WIll actually has A LOT of mid-late game use. He's the only playable character who can chain special moves into combos. My favorite combo is using the Jump Attack _while running,_ Psycho Slider through the enemy, and follow up with a Psycho Dash. Explanation: When you use an attack _while running,_ you actually retain your momentum from the run until shortly after that attack finishes its animation. So you still have the run charged up. This even works for the Spin Dash crazy enough. By performing a Jump Attack, you receive knockback. This puts which puts you at the ideal distance from enemies to make use of the temporary invulnerability during the Psycho Slider animation, which you can use to pass through the enemy unharmed. You can also charge your psycho power _during_ the Psycho Slider animation. This allows you to almost immediately pull off a Psycho Dash or charge up a Spin Dash. Another protip: You can actually use an improvised special move which I affectionately referred to as the "Psycho Spin". This can be done with any of the playable characters by holding down the attack button and rapidly changing your character's direction with the D-pad. Doing this will interrupt the attack animation and cause the player to start another attack in the new direction, all without having to mash the attack button. Really helps when you're surrounded by enemies.
Jason, you overlooked a huge plot point in the section at the end about the Russian glass guy who dies from poison: the note that he leaves to his opponent, which is you, states that he was suffering from a terminal illness and knew he was going to die. That's why he was playing Russian Glass, so he could stockpile some money for his wife and his child that he would never get a chance to see. So he wasn't just doing some living dangerously, kamikaze,suicide death-wish thing, but he was trying to accrue wealth in a high-risk game in a relatively short period of time, in order to look out for his family that he knew he wouldn't be able to take care of.
@@dan47483 Thanks for replying! I'm glad others picked up on this! I was actually playing through the game at the time I watched this video, so it was fresh on my mind!
I have such nostalgia for this game. So much Wonder Years stuff was going on in my life while playing this. It may have been the happiest time of my life. I think because of that, I have not played this since the late 90s. I want this one to remain as I remembered it and everything going on.
One of my favorite Red Jewels is outside the house of the guy who rescued you after the raft section. You get one chance. After the conversation, you go outside. The jewel is beside the house. Once you talk to Kara, you automatically go to the next town. If you do not check for the jewel before talking to her, it's gone. You cannot go back to that house. One of the other dark parts: in the Aztec temple, you find a dead explorer with a note from his family. You actually meet his family later in the game in Watermia, who are still waiting for him to come home with the treasure. There's also the three explorers you can meet later on in Neil's parents's town. One by one, you find their remains at Angkor Wat.
Lmao realizing I missed that jewel outside that guy's house was when I gave up on the game, I finally picked it back up after like a year and beat it a couple days ago and it was amazing. Gonna go back through and finally get them all
This is one of the earliest games I remember playing. It oozed charm and at the same time I was a little kid and for the life of me had no idea what was happening in the game and did not know it was related to Soulblazer.
The Russian Roulette thing seems right in line with the whole theme of the shiny veneer hiding the worst aspects of humanity. The beautiful city built on slave labor. A guy with a nice family and everything going for him willing to gamble it all away for the hell of it. I like a snes game willing to say that people can just suck. Good review. Downloadin it.
These secrets were there specifically so Quintex could have people talking about it, and word of mouth was very important on the 90's, plus the whole 'Game magazine' concept that was ESSENTIAL to enjoy these type of games which in part were big sponsors at the same time.. Going the extra mile to hide stuff to give you extra rewards was the idea of making an RPG having way more replay ability.
- When Soul Blazer came out it was hands down one of the best games ever made. Sure it's structure hasn't aged well, but the gameplay is pretty tight for an SNES game let alone a very early SNES game. To rate it so low is criminal. - The Illusion of Gaia instruction manual includes a guide to the location of all 50 red gems. I rented it in 1996 and beat it with all 50 gems before the 3 days was up.
Any skipped health, str, def upgrades are given upon the defeat of the next boss. I recently watched a speedrun of this game and was floored when I learned you can just skip the minion clears.
That first red jewel. My god. The fisherman spawned for me eventually, but I was so used to pressing up and down that when he did appear, I went back into the cave. 🤣
Played this game, about halfway through, probably 3-4 times when I was younger. I recently finally loaded it up on the Everdrive and plowed through the whole thing. It's a game that has a lot of beautiful moments (for the era), and it's pretty satisfying gameplay-wise, but of course the story is totally linear and sort of less deep than it seems to think it is haha. Overall a strong game for the SNES. My one gripe is that the text boxes can be advanced by any button press, so I accidentally skipped dialog sometimes, which was kinda frustrating and stupid lol.
I know you guys love to push the theory that games were hard because Nintendo was trying to combat game rentals, but just because everyone says something doesn't make it true (the Virtual Boy hurting eyes is a perfect illustration-don't believe me, read Florent Gorges’ books). That said, it's not entirely false either. The story of Nintendo is much more complex and rich than that. When the NES was launched, Nintendo understood the importance of user experience. They immediately worked as hard on the games as they did on customer service. Various experiments were initiated in different countries, some specific, some with variations. This is how we ended up with Nintendo Power in the US and Club Nintendo in Europe. The 'Hotline' was a significant part of the Nintendo experience for a long time. Many of us have fond memories of calling Nintendo's experts. Similarly with games, it was intentional that games were obscure or full of secrets; the intent was to create a need to share secrets at school, keeping the interest and enthusiasm alive. This was before the internet, but they already understood the importance of creating a buzz! I insist on the experiments: they tried adding guides to RPGs like Secret of Mana, Earthbound, and Secret of Evermore, and Super Metroid. Or they would work with magazines to share secrets, which helped Nintendo and also provided the magazines with content. Illusion of Gaia is one of those games... The manual revealed a lot of information and secrets (and it was huge). The press also shared many secrets. It's not the best RPG on the Super NES, far from it, but living that adventure back in the day was wonderful!
Actually, for bosses I always found it better to be Will then Freedan, simply because Will has that jump attack that gives him an invisibility frame that Freedan just doesn't have. When Freedan is a giant projectile target....
This was my favorite game as a kid. I'm not sure if this has been mentioned in another comment, but when this game came out the red jewels were listed out in the little booklet that came with the game. God I miss the little booklets that used to come with games. So much cool artwork and character introductions. Great review though, you hit the nail on the head with pretty much everything.
the first time i played je always appeared .... i wonder if theres some sort of memory dependent counter that if its a new save he'll appear after a specific amount of times... nowadays i always have trouble finding him
there was a guide provided with the game. half the rulebook that came in the box was a guide to how to play including a section on how to get all the red gems. i love this game to death but it was my first ever rpg so im gonna be bias lol. the guy playing russian glass is dying anyway and was playing russian glass every night to win money for his wife before he passed, the reason you play is to have him leave his camels to you in his will because otherwise you cant travel over the desert.
I definitely think this is yet another step up game from Quintet. Very much better than Soul Blazer, but that game is very good too like I said on your video on it.
This was another one of my all time favorites! I even played a Japanese emulator to see how far I could get in the game by memory alone and got up to midway through the angel village, that place was too text heavy for me to remember. But still, a phenomenal game with an equally phenomenal story!
Just discovered your channel. Has anyone ever told you your channel resembles if endless jess and razorfist had a buttbaby, and then that buttbaby was locked into a room with nothing but an SNES and a copy of dennis miller stand up repeating over and over again? No? Thats what your vids remind me of. Keep up the work man, its criminal you haven't broken through. Its some good shit.
Would you fucking believe that i only played this game for like an hour a long time ago and one of the few things i vividly remember is that right after i started playing i went into that little cave, talked to the NPCs, then came out and BOOM the fisherman was there and i got the red jewel without even trying (or knowing what it was for).
Might be my favorite review in this series yet. Very entertaining script. Between the line you have to wait in, the maze doors and the Russian roulette I was cackling throughout the whole thing. Had to rewatch some parts and nice to hear Mallard's Tomb! That pig roast would crush my heart though, especially with how cute it is :'(
The pig actually _sacrifices itself_ to feed everyone. Because that was, like, its destiny all along. Yeah. It's a really good game, very emotional story in parts, but also weird. I think it's partly a Japanese cultural / Eastern philosophy thing.
Love this game. Best music on the SNES. Though i always did think the theme that plays near the ending, when Will and Kara are talking, needed vocals, and I'm surprised that mine seems to be the only attempt at writing some. The ending is a double edged sword. It's specifically stated that the planet is unhappy, that your efforts have harmed it irrevocably. But we...had to? Because the chaos comet was going to turn everyone into beasts or something. This game would sorely do with a remake that expands on the story. Also recently while playing Pokémon Violet, i caught a Tepig. What better name is there for a pig on fire than Hamlet?
This game is not like Zelda, it's completely different in story and in concept. They're nothing alike, now this game never exactly took off. I don't how they marketed it, or if it didn't appeal to people. One thing you can say about the Quintet trilogy is they're all very unique games in their own right. Soul Blazer was a good start and Terranigma was a great ending to the three. Illusion of Gaia really was in the middle just from everything the game is and does.
damn that soul blazer placement is harsh bro. the one-at-a-time spawn points were really dumb, though at least they grow more sparse later in the game. but other than that base combat felt way better than IoG (though the abilities in IoG are p fun). IoG just doesn't feel as tight. if SB had come up with a better formula for enemy placement i would seriously consider putting it above IoG myself. though IoG still blows SB out of the water on the presentation front.
I remember first hearing of this game in Kmart, they had a panel for upcoming and new releases, illusion of Gaia being one of them. I believe the marketing there was hinting at this being a Zelda clone
This game was far more than a zelda clone, it had way more charm than LTTP, and I say that as a huge zelda fan, and LTTP is one of my top 3 zelda games
I never understood why these kinda games would have an enemy fortress with a mind boggling intricate maze ? That's where the enemies live, so that makes no sense. Why would someone build their fort like that ?
The upgrades you miss are given to you at the end of a boss. Speed runners never clear an area, but at the end of the game they're pretty much full power still.
I traded Shadowrun for the snes for this. I was let down. An exp system or equipment system would have made this way more alluring to me, tastefully implemented. That 50 gem thing bugged me as well. I had 56k at the time, so I suppose there were possibly guides. This was probably around 95-96.
Illusion of Gaia isn’t a sequel to Soul Blazer. It’s always been rumored to be that because there are some thematic similarities and because the assets for the first big boss in Soul Blazer were re-used as the secret boss (of the Jeweler) in IoG. In reality both games had completely different writers.
Yeah, I couldn't help fixating on the Russian glass thing in my own review, too. It's so weirdly out of place and none of the characters ever question any of it. For what it's worth, I love all three of these games, but found the "what tiny part of the world will I unlock next?" gameplay cycle of SoulBlazer way more compelling than you did. IoG is my third-place pick.
Jason, you overlooked a huge plot point in the section at the end about the Russian glass guy who dies from poison: the note that he leaves to his opponent, which is you, states that he was suffering from a terminal illness and knew he was going to die. That's why he was playing Russian Glass, so he could stockpile some money for his wife and his child that he would never get a chance to see. So he wasn't just doing some living dangerously, kamikaze,suicide death-wish thing, but he was trying to accrue wealth in a high-risk game in a relatively short period of time, in order to look out for his family that he knew he wouldn't be able to take care of.
You break down walls with Will and not Freedan not based on strength, but on their weapons! Will hits with his "flute", a blunt weapon, while Freedan uses a sword, a slashing weapon. Trying to break a wall with a sword would only make it lose it's blade cutting abilities. THAT makes sense!!
You're honestly the first person I've heard complain about Soupblazer's combat. By today's standards yeah, but back then it was pretty aweet. Go around, swing your sword, shoot fireballs. No devil may cry shit. And yeah, many 80s/90s game reviewers seem to forget that the game manual was an extention of the games back then. That's why some games don't even give you a tutorial back then - they're expecting you to have the manual that they sold with the game in the same box. Double-edged sword on the manual thing. Nowadays in-game tutorials can be annoying as hell. But at least you don't have to manage a paper booklet.
I want to say Nintendo Power had an article that gave the location of them, too. I feel like I got all the gems on at least one play through, and I probably had one Prima guide ever. But yeah, you weren't expected to find them all on your own in a single play.
2 года назад+3
Doubt it. The manual that came WITH the game told you the location of every single red jewel.
@@adventureoflinkmk2 Oh, did it? I only ever rented it, though I badly regret that I don't have a cart for this. One of my favorite SNES RPGs of all time.
It's come up on the Patreon vote a number of times but hasn't won yet, figure it'll get its time eventually. Sure seems like he's been dodging it though haha
Although I like your work, I have only one criticism to make, despite the fact that you review retro games and spoiler alerts, it is not enough, I have nothing against telling facts and the nature of the game, you do that very well but You still expand on events or crucial facts of the game, telling almost the entire plot itself, so my advice would be not to go so deep when you already listened to the first 5 minutes and you did it well.
All I remember about this game was hanging by the walf, a secret kinda room where me and the other coloured-hairs hung out, and difficult lands I never really surmounted. Still, holes one of the most teasured memories for me. This, Secret of Mana, and Link to Past are the happines memories of my childhood.
Dig your vids! Idk if it’s just me but during portions where you don’t speak and it’s just game audio, there is a white noise *hiss* Maybe it’s just me and maybe my ears are too stupid
I hated this game, traded it to a friend of mine for Shadowrun in the late 90s, setting off a chain reaction of my obsession with cyberpunk. One of the most influential butterfly effect decisions I made. I still hate this game.
WIll actually has A LOT of mid-late game use. He's the only playable character who can chain special moves into combos.
My favorite combo is using the Jump Attack _while running,_ Psycho Slider through the enemy, and follow up with a Psycho Dash.
Explanation:
When you use an attack _while running,_ you actually retain your momentum from the run until shortly after that attack finishes its animation.
So you still have the run charged up. This even works for the Spin Dash crazy enough.
By performing a Jump Attack, you receive knockback.
This puts which puts you at the ideal distance from enemies to make use of the temporary invulnerability during the Psycho Slider animation, which you can use to pass through the enemy unharmed.
You can also charge your psycho power _during_ the Psycho Slider animation. This allows you to almost immediately pull off a Psycho Dash or charge up a Spin Dash.
Another protip: You can actually use an improvised special move which I affectionately referred to as the "Psycho Spin".
This can be done with any of the playable characters by holding down the attack button and rapidly changing your character's direction with the D-pad.
Doing this will interrupt the attack animation and cause the player to start another attack in the new direction, all without having to mash the attack button.
Really helps when you're surrounded by enemies.
Jason, you overlooked a huge plot point in the section at the end about the Russian glass guy who dies from poison: the note that he leaves to his opponent, which is you, states that he was suffering from a terminal illness and knew he was going to die. That's why he was playing Russian Glass, so he could stockpile some money for his wife and his child that he would never get a chance to see.
So he wasn't just doing some living dangerously, kamikaze,suicide death-wish thing, but he was trying to accrue wealth in a high-risk game in a relatively short period of time, in order to look out for his family that he knew he wouldn't be able to take care of.
Glad someone else mentioned this. It's a much better plot point than he gives it credit for.
@@dan47483 Thanks for replying! I'm glad others picked up on this! I was actually playing through the game at the time I watched this video, so it was fresh on my mind!
Yeah, that's really weird. Kinda cinemasins level of ignoring the detail of a story to make a complaint.
walter white good ending
I have such nostalgia for this game. So much Wonder Years stuff was going on in my life while playing this. It may have been the happiest time of my life. I think because of that, I have not played this since the late 90s. I want this one to remain as I remembered it and everything going on.
One of my favorite Red Jewels is outside the house of the guy who rescued you after the raft section. You get one chance. After the conversation, you go outside. The jewel is beside the house. Once you talk to Kara, you automatically go to the next town. If you do not check for the jewel before talking to her, it's gone. You cannot go back to that house.
One of the other dark parts: in the Aztec temple, you find a dead explorer with a note from his family. You actually meet his family later in the game in Watermia, who are still waiting for him to come home with the treasure.
There's also the three explorers you can meet later on in Neil's parents's town. One by one, you find their remains at Angkor Wat.
Lmao realizing I missed that jewel outside that guy's house was when I gave up on the game, I finally picked it back up after like a year and beat it a couple days ago and it was amazing. Gonna go back through and finally get them all
Holding R to twirl the flute also blocks projectiles. So it's actually insanely useful.
I beat the entire game without knowing this. I used the water transformation item against the final boss to dodge the projectiles lol.
This is one of the earliest games I remember playing. It oozed charm and at the same time I was a little kid and for the life of me had no idea what was happening in the game and did not know it was related to Soulblazer.
It stood on its own!
The Russian Roulette thing seems right in line with the whole theme of the shiny veneer hiding the worst aspects of humanity. The beautiful city built on slave labor. A guy with a nice family and everything going for him willing to gamble it all away for the hell of it. I like a snes game willing to say that people can just suck. Good review. Downloadin it.
Read my above comment for clarification on the full context of the Russian Glass segment. It's not at all what you think.
@@lawrencemcstephens308I think it still is, considering that guy was never the only one to play it.
These secrets were there specifically so Quintex could have people talking about it, and word of mouth was very important on the 90's, plus the whole 'Game magazine' concept that was ESSENTIAL to enjoy these type of games which in part were big sponsors at the same time..
Going the extra mile to hide stuff to give you extra rewards was the idea of making an RPG having way more replay ability.
Illusion Of Gaia, FFII (American), and Zelda Link To The Past are probably my favorite three games of all-time.
- When Soul Blazer came out it was hands down one of the best games ever made. Sure it's structure hasn't aged well, but the gameplay is pretty tight for an SNES game let alone a very early SNES game. To rate it so low is criminal.
- The Illusion of Gaia instruction manual includes a guide to the location of all 50 red gems. I rented it in 1996 and beat it with all 50 gems before the 3 days was up.
Any skipped health, str, def upgrades are given upon the defeat of the next boss. I recently watched a speedrun of this game and was floored when I learned you can just skip the minion clears.
Wow, never noticed
WHAT
Then why were the Vampires impossible for me to beat as a kid when now I could beat them with my hands tied behind my back 😭
And here I am, 30 years after, discovering it right now...
That first red jewel. My god. The fisherman spawned for me eventually, but I was so used to pressing up and down that when he did appear, I went back into the cave. 🤣
lmao, guilty as well.... *walks back up realizing what happened* ......…....…......
.........
......
GODFWUAKINDAMN----!!!
To be fair with the red jewels, the game's manual tells you where they all are. Didn't even need to buy a guide back in the day.
It's in the manual? Dang they knew finding those was asking too much
@@JasonGravesPoser it's manual is almost an entire strategy guide.
Played this game, about halfway through, probably 3-4 times when I was younger. I recently finally loaded it up on the Everdrive and plowed through the whole thing. It's a game that has a lot of beautiful moments (for the era), and it's pretty satisfying gameplay-wise, but of course the story is totally linear and sort of less deep than it seems to think it is haha. Overall a strong game for the SNES. My one gripe is that the text boxes can be advanced by any button press, so I accidentally skipped dialog sometimes, which was kinda frustrating and stupid lol.
Small correction. You cant actually miss out on stat upgrades. After killing a boss you retroactively get all stat upgrades you missed
I know you guys love to push the theory that games were hard because Nintendo was trying to combat game rentals, but just because everyone says something doesn't make it true (the Virtual Boy hurting eyes is a perfect illustration-don't believe me, read Florent Gorges’ books). That said, it's not entirely false either. The story of Nintendo is much more complex and rich than that. When the NES was launched, Nintendo understood the importance of user experience. They immediately worked as hard on the games as they did on customer service. Various experiments were initiated in different countries, some specific, some with variations. This is how we ended up with Nintendo Power in the US and Club Nintendo in Europe. The 'Hotline' was a significant part of the Nintendo experience for a long time. Many of us have fond memories of calling Nintendo's experts. Similarly with games, it was intentional that games were obscure or full of secrets; the intent was to create a need to share secrets at school, keeping the interest and enthusiasm alive. This was before the internet, but they already understood the importance of creating a buzz! I insist on the experiments: they tried adding guides to RPGs like Secret of Mana, Earthbound, and Secret of Evermore, and Super Metroid. Or they would work with magazines to share secrets, which helped Nintendo and also provided the magazines with content. Illusion of Gaia is one of those games... The manual revealed a lot of information and secrets (and it was huge). The press also shared many secrets. It's not the best RPG on the Super NES, far from it, but living that adventure back in the day was wonderful!
Actually, for bosses I always found it better to be Will then Freedan, simply because Will has that jump attack that gives him an invisibility frame that Freedan just doesn't have. When Freedan is a giant projectile target....
This was my favorite game as a kid. I'm not sure if this has been mentioned in another comment, but when this game came out the red jewels were listed out in the little booklet that came with the game. God I miss the little booklets that used to come with games. So much cool artwork and character introductions. Great review though, you hit the nail on the head with pretty much everything.
I've never missed the fisherman. Never gone in and out repeatedly like that either. Maybe he's supposed to show up at a certain time?
the first time i played je always appeared .... i wonder if theres some sort of memory dependent counter that if its a new save he'll appear after a specific amount of times... nowadays i always have trouble finding him
there was a guide provided with the game. half the rulebook that came in the box was a guide to how to play including a section on how to get all the red gems. i love this game to death but it was my first ever rpg so im gonna be bias lol. the guy playing russian glass is dying anyway and was playing russian glass every night to win money for his wife before he passed, the reason you play is to have him leave his camels to you in his will because otherwise you cant travel over the desert.
I really loved that game except the missable red gems...
I definitely think this is yet another step up game from Quintet. Very much better than Soul Blazer, but that game is very good too like I said on your video on it.
That lagoon bg music though : )
This was another one of my all time favorites! I even played a Japanese emulator to see how far I could get in the game by memory alone and got up to midway through the angel village, that place was too text heavy for me to remember. But still, a phenomenal game with an equally phenomenal story!
5:25 yeah, turns out you don't need a guide since... all 50 red jewels locations were shown in the game BOOKLET!!! Can you believe that!!!!
Just discovered your channel. Has anyone ever told you your channel resembles if endless jess and razorfist had a buttbaby, and then that buttbaby was locked into a room with nothing but an SNES and a copy of dennis miller stand up repeating over and over again? No? Thats what your vids remind me of.
Keep up the work man, its criminal you haven't broken through. Its some good shit.
Ashamed to admit idk who Endless Jess is, so thanks for the channel recommendation!
@@JasonGravesPoser trust me, its a compliment.
Also, you remind me of them not so much in content but in presentation and quality of your work.
Believe it or not, the manual that came with the game included a guide of where to collect every gem.
OMG... I totally had a flashback to that "wait in line" part.
Would you fucking believe that i only played this game for like an hour a long time ago and one of the few things i vividly remember is that right after i started playing i went into that little cave, talked to the NPCs, then came out and BOOM the fisherman was there and i got the red jewel without even trying (or knowing what it was for).
Lucky you!
Always been one of my favorite games. Very nostalgic game.
Might be my favorite review in this series yet.
Very entertaining script. Between the line you have to wait in, the maze doors and the Russian roulette I was cackling throughout the whole thing. Had to rewatch some parts and nice to hear Mallard's Tomb!
That pig roast would crush my heart though, especially with how cute it is :'(
The pig actually _sacrifices itself_ to feed everyone. Because that was, like, its destiny all along. Yeah. It's a really good game, very emotional story in parts, but also weird. I think it's partly a Japanese cultural / Eastern philosophy thing.
Love this game. Best music on the SNES. Though i always did think the theme that plays near the ending, when Will and Kara are talking, needed vocals, and I'm surprised that mine seems to be the only attempt at writing some.
The ending is a double edged sword. It's specifically stated that the planet is unhappy, that your efforts have harmed it irrevocably. But we...had to? Because the chaos comet was going to turn everyone into beasts or something.
This game would sorely do with a remake that expands on the story.
Also recently while playing Pokémon Violet, i caught a Tepig. What better name is there for a pig on fire than Hamlet?
Do you mean In the Earthen Womb? Would honestly love to hear your lyrics
@@richarddavis8863 No, To The New World. And you can find it on my channel! Though there's two versions so go with the updated one.
I got a free illusion if gaia tshirt when I bought this at software etc
The game manuel gives the locations of all if the red jewels.
*All of
You may not like Lagoon, but you seem to like it’s music! No complaints here 😊
I see Terranigma coming!!!!!!!!!!!
This game is not like Zelda, it's completely different in story and in concept. They're nothing alike, now this game never exactly took off. I don't how they marketed it, or if it didn't appeal to people. One thing you can say about the Quintet trilogy is they're all very unique games in their own right. Soul Blazer was a good start and Terranigma was a great ending to the three. Illusion of Gaia really was in the middle just from everything the game is and does.
damn that soul blazer placement is harsh bro. the one-at-a-time spawn points were really dumb, though at least they grow more sparse later in the game. but other than that base combat felt way better than IoG (though the abilities in IoG are p fun). IoG just doesn't feel as tight. if SB had come up with a better formula for enemy placement i would seriously consider putting it above IoG myself. though IoG still blows SB out of the water on the presentation front.
The upgrades are not lost when you miss to kill all enemies, if you kill the boss you get all upgrades from that level that were not collected i think
I remember first hearing of this game in Kmart, they had a panel for upcoming and new releases, illusion of Gaia being one of them. I believe the marketing there was hinting at this being a Zelda clone
This game was far more than a zelda clone, it had way more charm than LTTP, and I say that as a huge zelda fan, and LTTP is one of my top 3 zelda games
I never understood why these kinda games would have an enemy fortress with a mind boggling intricate maze ? That's where the enemies live, so that makes no sense. Why would someone build their fort like that ?
Love the intro to this video!
The upgrades you miss are given to you at the end of a boss. Speed runners never clear an area, but at the end of the game they're pretty much full power still.
Hope you check out Terranigma, best of 3 in my opinion.
Considering he had that game in the top 20 on his overall SNES list, i'm sure he's looking forward to it =)
I traded Shadowrun for the snes for this. I was let down. An exp system or equipment system would have made this way more alluring to me, tastefully implemented. That 50 gem thing bugged me as well. I had 56k at the time, so I suppose there were possibly guides. This was probably around 95-96.
The guide showing you how to find all the gems is the one that came with the game
Illusion of Gaia isn’t a sequel to Soul Blazer. It’s always been rumored to be that because there are some thematic similarities and because the assets for the first big boss in Soul Blazer were re-used as the secret boss (of the Jeweler) in IoG. In reality both games had completely different writers.
Yeah, I couldn't help fixating on the Russian glass thing in my own review, too. It's so weirdly out of place and none of the characters ever question any of it.
For what it's worth, I love all three of these games, but found the "what tiny part of the world will I unlock next?" gameplay cycle of SoulBlazer way more compelling than you did. IoG is my third-place pick.
It's so weird right?
Jason, you overlooked a huge plot point in the section at the end about the Russian glass guy who dies from poison: the note that he leaves to his opponent, which is you, states that he was suffering from a terminal illness and knew he was going to die. That's why he was playing Russian Glass, so he could stockpile some money for his wife and his child that he would never get a chance to see. So he wasn't just doing some living dangerously, kamikaze,suicide death-wish thing, but he was trying to accrue wealth in a high-risk game in a relatively short period of time, in order to look out for his family that he knew he wouldn't be able to take care of.
You break down walls with Will and not Freedan not based on strength, but on their weapons! Will hits with his "flute", a blunt weapon, while Freedan uses a sword, a slashing weapon. Trying to break a wall with a sword would only make it lose it's blade cutting abilities. THAT makes sense!!
Yeah but a flute?
@@BJGvideos irk...maybe it's a very sturdy flute...
What’s the song at 2:04? Shit bumps. Good review, too, I love your videos, they remind me of how cozy RUclips used to feel.
Wish I could help, but honestly I don't remember. Most of the times I just use game soundtracks but that was a random youtube find
This is my #1 SNES game
You're honestly the first person I've heard complain about Soupblazer's combat. By today's standards yeah, but back then it was pretty aweet. Go around, swing your sword, shoot fireballs. No devil may cry shit.
And yeah, many 80s/90s game reviewers seem to forget that the game manual was an extention of the games back then. That's why some games don't even give you a tutorial back then - they're expecting you to have the manual that they sold with the game in the same box.
Double-edged sword on the manual thing. Nowadays in-game tutorials can be annoying as hell. But at least you don't have to manage a paper booklet.
In other words, it's not the 16-bit gem it's cracked up to be.
rip Clan of the Grey Wolf
16-bit gem was kind of code for "this was on the SNES"
This is my favourite adventure game of all time
I'm pretty sure the gems were purposely obtuse to sell the official strategy guide.
Sounds about right
I want to say Nintendo Power had an article that gave the location of them, too. I feel like I got all the gems on at least one play through, and I probably had one Prima guide ever. But yeah, you weren't expected to find them all on your own in a single play.
Doubt it. The manual that came WITH the game told you the location of every single red jewel.
@@bloodgain was gonna say my copy of illusion of Gaia came with a strategy guide built into the manual 😳
@@adventureoflinkmk2 Oh, did it? I only ever rented it, though I badly regret that I don't have a cart for this. One of my favorite SNES RPGs of all time.
Any plans on a Secret of Mana review?
It's come up on the Patreon vote a number of times but hasn't won yet, figure it'll get its time eventually. Sure seems like he's been dodging it though haha
Nice Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga music
Although I like your work, I have only one criticism to make, despite the fact that you review retro games and spoiler alerts, it is not enough, I have nothing against telling facts and the nature of the game, you do that very well but You still expand on events or crucial facts of the game, telling almost the entire plot itself, so my advice would be not to go so deep when you already listened to the first 5 minutes and you did it well.
Keep up the good work bro
Great video my man
Could someone please let me know what the song at 5:37 is, i need to know 😭
All I remember about this game was hanging by the walf, a secret kinda room where me and the other coloured-hairs hung out, and difficult lands I never really surmounted. Still, holes one of the most teasured memories for me. This, Secret of Mana, and Link to Past are the happines memories of my childhood.
Dig your vids! Idk if it’s just me but during portions where you don’t speak and it’s just game audio, there is a white noise *hiss*
Maybe it’s just me and maybe my ears are too stupid
Waiting on a raft is not filler?
So no Nobunaga's Ambition?
Prolly not, I might do something with all those Koei strategy games in one video at some point though
@@JasonGravesPoser That's fair. Have to talk about the SNES Mouse & Keyboard after all
Well, I hope you enjoy UW2 at least.
I hated this game, traded it to a friend of mine for Shadowrun in the late 90s, setting off a chain reaction of my obsession with cyberpunk. One of the most influential butterfly effect decisions I made.
I still hate this game.
I like this better when it was called Yugioh. /snarky sarcasm
DAEWOO 🤭
I prefer Illusion of Time
You complain about pick a pipe but I'm about 78% sure that's all your Mario Maker levels are.
game sounds tedious as fuck. Kinda reminds me of chrono in appearance. Not bad.... wait your hiding mountain dews in every video wtf lol
Use this comment as a dislike counter.
get the chrome extension "return youtube dislike"
This game is garbage !!!
Every red jewel location was in the game manual 👍
Who ever says that this game is like Zelda, i need to know what their smoking and where to get it so i can enjoy that shit too. 🚬🚬💨💨💨