Illusion of Gaia reviewed

Many years ago a game company called Quintet existed and made various genre-busting games like the action/sim game of Actraiser.  Their shining moment came with a trilogy of loosely connected games known as the Soul Blazer trilogy which consisted of Soul Blazer, Terranigma, and the topic of today's review Illusion of Gaia.  Illusion of Gaia is easily the most well-known game of the trilogy but in the grand scheme of gaming history it has been almost forgotten by all but the hardcore SNES fans.  So does this game truly deserved to be forgotten or should it be worthy of a revival?  Let's answer this question as we dig into Illusion of Gaia.

So a year before the game starts proper, our plucky young hero, Will and his father along with some crew go up to the Tower of Babel and start exploring but something went horribly wrong and they all died.  Well not Will since he escaped but he has a case of convenient amnesia.  Now IN THE PRESENT, the game begins proper with Will dilly-dallying after school where he steps in a portal to ANOTHER DIMENSION where the spirit of the Earth Gaia is watching.  Here Gaia tells Will that he must leave to destroy a comet that is out changing the very fabric of Earth.  So begins a story of adventure, friendship, love and bashing the heck out of everything with your trusty flute.  Also, you can transform into a knight named Freedan and a shadowy warrior named Shadow that kills things with his fists...that turns into swords!

The greatest asset that Illusion of Gaia has is that it's a bit impossible to pigeon-hole.  It plays like a Legend of Zelda clone so you're thinking you collect stronger weapons and pieces of life like any Zelda game.  Well no, you really don't do that other than a couple life potions and you don't get stronger weapons besides when you become either Freedan or Shadow.  So it's a real RPG right?  Well no, you only get stat increases when you kill every enemy in an area plus there's no money to be had and there's a lives system.  Yes, there's a lives systems that's in use that increases when you get 100 blood orbs from the corpses of your enemies.  It's all a hodgepodge of various genres but it all works out.

The graphics in this game are simply breathtaking especially for its time.  The backgrounds are very rich and detailed.  The character sprites are very rich and even though they're not at all full of expression it still gets the job done.  There's even one part that is so rich that it's almost disturbing.  So near the end of the game you will have to set off a fire trap to save one your friends.  The guy is lit on fire and he's ambling towards you, completely on fire, in a slow sort-of realistic way.  Then he collapses and his arm is reaching out towards you before he finally stops moving.  It would be awesome if it wasn't so disturbing.

There are flaws in this game however.  One flaw is that this game suffers from very extreme padding.  There are a few instances where you learn a new song and it takes five minutes to learn it!  I may be exaggerating but not by much and it's even worse when you have to play the song for your appropriate plot point.  Then there's the infamous Raft Scene which needs no explanation, trust me on this when you play it you will know what I am talking about.  Then there's the Red Jewels side quest where you work your fingers to the bone to find 50 of these things in weird places.  Then the end result isn't really worth it since you really get nothing from it instead of a more tangible link to Soul Blazer, the first game in the aforementioned Soul Blazer trilogy.  And do you know Guide Dang It-y this side quest is?  The instruction manual had to tell you where they were, not a strategy guide you have to buy separately but the instruction manual that comes with the game!

So this game is pretty good.  It's very pretty too look at and it has a good style in its presentation.  The characters are somewhat fleshed out enough to the point that we do care what happens to them and there is a couple moments that did almost bring out a tear out of me.  If this game had much better pacing, lousy horrible flashbacks of the raft, and a better reward for the Red Jewels then this game would not have been forgotten like it is today. 

7/10