a corner with this shit, I have no idea why they insisted on releases needing to have guides. Especially in A-RPGs that don't really warrant it
In Nintendo's case, they saw what a huge deal Dragon Quest and other RPGs were in Japan and were trying to replicate that here. Hell, they even gave away Dragon Warrior as a gateway drug at a time that a "free" game would have been a huge deal for consumers.
their understanding was that the morons in america needed this kind of shit to get by. and would entice the average player to hop in. these magazine/guide type things were popular in japan and helped the genre thrive.
Being an unironic weeb hasn't been cool on Ganker since like 2005
My biggest missed opportunity as a collector is in the late 90s, a Best Buy near me was liquidating a stack of Earthbounds for 10 bucks each. If I had any foresight I probably could retire now.
Damn, I remember this being heralded as a truly hidden gem and try as I might I could never find a copy. It had an extremely limited release and if you had told me that it had released in my state I would have believed you.
Glad to know that thirty years later a game I never got to play was never worth playing.
Pic unrelated.
It's totally worth playing. OP just has poor tastes.
soul blazer is fine, but dungeon explorer is much more fun (and an amazing soundtrack) and scratches the "japanese gauntlet" itch better
none of them are, but theyre still fun
I haven't played it recently but it was great when it came out.
When you save your game and you choose not to continue your journey Gaia tells you to rest a while and you disappear, no longer able to interact with the game at all as the music plays and the stars drift by. I know now that you're meant to turn the console off at that point but as a kid I used to just stare at the screen afterwards for 20 minutes at a time and feel child anxiety about my own mortality.