Making a good sequel is easier said than done. For all the good that can come from change, a lot of bad can come from it too. And sometimes being more ambitious leads to bigger pitfalls that simpler games just don't have to contend with.
Illusion of Gaia isn't a true sequel to Soul Blazer, which I looked at earlier in the year, but it is the second title in what's come to be known as the Quintet Trilogy. I talked at length about my experience (or lack thereof) with these games and the story behind them already. To summarize, they were a series of action RPGs developed by Quintet and published by Enix in the 90s. Illusion of Gaia was released in the West in 1994, two years after Soul Blazer. It was by far the most readily available of the trio, Soul Blazer was hard to find near me and Terranigma wasn't even released in the U.S. But Illusion of Gaia was available for rent just about every week at all of my local video stores, so it still shocks me that I had never played it. It was pretty well received at the time, and I have seen a lot of praise thrown its way in recent years, so I had some level of expectations going in. After finally playing Illusion of Gaia, I'm still kind of unsure how I feel about it.
Before I continue, I want to get something out of the way. Most, if not all, coverage of the game I have seen calls it an RPG. Honestly, I'm not sure I would consider it to be one. It's weird, because Soul Blazer would definitely qualify as one, but I'm not sure Illusion of Gaia does. The whole "what is an RPG?" debate is its own discussion, one I don't want to get into here. It's doubly complicated here, because of the game's close connection to other titles that are RPGs. But Illusion of Gaia is much closer, in my opinion, to an adventure game like The Legend of Zelda. Probably the closest comparison would be Alundra, a title I reviewed a few years ago commonly called an RPG that I don't think is one. I don't think Illusion of Gaia is as egregious, but it still doesn't have an experience system or true leveling. Your attack and defense can increase, but the only parameter the game really tracks is HP. There also isn't any form of equipment, your equipable item is the only thing you can use from your inventory. Again, I don't want to get too deep into this whole thing, but it was worth mentioning.
Regardless of what genre you classify it as, Illusion of Gaia tells the story of Will, a young boy living in the seaside town of South Cape. Will was on an expedition with his father, exploring the legendary Tower of Babel, when disaster struck. What sort of disaster? Unknown, Will has no memory of what happened, all he knows is somehow, some way he's made it back to his hometown and his father is missing. He goes about his life, attending school and hanging around with his friends, until one day he's summoned by King Edward. Will goes to the castle, thinking nothing of it until he is shockingly thrown in the dungeons. With the help of Princess Kara, and driven by a mysterious voice, he escapes and gathers his friends. They set out on a journey to help Will learn what happened to his father and prevent a catastrophe prophesized by the aforementioned voice. Along the way, Will is supported by Gaia, a mysterious deity who lives in dark space. Gaia helps Will better control his telekinetic powers, teaches him new skills and allows him to transform into the Dark Knight Freidan or Energy Warrior Shadow. These transformations will help him navigate a unique but treacherous world based on our own. The towns may be places of fantasy, but the dungeons are familiar landmarks like the Nazca Lines, Angkor Wat and the Great Pyramids. By the end of the journey, Will will help defeat a terrible evil, but it will come to him at a great cost.
Did that plot synopsis feel a little bit wonky? I know it did when I was writing it. It's actually good, because it brings me to the single biggest problems I had with Illusion of Gaia, one that prevented me from enjoying it on the level that a lot of gamers seem to: translation. This might be the single most poorly translated game I have ever played and I'm not sure it's even close. Mega Man X6 was bad, but it's an action game with such little text or emphasis on the story that it doesn't matter. Legend of Dragoon was bad, but it was worlds better than this. Previous paragraph notwithstanding, I'm still not entirely sure what Illusion of Gaia is supposed to be about or what its characters' motivations are. Character development suffers the most, they spend most of the game spouting nonsense or making comments that are completely out of context with the current conversation. Every line of dialogue ends up completely butchered, to the point that I found it difficult to care about these characters. It's a shame too, because this was clearly an instance where translation, not writing or vision, was the issue. There's clearly a solid coming of age story hidden in here somewhere, and Illusion of Gaia attempts to tackle some pretty serious themes, we are talking stuff like slavery, that no other games at the time would even dare touch. But it's all completely lost in translation. Again, this isn't like LOD, where the bad translation leads to the characters looking and sounding stupid, but their personalities and the plot still make sense. This is so bad that I have absolutely no idea what's going on and events that are supposed to be deep or moving come off as, well, nothing at all.
Fortunately though, the gameplay is pretty solid. Illusion of Gaia is understandably similar to Soul Blazer, where you explore dungeons from an overhead perspective battling a variety of enemies and solving puzzles. The town building element is gone, as are the monster lairs. Instead, you can bring up a map to see all of the enemies in a level with some of them opening up new paths. Defeat all the enemies on the floor and you will get a bonus to your attack, defense or health. The layouts are a little more open than in Soul Blazer and there are a lot more instances where you can move through an area without defeating anything. This adds to the more adventure-y and less RPG-y feel, at least I think it does. I think the gameplay changes are a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand, the lack of town building, lack of exploration between dungeons and less emphasis on having to to kill enemies makes everything more linear and one note. On the other, the actual gameplay is much tighter, the challenge is much more balanced and the level design in general is much better. Enemies actually feel like an obstacle here than an afterthought and you need to do a lot more than just slam the attack button. They are harder to kill and IOG actually gives you incentives to use the special moves that you learn in combat situations. The dungeons are definitely better designed, even if they are more linear, and I never once came upon a puzzle that was so obtuse I had to look it up (though I did have to look up things that certain characters asked of me, but that was more of a translation thing).
The other big improvement comes from the graphics, which are a huge step up from Soul Blazer. I don't think they are the best graphics on the SNES, but they are really good. There are some truly excellent looking areas and they help bring life to some of what could have been otherwise pretty boring dungeons. There is a lot of visual variety and I think they did a great job of capturing the essence of the more real-world locations. The towns are all very unique and they do a good job of representing the real-world areas they are supposed to. Enemies are big and detailed and there are some really cool enemy designs here. The bosses are especially fun to look at, they really went the extra mile on a lot of these guys. The sound is very good as well, the opening theme is suitably epic and the town theme is great as well. I really liked some of the dungeon themes too. Overall, the presentation is great, the mode 7 (I think) map screens are especially impressive and something about the dark space areas was just so appealing.
Overall, Illusion of Gaia was a bit of a disappointment, largely because of the amount of hype I have seen about it. That doesn't mean the game is bad though, it's actually quite good. It definitely improved on the technical aspects of Soul Blazer even if its narrative wasn't as good. The translation here is so unbelievably bad that it completely ruins any chance of the story being good. At the end of the day, I have to give the edge to IOG because the gameplay was definitely better. I kind of wish the town building was still here, but I'd rather them keep it simple and do it right. If these were straight up RPGs, the better story would win out, but in an action RPG (or adventure game, or whatever IOG is) better gameplay is more important. I gave Soul Blazer a 7.5, so for Illusion of Gaia...
8/10
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