Behind all of the most popular games, the gems and the award-winners, and even behind the cult classic games, there is the rare occasion of the unpopular diamond in the rough. Soul Blazer on Super Nintendo, in my opinion (which is fact) is exactly that. Despite all of the SNES games I’ve played and emulated, there were only a handful that I actually owned from the very beginning. Again, Soul Blazer was one of these, so I actually played this game before the N64 even came out.

At the time I knew it was fun. It’s pretty much a complete Zelda rip-off, which I guess is why it’s so good. The gameplay was pretty much the same, top-down adventure with swords and killing small bad guys. To my knowledge, nobody but me has ever played this game before. I think I’m the only one to own the cartridge. And that’s a shame because it’s an incredibly fun game. Now, I want to talk about my five reasons as to why this game is totally awesome.

1. Music

I was going to talk about this later, but this is really one of the biggest things about Soul Blazer that stuck with me. It’s like back when I played it as a youngin’, I never understood the story, but the music was amazing. Obviously it’s midi, like all music was back in that era, but that didn’t make it any less beautiful. Plus, it was composed by Yukihide Takekawa, who didn’t do much more video game music composing. It might be just a combination of nostalgia and faggotry, but this game offers the best video game music I’ve ever heard.

And another.

Just awesome.

2. Gameplay

Jesus Christ I can hear it in my head.

I already talked a little bit about the gameplay, but I want to go into a bit more detail. So it’s a lot like Zelda LttP; items, top-down sword fighting, bosses, upgrades. Except Soul Blazer was a little more simplified. It obviously had its differences as well. The game has two main types of areas: the “town” and the “dungeon”, so to speak. When you move to a new world, you start off in this spacey, monolithic temple with the most fucking annoying anthem you could possibly imagine which will be drilled into your brain after playing. This area is like, your safe zone. Your health replenishes, it’s where you go after you die, and it has three blue “checkpoint warps” to take you to various places in the town and dungeon.

When entering a new world, the town is basically empty. No buildings, no people. In order to get people and buildings and stuff back in the town, you gotta go into the dungeon and kill some baddies. The enemies spawn from these red, glowing “lairs” as they call them, and after you kill all the enemies that spawn from one layer, it explodes and you can stand on it which either puts some stuff back in the town or allows you to move forward in the dungeon. You usually end up hoping for the one that doesn’t happen.

Sometimes you need a certain sword or item to progress in the dungeon that can only be found in the town, or in a previous world. Sometimes it will occur when you can’t kill a certain enemy in one dungeon without a sword you obtain six worlds ahead, which you have to go back and do in order to unlock an item that allows you to progress through a different dungeon. It’s a massive clusterfuck. And got forbid you accidentally skip a lair without noticing and get stuck, because in order to complete the dungeon, you need all of them (excluding the clusterfuck ones that require a weapon you get later on). Basically, you can’t get to the next world without beating the dungeon.

3. Storyline

It might sound cheesy, but I really enjoyed the plot of this game. Though when you play it, the key points are very redundant. Here’s a plot run-through, so SPOILER ALERT! You start as the protagonist with no official name to save the world. There’s a huge dick named Deathtoll that’s bent on destroying all life by taking all that is good and sending it into the evil realm so the light world collapses in on itself. So you’re sent to Earth as some deity or angel (they just call it something “from the sky”) to stop him. By destroying all of Deathtoll’s enemies, you release the goodness back into the towns. After defeating the boss of the temple, the “main dude” (usually some sort of mayor or king of the town) is released, who gives you a stone that allows you to travel to the next world.

Deathtoll is one mad mofo.

In the first world you meet a girl named Lisa (if you count literally invading her dreams a form of introduction) who turns out to be the daughter of a professor named Dr. Leo. He’s very mysterious up until about the sixth world where you meet him, but until then all you know about him is that he invented some shit that allowed Deathtoll to fuck the world up. However, as you come to discover, Dr. Leo isn’t a bad man. He was just an inventor that got butt-fucked by monarchy when the greedy king forced him to invent stuff for Deathtoll in exchange for… something that’s never quite explained.

So near the end of the game, you storm the king’s castle and rendezvous to Dr. Leo’s airship with him when the queen catches onto your shit and starts playing hardball. She brings out Lisa threatening to kill her unless Dr. Leo surrenders himself. So he does, but uh-oh, plot twist! He fucking blows himself up around all the guards, killing them, the queen and himself. Lisa stands there crying over her blown-to-shit father until you board the airship yourself to battle the boss. Killing the boss releases the king, who after realizing what he’s done, decides to give you the last stone to travel to the dark world and take out Deathtoll.

After killing Deathtoll, all the main dudes from the worlds thank you and you get sent back up to the sky. The Master (the voice that allows you to save your game and stuff) realizes that even after a year past the game’s events, you’ve become attached to Lisa. The Master sends you back down to Earth as a human with no memory to live your life happily with Lisa. Oh, and you can talk to animals because you’re from the sky.

4. Upgrades

This game had more magic, sword and armor upgrades than any game I’ve ever played. And every time you get one, it’s always the same. You get a new one of each in every world just about. When you get a new one it’s like YES, FINALLY I CAN WALK THROUGH FIRE. But then you’re less impressed with the next level when you need to breathe underwater. In the first dungeon there are metal enemies that can’t be killed with your sword. So I assumed you’d get a stronger sword in the second world. You don’t get a sword that can kill metal enemies until the sixth world.

There isn’t much else to say about it, and I’m sort of rushing to get this article out by tonight. There’s one thing I’d like to complain about though. Along with your upgrades, with every world you get a new character to join you. Not like a typical RPG where they’re in your party and you use them in battles, it’s just slash and kill, but in order to do or see certain things in the dungeons, you need these guys. For example, in one level there are invisible enemies that kill you, and you can’t see them until you get a cat to join your party that allows you to. This is only explained if you talk to every fucking cat or door or plant and one of them tells you. But unless you do, it’s a total mindfuck.

5. Dialogue

Your argument is invalid.

This game has so many typos and weird dialogue that it’ll leave you laughing or scratching your head. If you play it, you’ll notice they can’t decide between “Alright”, “Allright” and “All right”. The fact you can talk to animals and inanimate objects is just hilarious. No one seems to mind that the savior of the world is having a conversation with a door.

It’s hard to say a lot about this game if you haven’t played it, which I highly recommend that you do. It may not be original, but it sure is fun. It was developed by Enix before they merged to become SquareEnix. Though Soul Blazer never had any official sequels, the company made a few games that related to one another. If you liked The Illusion of Gaia or Terranigma, you may like this one.