ActRaiser 2

 I just tried and failed to beat ActRaiser 2.

ActRasier 2 was released for SNES in 1993. I played it on emulator.
As far as I know, this game has never been re-released.


ActRaiser 2 is a slow-paced sidescrolling action game with extremely high difficulty.
In fact this is one of the most difficult SNES action-platformers I have played.


You play as The Master, a godlike being who descends to earth in order to fight the evil forces of the demonic Tanzra.


The game has a world map menu where you can choose from a selection of levels to play in the order you like, however some levels will only open up after beating certain previous ones. In total there are 14 levels in the game.


The Master can walk, jump, crouch, double jump, glide, and swing his sword forwards or in mid-air. He can aim his sword diagonally upwards while standing, and can thrust the sword downwards while jumping as well. Additionally, he has a shield that will block projectiles as long as he is standing still. So there are quite a few moves in this game, more so than the typical SNES platformer.

The Master's walking speed is.... really slow. This is quite a slow-paced game.
As a huge fan of Castlevania, I am no stranger to slow-paced action games, so I get it, but... I dunno, this game does feel especially slow-paced, even when compared to Castlevania.

The double jump and gliding controls are really awkward. This biggest issue is that the Master will automatically begin to glide after every double-jump. In order to double-jump without gliding, you have to hold up on the d-pad in order to preemptively cancel the glide, which is super awkward to do.
If you mess up the timing, then the Master will start soaring through the air, which will often lead to your death if you did it accidentally. Whenever he touches the ground while gliding, he has this sliding-braking animation that can get you in trouble... If you're stuck sliding, you can't avoid enemies, and you might slide off the ledge into a pit. It's really annoying.

I kind of just wish that this game had a specific button you needed to press in order to start gliding. I wish I could just double-jump without having to constantly worry about also needing to cancel the glide...

From a glide, if you press down + the attack button, the Master does a diving attack, which can be pretty handy on occasion. But it is also rather awkward to pull off.


Additionally, the Master has seven magic spells he can use. If you hold the attack button, he will start charging and glowing red. Once he fully charges, releasing the button will do a spell depending in which direction you hold:
If you are standing, he does a flamethrower. If you are crouching, he does an earthen barrier. If you are holding up, he does a fire bomb. If you are in the air, he does an electric blast. If you are gliding, he does a sonic wave. If you are gliding and holding up, he does a thunderbolt. If you are gliding and holding down, he does a phoenix dive.

I do like this system where your magic depends on your current action, but... most of the spell effects are pretty underwhelming in this game. The spell animation doesn't really last very long or look that impactful, and they're all super awkward to aim.
The only spell that I found to be any use is the fire bomb, as it travels in a big lobbing arc, and it inexplicably deals a ton of damage to the bosses. All of the other spells, especially the ones you need to glide to do, I found way too awkward to ever use seriously. Especially since it requires you to hold the attack button, meaning you lose the ability to defend yourself whenever you want to charge one up. So most of the time, trying to use a spell causes you to just take damage trying, and more often than not you don't even manage to land the hit after all the fuss.

Casting a spell costs 1 MP too - you start each level with 3 MP, and can occasionally find more from random enemy drops or from breaking specific power up pillars. So it is pretty limited.

...

So... what makes this game so hard?

To put it simply, you move slowly, there are enemies everywhere, and the checkpointing is extremely unforgiving.


So here's a typical first-time experience with ActRaiser 2...

You begin the game, and the world map cursor defaults to hovering nearby Industen, the forest level. You select this level and begin. First thing you notice is how beautiful the environmental scenery is. Lush jungle foliage, fantastical giant mushrooms, this game has some great environmental pixel art.

Second thing you notice, is that there are goblins on the mushrooms that jump directly in your face the moment you approach, there are worms crawling out of the ground and emerging directly underneath you, and there are dragonflies flying right at you, all at once. All at the same time. You can't make it very far before being completely overwhelmed by this cacophony of enemies.

So you try again. Again and again. You take it slower. You start paying attention to exactly how the enemies behave and where they are located. You learn exactly what distance a goblin will jump from the mushroom so you can back off at just the right time to deal with it. You learn how many hits it takes to kill a dragonfly so you know how safe it is to let them approach. You learn where not to jump in order to not trigger additional dragonfly spawns. You learn which enemies to prioritise - if there is a worm and a dragonfly chasing you at once, which one will reach you first? You might even figure out that your down-thrust attack can kill a worm or goblin in one hit. Nice. So you die and try again, you die and learn, you die and figure it out, piece by piece. And... eventually you get a decent grasp of the first few screens and can even sometimes get through without taking damage.

Eventually, you make it to the mid-boss. It's a carnivorous plant with a big flytrap maw. It charges at you, spits fireballs at you, and you die immediately. ...So you make it back to the midboss again. Every attempt requiring you to get through the hellscape of goblins and dragonflies beforehand. And you die immediately again. It's impossible. The plant's vulnerable point is behind its huge jaw, how can you reach it without taking a hit?

Eventually you might figure out to use the magic fire bomb for its high damage, or the flamethrower for its brief period of invulnerability. Or you might learn how to continuously down-thrust its weak point to do more damage than just slashing. There are ways to get through the fight, but none of them are intuitive, and so it will take some experimentation to figure out. And each and every death requires you to brave the previous path again.

And when you finally manage to triumph, what happens next? Well... the screen continues scrolling. That was just the midboss after all. ...And you don't even get a health refill either.

Immediately afterwards is a swampy mud floor, which spells instant death if you fall in. So you need to do some actual platforming now. You jump onto the mushroom platform hovering over the mud pit, and.... an offscreen frog jumps into you from below, completely unpredictable and unreactable. You die and it's back to the very beginning.
What in the actual heck was that. How was I supposed to know...?????

So okay. Try again. Goblins. Dragonflies. Big plant. ....do it again. And again. Until you can get through the plant boss consistently.

Okay finally. Now we know to avoid the frog, but... what is this next section? There is a faraway platform inside a tree trunk that can only be reached with a glide-jump. And not just any glide jump will do. It has to be an almost pixel-perfect glide jump.

...
For whatever reason, ActRasier 2 has a fascination with pixel-precise jumps. Almost every stage has at least one of these. A jump that requires you to get riiiight up to the very edge of the platform, and then jump as high as you can, initiate your double jump at the exact highest point of your jump, glide perfectly straight forwards, and land just on the very very edge of the platform on the other side. It's ridiculous. And if you fail this jump, it's back to the beginning for you. There hasn't been a checkpoint yet. Go kill that plant again if you want to try this jump again.

It doesn't help that this particular pixel-perfect jump also has an unreachable enemy in the way too? So you either have to somehow dodge the enemy mid-flight, or waste an MP killing it beforehand. And you only start with 3MP, so you'll have to have not used them all up on the plant beforehand, and have no plans to use them at the end-of-stage boss either.

So at this point, after failing this ridiculous pixel-perfect jump for the billionth time, you might decide to try one of the other stages.
There are six levels available on the world map from the start, after all.

Well............ the other levels aren't much better. what are you even expecting? Starting afresh with a new level means learning all the enemy placements and level layouts anew. Learning new miniboss patterns, learning new specific techniques that help in specific sections. And then failing to yet another pixel-perfect jump or unfair enemy spawn deep into the level. And doing this over and over and over.

The typical player's impression of this game is one where they try playing for hours, and yet never managed to make any progress at all. They try all the available stages, don't manage to complete a single one, and then give up entirely. I've seen this story online several times when looking up opinions about this game. People tend to dislike this game because they can't get anything accomplished, and have nothing to show for their hours of efforts.

...

So, anyway. I decided to play ActRaiser 2 for two days straight. I learned those levels and figured out how to damage the bosses efficiently. It took a lot of patience and a lot of practice. And you know what? I was actually kinda enjoying the game. I wasn't having an awful time by any means. It was pretty fun figuring out this game and getting the hang of things. There's something satisfying about getting to grips with a difficult game, even if it is designed to be maddeningly difficult.

And eventually, after all of this practice and repetition, I did manage to beat....12 of the 14 levels. ...That's as far as I could get.

The problem with level 13, the Tower of Souls, is that... in addition to a fairly lengthy platforming level with precision jumps and swarms of ghosts who love to appear right in front of your face without warning, is that the level ends with a boss rush segment. You have to defeat six minibosses in a row, and THEN the end-of-stage boss immediately afterwards. And... I just couldn't manage this. I was getting too frustrated because I kept having to redo the tower platforming so many times. It's so irritating when you just want to get back to try the bosses again, but keep failing the precision jumps because the glide is too finicky to control. It was getting on my nerves.
So after trying and trying and trying again and always eventually dying to the boss rush... I just gave up.

I looked up a speedrun of the game online so I could see the ending. Apparently level 14 ALSO contains its own boss rush! what the heck. And the final boss looks ridiculously difficult on top of that.
So you know what, I think I'm done with this game. 12 out of 14 levels is good enough for me.
...

Anyways. I had a fun time with ActRaiser 2 overall, even though it was way too hard and unfair for my liking.
It's not a bad game, but maybe they could have balanced it a bit better to make it more palatable?

If I was younger and had fewer games to play overall, I believe I would have probably stuck with it until I beat it. I have beaten every single Castlevania game after all, so I'm always up for a challenge. But for the point in my life where I'm at now, I'm just happy to have reached as far as I did.