Metroid Prime Trilogy

The adventures of space oriented bounty hunter Samus Aran got their grand 3D debut with the game known as Metroid Prime, releasing with Metroid Fusion at the same time back in 2002 and they marked the return of perhaps Nintendo's earliest resurrection of a franchise.

Retro Studies was guided to design these new worlds and perspectives that Samus would soon be going through. Defining the trilogy as first person adventures, they left behind immersive and memorable entries.

Metroid Prime gained popularity because the formula introduced in Super Metroid, which has been used by Konami's Castlevania's many times as well, was succesfully transfered through 3D, a feat that no one expected to be able to be done.

Not only that, but the world of Metroid would be given more depth, with tons of information objects to be scanned by the visor, a new feature that offered much new and established lore. They provided much intrigue, not only for reading more about the various alien species, geography and more, but also because it was curious to discover them on your own.

A stunning soundtrack would give the various areas to explore fitting songs that sparked with heroic and epic moments of feelings, as you were controlling the world's most brave female warrior. With Metroid Prime, the story of the trilogy starts on the planet Tallon IV.

After the prologue, seeing Ridley, her nemesis, Samus lands upon the planet not only to hunt him down, but also to investigate the history and surroundings. Both Space Pirates, an evil race, and Chozo's, an ancient race that raised the protagonist, had colonizations here.

Traversing and encountering many new creatures, as well as recovering her equipment and upgrades that allow for new routes to be taken, eventually it becomes clear that a substance known as Phazon pretty much created a lot of wreck and havoc on the planet.

Reaching the Impact Crater, the final area of the game, and after defeating Ridley, Samus confronts the Phazon mutated beast called Metroid Prime, and she must stop the beast before it releases more of the substance before all of Tallon IV is lost.

As monologues don't happen, all of the "communication" happens through dialogue, but even that is limited to information that has been found with the scan visor. That's fine. The focus is on exploring and recording notes.

Metroid Prime has plenty of platforming and shooting sequences, but it is balanced out nicely with the interaction of gaining more information, exploring and really just discovering not only new area's, but new sections of older ones as well.

Backtracking is normal for these kind of games, and Samus is also able to do the majority of movements previous known, such as the unique Morph Ball, which not only acts as a way of moving around more suitably and quickly, but also provides fun puzzle sequences and lets you find out about hidden items.

Items that consist of capacity upgrades, energy(HP) tanks and more. And that's about everything that is happening within Metroid Prime, a game that is absolutely a blast to play. It looks like a sci-fi shooter, but it has an identity of it's known and is different enough to be worth playing.

Rating: 9.0

My personal favorite of the trilogy is Echoes. After Samus's previous adventure, she once again discovers the substance known as Phazon on the planet Aether, a weird world that is split up into a light and a dark dimension, very similar to the concept found in A Link to the Past and Ikaruga as well.

Actually, combine the two, and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes comes out of it. The planet is inhabited by the illuminous Luminoth and the cruel Ing, of which the latter is exploited by Phazon. Aether introduced to me two of the most interesting locations in any game I ever played.

The first one, called Torvus Bog, was so beautiful for me, partially because of the graphics but also of the music, that I would had liked to live there for a while if it was possible and minus the vile creatures of course.

The second one, called Sanctuary Fortress, is an area so alien in design that it was a challenge to get comfortable here. The first region called Agon Wastes is simply a waste and forgettable, but the latter two more than make up for it.

Dark Samus, a cliché concept, is also introduced here, but the circumstances are forgiving for this rising. Besides, the theme of the villain, as well as many other tracks are still wandering my mind whenever I think of Metroid.

What's abstract next towards Aether is that your ammunition at one point also becomes limited, using both Dark and Light ammo in order to exploit weaknesses and discover new routes to take. The Screw Attack also marks it's return in Echoes, and it was the first Metroid game to feature a multiplayer mode, a limited one.

I failed to mention this previously, but Metroid Prime and it's sequel had more than one kind of visor. They have always been used as excuses in order to open up and progress further apart from the combat visor, and this time in Echoes, the Dark and Echo visors are designed.

"The Echo visor is based upon echolocation and allows Samus to see sound waves by replacing her HUD with a monochromatic false-color representation." And the Dark visor allows Samus to see interdimensionally between Aether and Dark Aether.

It's best to see these in action rather than trying to explain it to dummies, but they made the current adventure more enjoyable. Lastly, Echoes was criticized for having an imbalance surrounding difficulty.

The mini-bosses were actually harder than the regular ones according to the reactions back in 2004, but I disagree with that. The overall gameplay was certainly more challenging, but nowhere did I found it to be unfair.

It also suffers from being squeezed inbetween the classic original and the impressive ending of the next sequel. Still, Echoes remains my favorite for personally being very expanded upon itself, standing proudly next to it's brethren.

Rating: 9.1

The end was about to come, as Dark Samus AKA Metroid Prime plots to corrupt the galaxy with Phazon overworlds and large obelisks using the supercomputers called Aurora Units, which are reminders of the original Metroid final boss, Mother Brain.

Samus works not only with the Galactic Federation monologially, but is also grouped up with 3 other bounty hunters, of which they differ very much from each other. Rundas is an icy fellow able to travel through the sky, Ghor is a mechanical cyborg like creature and Gandrayda can morph into others.

The controls aren't changed much, apart from being able to use Wii Motion Control now. There are some new features, such as the Command Visor letting Samus being able to call up her gunship. Another feature is Hypermode, which made the game too easy for me.

It is simply a state where you are able to deal massive damage against all enemies for a short while. It also doubles as a plot element for counteracting against being infected with Phazon. Part of the driven story is to recover from getting corrupted too much, a fate that happens for your fellow partners.

The locations weren't as great as the previous ones, but Elysia for example represented a majestic view of an interesting ancient robotic race. The urge of defeating Dark Samus and Ridley once again also kind of made this game the weakest one of the three.

Still, Corruption remains a very good first person adventure like the others as it is essential to recommend if you liked Prime and Echoes already. It doesn't even come close to the dissapointment of Other M, the first Metroid game I reviewed here.

Rating: 8.7

Quarter of a Century

It is no joke that I was born on this day.

What follows is after a quarter of a century being alive, these are my current noteworthy memories, opinions, experiences and beliefs, in general. I will try to keep personal connections as limited as possible, and give you an overview of a general profile of mine alongside trivial information that continues to be important for me.

So life has been the most interesting since that seems to be everything or nothing. In these 25 years, I've been very lucky, with a terrific childhood full of happy memories with plenty of friends to play around with, a great family and I have been very spoiled.

School was finished well, and I am still studying, mainly for the challenge. Through the years I did many kinds of sports: tennis, baseball, swimming, chess. And now Kenpo Karate has consumed my main physical activities since I was 18.

The internet has broadened my worldwide view through educational sites and sooner or later I got more interested into the big topics such as politics, religion and science. Strangely, this wasn't as much as when I was at school. Perhaps because I could decide by my own from now on on what to learn and read about.

At the age of 17, I started developing my own religion, simply because I could. After fleshening it out so to speak, I decided to compress it into a future video game instead, which I still have to develop. That is one goal I intend to accomplish, creating my own game.

My view on beliefs in general is agnostic atheism. That means that I disregard the organized religions for they have the burden of proof, while I do not disclose that a higher intelligence could exist. In this case, extraterrestials and entities beyond the materialistic world are the same for me with respect towards my position.

Politically, my support lies with the Zeitgeist Movement and the Venus Project. The former says that the marketing and the monetary system have become outdated. The monetary system in particular has become obsolete since reports came out of certain resources getting more scarce and whenever the next huge bailout happened.

There are many topics discussed during the Zeitgeist films about these systems that have made me support their stance on the current state of the world. Planned obsolescence for example I find to be a ridiculous policy. Or how money is created and the whole idea about debt and seeing how it's played out.

The Venus Project offers a possible, non-utopian, non any "ism" (capitalism, communism etc.) solution or replacement towards the current status quo globally using the tools known as science and technology.

In order to cleanse the world from poverty, war, crimes and corruption in the biggest way imaginable, we must share the resources and needs as a common heritage for all the world's people in order for humanity, nature and technology to co-exist.

That, and making all of these resources abundant and sustainable, so that we will be able to live out our lives much better. Jacque Fresco has always fascinated me because he makes so much sense during the examples and life experiences he gives to others.

For example, he says that everyone should not only have clean air and rations, but a relevant education as well. He means that the current educational system is outdated as well and in the future people should learn a global language that everyone else understands, similar to math, chemistry or physics. Without cultural differences so to speak.

Racism by the way is the biggest baseless ideology for me, it's such a shame that it exists. Ethnic cleansing is a sub-topic that is disturbing for me, whoever thought of that one surely created some nasty consequences.

Enough about my opinions and positions, let's talk about something I have yet to experience. Love hasn't come for me yet, but I keep trying to approach it and in the mean time pursue hope and keep myself busy. It's the hardest "thing" to achieve for me. I know a lot about it, but it remains the strangest and illogical status.

I also have a bucket list for a life time, or rather several backlogs. I pursue dreams and wishes, but know that everything has their place and time, even with all of my backlogs I constantly update and plan, practically events change all the time.

And as said several times in other posts vaguely, video gaming remains my number one passion. I am thankful that I am able to have the luxury to continue doing this. I've had SO many positive emotions coming out from them, and well, I just really like them. :)

Cinema and traveling are the other two big occassions to do for me. I've seen a ridiculous amount of the former already, most of all with content, while the latter has only begun for me. Truly I am a hobbyist who enjoys to try out new stuff.

My own blog, Flok Factory. Of course I have enjoyed writing up all of those posts so far! Some of them were harder than others, but I hope that whoever has read them so far from around the world(as I can see at the overview statistics) has enjoyed the entries as well. I have been writing and reviewing a lot since 2006, while I started with FF in 2010.

So after a quarter of a century, I've surely had a great time so far in general! And by the way this post was my attempt at talking about my life in general, I don't think that I was too personal with details here.

Let me end the post with one of my own quotes that I agree with:

"Life is uncertain, unfair and unbelievable."

Retro Blog: First Three

Here are the first three videogames that I ever played. After that, I obviously lost count in what happens to still be my favorite hobby to spend time into. And I don't see it ever going away, because it is here to stay, it is innovating and best of all there are so many differences between video games in the available genres and through their environments, controls and content.

In honor of them, I managed to beat all three in 2013 again.

#1: Bubble & Bobble

As far as I can remember, this is the one that started it all.

Bubble Bobble is a different kind of puzzle platformer where two players can play little lizards or dragons that are able to create bubbles to trap their enemies and defeat them then by striking with their bodies.

Consisting of about one hundred ten levels, it’s a game that gradually gets tougher to get through.

Powerups such as the umbrella(skipping several levels) and invincibility are randomly popping up to help out.

You are also able to use the bubbles as semi brief platforms in order to get to higher places whenever you are stuck or need to get that last enemy down. If you do not hurry, a ghostly fiend will chase you down and kill you instantly.

As you cheerfully and peacefully traverse the hostile creatures, halfway through comes Level 57 which is an unexpected torture to overcome that seriously has put off a lot of players getting further, unless you got lucky with an umbrella.

But most of the time does Bubble Bobble do play fair, provides enough variety in level design and keeps things interesting with a score system, a letter system letting you able to see the true ending and the last levels plus the powerups I mentioned previously.

Rating: 7.5

                                                           #2: Mega Man

There's another good reason why this franchise continues to make me excited; I grew up with it.
Mega Man feels like it's from a different era than it's countless sequels, which is evident when you look at the score system and the retro graphics that have these certain mood about them.

As the formula wasn't traditional yet, there are only 6 Robot Masters to overcome, a small fortress and only 1 assist weapon to help you progress, nor are there any E or W tanks. The difficully is harsh at times, but the more you play Mega Man, especially the NES ones, the easier the first title becomes.

I remember sitting with my brother during a party with adults, where we were focused with trying to beat Guts Man's stage. We simply couldn't do it. Those damn platforms triggered our defeat  constantly.

That was the first time I experienced the blue bomber in action. I was 3 years old, but this memory is still intact. It wasn't until 1999 that I beat it for the first time, which was pretty satisfying to experience.

Mega Man remains consistent but not "perfected" so to say when looking at the next two sequels. Still, there's a lot of joy to be found here. It's a nostalgia ride and a simple game, but it surely was innovating back in the day when stage select and absorbing boss weapons were original.

Rating: 8.1

                                                     #3: Super Mario Bros. 3

My 2nd favorite Mario game basically. Super Mario Bros. 3 is a very big game featuring large worlds with lots of levels to complete. It also features a fun throwback multiplayer mode to the original Mario Bros. and it is also a pretty difficult game from Nintendo.

As the pinnacle of the early days of the huge franchise, much alike with being the "third time's the charm" similar to A Link to the Past and Super Metroid, Super Mario Bros. 3's main feature is flying around as Mario using the "P meter" which you must boost up by running first in order to trigger it.

By doing so will you be able to uncover secrets in the sky, make several levels a ton easier and be free like a raccoon. But there are other enjoyable powerup suits making their debut here, such as the Frog Suit and the Hammer Bros. Suit.

There are 8 worlds to platform through, such as the Ice Land, Sky Land and Giant Land. It introduced new enemies such as Boos and Thwomps that are of course familiar to everyone now. And as for secrets, these were a joy to find!

The flute letting you skip whole worlds, the airships with the Koopalings, the Kuribo Shoe and the bonus mini games found on the maps; surely was Super Mario Bros. 3 similar to the first one but radically different by it's content!

It's one of the games that I think that every gamer should atleast beat once to truly feel the Mario magic the best way yet. And it continues to be the most popular NES game to this day, because of expanding upon pretty much everything.

Rating: 9.3

Paper Mario Tetralogy

Paper Mario

Has it been a decade already since this spiritual sequel of Super Mario RPG went retail?

I remember when I skipped a day of school once specifically, calling in sick because I had to continue playing this game at some point. And, admittedly, I also have a confession to make about this(I cried during the credits thinking Mario would never return), plus in many ways I see Paper Mario as the last childhood game I played, before the internet, high school and other new events arrived.

When it comes to RPG's, everyone has their favorite. It is always a massive distinction, resulting into popular ones such as Final Fantasy VII and Chrono Trigger, or underrated ones such as EarthBound and Suikoden II. Despite many of them sharing the same traditional RPG standards, the debates continue to blaze constantly.

I might have truly disliked Final Fantasy X, but plenty of people hail it as one of the best, if not the best in the franchise. Therefore I think that certain RPG's can be very personal for some, and for others very out there.

Paper Mario, for me, is my personal favorite and best RPG. The game's design, content and gameplay are the prime reasons for being so. For being the only worthy RPG and one of the last games released on the N64, it surely was a triumphant way to go.

Intelligent Systems, the incredible first party developer for Nintendo, is responsible for what has become another sub series for Mario. They have an amazing portfolio consisting of series such as Advance Wars and Fire Emblem. 

They took the basic combat gameplay from Super Mario RPG, but decided to change many things considerably. It is no secret that Paper Mario plays fairly simple. For instance, damage charts start at the scale of 10, as Mario will hit not harder than 1 point of damage when the adventure begins.

The world is comprised of paper objects, allowing the player to interact with their "paperistic physics", resulting in both visual as well as gameplay enhancements. As you wander around in this pretty big land, the NPC's, or non playable characters provide not just any dialogue, but humoristic, helpful and curious ones.

It's sequel by the way might have even better dialogue, but the reason why this part of the game is so good is because of how closely it is connected with the gameplay and the world. The story, game mechanics and the controls combining RPG and platform segments just work in harmony here.

It has been the only game in my life where I wept for the future when I was thirteen. I did so, in combination with the charming ending and thinking by myself, when the internet was still unknown territory for me, that this was the final Mario game(the GameCube and Luigi's Mansion for that matter were still unknown to me.) Thinking about it now, Paper Mario was the last game I played before the internet became a part of my daily activities.

And there is so much to see and so much to do. From discovering star pieces to being a postman to experimenting with cake recipes and intriguing badges, opitional boss fights, secret areas, empowering your partner allies even further and more.  

Personally, Paper Mario is my favorite Mario game out of them all. When speaking of Mario platformers, that would have to be Super Mario Bros. 3. But Paper Mario has such a
charm to it, because of its simplicity, it's graphics, it's humoristic dialogue and its sublime soundtrack that it beats out even the best of the traditional platformers.

Rating: 9.6 

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door

An explosive sequel with many new fun locations to be found, and the difficulty actually got harder. Mario will have to unlock the mystery of The Thousand Year Door(and beyond!) and battle Grodus's army simultaneously.

As was previously happening as well, Peach will once again have minor parts during the chapters. Bowser and Luigi return as well, but this new world including Rogueport is breathing with interactive events and has such sights to show you that first time players will be in for a massive ride.

I don't recall anyone ever saying that TTYD was a bad game, because everyone seems to like it as their favorite Paper Mario game. And for very good reasons; it's highly replayable, very humoristic and has a rich soundtrack that rivals the original.

Come to think of it, it's in my top 3 GameCube games. The long adventure brings with it new ways of interacting with the paper elements to be found, including moving between very small spots normally inaccessible, rolling up and of course your partners like the previous one have their own attacks during the battles and outside them.

Also returning is a special detective chapter, when you will have to solve a murder mystery, which in reality is one of the many examples I can give when it comes to variety by the content. Each boss battle is once again accompanied usually by very cool battle themes, and the badge system, that offers various effects during battles, is developed even better now.

The references and cameos are too many to count, but so is the original content to be found as well! From a certain boss that steals names to intermissions with Bowser to an audience cheering the contestants during battles, The Thousand Year Door is worthy of being an amazing game to remember.

Rating: 9.4 

Super Paper Mario

Solid mix of a platformer with RPG elements and originality regarding flipping from 2D and 3D perspectives, but a huge consequence was made for this; the difficulty is way easier than the RPG's before Super Paper Mario. 

The bosses are around the same as TTYD's, but the chapters themselves have become less entertaining for me, probaply because I beat this game much quicker than the actual previous RPG's. Not only that, interactions somehow became less exciting as well.

What is done well though is the fact that you can play with the 4 most popular characters, which are Mario, Luigi, Peach and Bowser, each with their own movesets. Alongside your new quirky partners called Pixls, this time you are facing Count Bleck with his interdimensional plans of dominion.

The story and the music wasn't on par, but I appreciate Intelligent Systems for doing something different. The dialogue is still written well, and some chapters were fun to do such as the Bitlands or the Underwhere. Other chapters however can be absolutely frustrating.

Rating: 8.4 

Paper Mario: Sticker Star

The latest entry turns out to have another premise, as stickers have become a general theme where you will have to collect them in order to use them as ammunition for the upcoming battles. It's up to Mario to save Princess Peach from a mute less Bowser once again.

Sticker Star is the first portable version as well, offering some pretty 3D graphics combined with simple and colorful art to blitz your screens. Not to mention the overall theme of a paper world remains a solid tradition to use.

I liked moving the Nintendo 3DS around just to see the stickers shine pretty. Paperization is your new tool available for solving puzzles involving Things, Scraps and normal stickers. Scraps are random peel able objects which must be rotated or switched with locations in order to progress.

Things however are realistic objects such as a bowling ball, a mobile phone, a baseball bat and much more which most of the time can be devastating attacks to use at battles. They are sometimes also needed to progress much akin with Scraps, but when they are needed, it can be cryptic to either find them in the first place, or know which one to use for maximum effect.
 
While the battle system remains the same at it's core most similar to the first two games, stickers being involved as limited attacks means that you will have to collect them in the fields or buy them at shops in order to be able to fight back.

Partners, or even other playable characters have been dropped. Your only assisting character will be Kersti, a sticker fairy who will do the talking for you, offer minor hints and she looks similar to the previous Pixls.

As for the chapters, they have been divided upon into smaller sections in the form of a familiar world map setting much like the many 2D Mario platformers. Okay, I guess there's nothing wrong with that. But what did lower the overall enjoyment I was anticipating is the lack of such overall enjoyment in the first place.

The comedy was minor in amount, the NPC's were mostly toads, the bosses were generic giant versions of normal enemies and forgettable apart from Petey Piranha's reappearance, but perhaps worst of all is that the normal battles are fundamentally not even needed.

You see, you only collect coins and a few stickers each time, not experience points. What personally happened for me is that I ran away from battles more than that I fought them, because there simply was no urgency to do them.

Collecting coins and stickers would be better to do so during the levels themselves and at the end of them. As for side quests, there are optional Things to be found as well as Secret Doors to insert at almost every level, mostly to get more stickers and Things.

The soundtrack was lacking but nothing really bad. Also, because Miyamoto was more involved, original characters have almost completely deliberately been left out because of some reason I cannot remember at the moment. Thus enemy design is all too familiar, much like with the recent New Super Mario Bros. games.

So Sticker Star turns out to be the least entertaining Mario RPG yet, next to Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time. The lack of an exciting adventure with fun NPC's, entertaining side quests, partners or playable characters and a better balanced battle system means that it sadly is nothing more than an average RPG at best.

Rating: 7.2

Quintet Quadrilogy

This is an old IGN blog, but I decided to update it because despite being average games, they did leave behind an impression of afterthoughts even to this day. Mostly because of the themes they play around with.

Courtesy goes to Hardcore Gaming 101 for laying the connection between the original trilogy and the fourth title which I recently beat. Technically, The Granstream Saga isn't developed by Quintet but by Shade, who had staff members of the former. Still, I like the title for this particular post.

Soul Blazer

Soul Blazer is where it all started. Well, almost everything, since some things were definitely borrowed from Quintet's previous game ActRaiser, which by the way is also worthwhile to play. You emerge from some kind of godlike altar where The Master informs you of the situation and asks you to fulfill your destiny, which is releasing every kind of souls in the world, be it human, animal or wooden objects such as doors or even vines. 

The action RPG gameplay is fun, but quickly starts to get repetitive as well because of the way the enemies spawn constantly like a precursor to tower defense and how each level in the game starts basically the same and ends the same. There are some memorable songs such as Dr.Leo's lab dungeon, his painting and after listening to it more my personal favorite being the Mountain of Souls. 

The reward feeling is nice for releasing the souls, but even that becomes so repetitive that you either want to drop the game or finish it quickly, like me. In overall, it's a good start, but in the end it remains a decent game with not much to offer other than hacking a lot of enemies, freeing souls and repeating the process.

+Fast-paced hack and slash action RPG.
+Rescue souls in order to restore parts of several villages.
+Challenging moments including some of the bosses.

Rating: 7.3

Illusion of Gaia

My personal favorite out of the four by far. Now why is that, when Terranigma is favored by pretty much everyone else? I will get to that game soon, but first let me explain this. Like HG101 already said, this is the odd one of the bunch, focusing on 1 literal forced route to take only, because once you are done with a town or a dungeon, you will never access that part of the game again in Illusion of Gaia. Quite an unusual game design in the way it is executed, but it works in a way. 

Not only does this contain some very successful songs such as Sky Garden, The Guardian and my personal favorite Angkor Wat, it also has a likable cast that goes through some heavy emotional moments. Perhaps the very reason I talked about that unusual game design before and because of the presented story is why I enjoy reading up on their emotions so much throughout the game.

 
I really like the action RPG gameplay this time, where you will have to defeat every enemy on each screen to advance further or to level up your main character Will, who by the way can morph into 2 other forms as well. It is perhaps the most difficult game out of them all... yeah it is, no question about that. I mean Illusion of Gaia instantly throws at you one of the most difficult first bosses in any game I had played back then as a kid. Mu remains the worst place to be though.

I am intrigued by the established ancient civilizations this game provides, and the brief fantasy history lessons it teaches gamers, also talking about the majority of the dungeons found here, which are awesome and most of them are even based on real life locations.

Backpacking towards these locations in the world is still possible and so far, I have visited Cambodia. There's a strong possibility that a next "dungeon" will also be visited this year, and it would be fun to complete the others as well such as Mu being partially based on Eastern Island in Chile.

Illusion of Gaia has memorable parts. For example, the gold ship part was surreal to say the least. The Nazca Lines being the entry point for the Sky Garden was a nice touch, and who could forget about the Russian Roullete part involving deadly alcoholic drinks?

And with a nice side quest involving finding red gems as well, this is a one of a kind game, where I would had liked to see more of, but I also think at the same time that this story is over and there is no need for continuation.

+Dungeons based on real life locations.
+Large graphics for the sprites, buildings and effects.
+Memorable bosses such as Castoth and the Vampires.
+Likable cast.
+Diversity in enemy design plus 3 different playable characters available. 

Rating: 7.9 

Terranigma

 

Oh, how so very dissapointing. Don't get me wrong, because this game really started off great, full of mystery, a beautiful unfolding plot and good action RPG gameplay. But this game is split up for me into two parts.

First, you start with the awesome part, which contains Crysta, the 5 towers, resurrecting the plants, animals and humans containing several dungeons each and finally the mirage town which turns out to be a zombie infested town in actual reality, a great twist right there during the era of the SNES.

But then comes the terrible part in my opinion, which starts once you get to be introduced to a second Ella at the surface world. Right at that moment, inconsistent parts appear where it would be impossible to know how to proceed at some random points.

Unless you were using a guide to navigate to lessen the frustration, repetitiveness is written everywhere including Terranigma's music, the many similar area's and even the enemies themselves. It really dragged down for what was done at the first half.

Furthermore, the magic system straight out sucks and is pretty much useless EXCEPT for 1 boss battle, the bosses were boring and the backtracking parts were painful as well. I can't recall the exact backtrack parts, but they are definitely there to be found in the terrible part.

Which is all really too bad. Because the reason I decided to go back to this game and beat it as an adult was because of the best song in the game, which is Mountains. You already know what I'm talking about here. Because of that song, I wanted to see beyond the zombie town, which is the point where I got stuck as a kid and never could figure out how to proceed further in the game, yeah.

But even this song was so horribly repeated so many times that it somehow has become a lesser song to listen to. How sad. Terranigma's soundtrack however remains pretty, but it's second part of the gameplay really isn't, with the surface map being revealed as a mirror reflection towards the real world and having all of these towns that can shape their prosperities slightly by your actions.

That isn't really a deal, unless you could excuse the wacky random characters, the cryptic proceedings, the repetitiveness of things and the dull moments. About the only part I liked during this second half was Beruga's Lab.

In overall, in the end, it's a dissapointing game for me. Even after seeing the much loved ending by everyone and understanding it and how the underworld and the surface world work, or how Light and Dark work in this game, I wasn't thrilled by all of it, unlike Illusion of Gaia's ending. 

+Strong themed songs.
+Heavy emphasis upon ideologies.
+Arguably the best resurrection plot of all four games.
-Repetitive at locations and enemies.
-2nd half is almost a complete dissapointment after the zombie town.

Rating: 6.6

The Granstream Saga

 

As a spiritual successor towards the resurrection trilogy from Quintet on the SNES, The Granstream Saga is sadly the least qualified one. The main quirks are the overall story, the voice acting, the length and the rather limited battle system.

It’s one on one fights, in which you are able to attack, defend, dodge, use spells and some special moves. But because of the minor variety in enemy design and the way each tactic is laid out, it turns out to be disappointing. 

Also, the game is very easy, especially when you are able to get the best weapon in the game very early on. What I did like though are the same themes of resurrection and sacrifice that also played in Quintet’s other games, plus I dig the old PSX graphics similar to Final Fantasy VII. 

Eon is an alright hero, but the world and its inhabitants were small and I wasn’t too fond of the supporting characters either. Korky was annoying. However, I liked how the game ended into starting out in what seems to be a different life for the cast. The Granstream Saga is supposedly Quintet’s last game. Rest in peace, you guys made some pretty interesting action RPG’s.

+One on one fights.
+Early smooth PSX graphics.
-Typical early bad voice acting.

Rating: 6.5