I played Illusion of Gaia.
This game was released in 1994 for the SNES.
In Europe, the game was titled Illusion of Time.
This game was developed by Quintet and published by Enix. Quintet also made Terranigma, which is a game I really liked, so I was rather eager to try Illusion of Gaia.
I decided to play the USA version on emulator.
This is an action-RPG where you control a young boy named Will on a quest to save the world.
The story involves Will and a group of his friends travelling across the world, discovering relics from ancient civilisations and uncovering the truth behind an evil threatening the Earth.
The story has a somewhat mysterious and dreamlike quality to it. Many strange things happen that are never really explained, and at times it can occasionally become unexpectedly dark and off-putting out of nowhere. The exact nature of the evil force is never really understood - there's a lot of nebulous concepts about light and dark, spirits and evolution... it's all rather enigmatic.
This atmosphere of strangeness is further bolstered by the game's rather poor English script. Many Japanese games from this time didn't have very good localisations, but this game actually manages to benefit from it somehow. NPCs talk in an unnatural-feeling way, and it only serves to add to the bizarre feel the game has.
...That being said, there are also some genuine errors in the English text that would have been better fixed.
The game has a very linear structure. You explore a town, and within the town you watch some story scenes that lead directly into a dungeon. And after completing the dungeon, you're whisked away to the next town to see the next story scenes, and so on. There is no overworld to explore at all - it's just a linear sequence of towns and dungeons that you play in order.
The game is very light on RPG elements. There's no EXP, no money, only a very small number of inventory items, and only three stats: Attack, Defense, and HP.
Will can attack using his flute as a weapon. You start with a regular attack and a jumping attack, and Will will also learn a few additional special moves that are used to pass specific obstacles.
Will can spin his flute to defend against projectiles, and the spin will also magically draw statues towards him for the purpose of puzzle-solving. You can also draw enemy item drops towards you, which is handy.
As you explore the world, you can come across portals to "Dark Space", which serve as this game's save point rooms. Inside Dark Space is a giant statue head called Gaia who will give Will guidance on his quest, while also providing full-healing and saving. Additionally, many Dark Space gates also contain a statue of the Dark Knight known as Freedan. If Will touches the statue of Freedan, he will transform into Freedan himself.
While playing as Freedan, you have longer reach with his sword, and later on he gets a projectile attack. However you can't use Will's flute or special moves, so there are some scenarios in the dungeons where you must keep swapping between Will and Freedan to solve the puzzles.
...This is the kind of thing I'm talking about when I say that Illusion of Gaia never really explains itself. Why are there all these portals to Dark Space? Who is Gaia? Who is Freedan? Why does Will become Freedan? Do Will's friends know about Freedan? Does anyone else see the portals to Dark Space? ... These are things that we never really get any explanation for. You kind of just have to take it at face value. And that's all part of Illusion of Gaia's unique charm.
So the dungeon design in this game is pretty nice. They take the form of mazes with enemies and puzzles, as is typical for 90s RPG style games. The dungeons all feel distinct from one another, which is always a good thing.
The level-up system in this game is rather unique. There is no EXP at all, however each room in the dungeons has a stat boost that can be acquired only when every enemy in the room has been defeated. The pause menu gives you a radar and a counter so you can easily track them all down.
Enemies do not respawn as long as you don't leave the dungeon, so you can completely clear out every room to ensure that you're getting all the stat boosts you need for the boss at the end.
I did have a concern with this system - because the game is so linear and it is not possible to return to earlier parts of the game, I was concerned that it might be possible to become underleveled if players couldn't be bothered to clear out the dungeon rooms to earn the stat boosts before moving on to the next one. However, some reading about this game online has informed me that Will will automatically gain any missed stat boosts after clearing a dungeon. So in practice, the stat boosts are really only necessary to track down in order to make the boss fight easier.
And these bosses.... they are quite the difficulty spikes!
Illusion of Gaia is a very easygoing game overall. Enemies are never difficult to deal with, and you can always return to the nearest Dark Space for a full heal almost any time you like. But the bosses are another story entirely. They're hard! They took me quite a few attempts each before I beat them. And it doesn't help that the game's "retry" system is really poorly designed....
So the way it works is that defeated enemies will drop "Dark Power" gems. Once you collect 100 gems, you get 1 "stock" of Dark Power. You can hold up to 9 of these.
Whenever you die with a stock of DP remaining, you respawn in the current room with only half health, using up 1 stock to do so.
And whenever you die without any DP left, you respawn at the last "checkpoint" area the game has (seems to mostly be at dungeon entrances and boss rooms), and if you were Freedan, you are reset to being Will. But the main thing is, when you die without DP left, you respawn with full health!
The fact that using a DP to respawn only gives you half your health back makes this whole system pretty useless for when you're struggling on a boss. Who wants to try again with half health? It would be better to just reset the SNES console and try again from full health, right?
And if you don't have any DP remaining, then it's actually BETTER, since it will respawn you with full health, which is fine as long as you don't mind fighting the boss as Will rather than Freedan.
Basically, the whole DP system is entirely meaningless. Its purpose seems to be to give you easier retries after dying, but I end up just wanting to retry from my last save anyway.
The inventory in this game is very limited. The only items that even exist are key items, red jewels, and healing herbs.
Key items are necessary for the story, and are give and taken away as the plot progresses. Simple enough.
Healing herbs are found in chests within dungeons, and restore a small amount of life when used. Because there's no money or shops in this game, the herbs are actually rather limited. I think there may exist only around twelve or so healing herbs in the entire game? They're certainly useful during the bosses, but if you run out of them, then that's your lot... You'll just have to beat the boss the old fashioned way.
Red jewels are the only "sidequest" in the whole game - they are hidden around throughout the world, and you can trade them for a few extra stat boosts from the gem trader who appears in every town. There are 50 in the game, but by the time I reached the end of the game, I had only found 32 of them myself. Since the game is so linear, it's easy to permanently miss a jewel unless you're following a guide.
If you do actually manage to get all 50 gems, you get to play a small bonus dungeon that ends with a cameo boss fight versus an enemy from one of Quintet's previous games, Soul Blazer. ....I may have to play Soul Blazer at some point too hehe.
I didn't find them all, so I just watched a video of this dungeon online. It's nothing to write home about.
Graphically the game looks really nice. It's typical SNES RPG fair, and it all looks great. One interesting note about the graphics is in regards to one of Will's animations, where his hair is blowing in the breeze. His hair will either be still or be blowing depending on how windy the area he's standing in is... and they actually decided to incorporate this detail into multiple different puzzles throughout the adventure. That's an impressive amount of mileage they've squeezed out of one idle animation! I thought this was funny.
So yeah. Overall: Good game, interesting game, unique game! I liked my time with this one, though I will say it is a bit too linear for my tastes. :) I definitely liked Terranigma a lot more.
