Retro Review - Illusion of Time/Gaia
RPG games are a genre of which you have to invest a lot of time and dedication, since many of them consist of having a character from 0, leveling it and equipping it with the best items that the game has at our disposal, for this we will need to eliminate large amounts of enemies, gain experience and collect money. This is a genre that not many people have the patience to play it, or they just do not like it and prefer some other simpler game. This is one of my favorite videogame genres, and throughout these months I have done several reviews about games of this style, but I forgot one, that even though it is not on my favorite RPG games lists, it was a game where I had a good time when playing it.
South Cape is the main place where we met before starting our adventure. Will is our main character and he is an inhabitant of that town. Early on, we learned that Will lives with his grandparents, because his mother died and his father disappeared mysteriously not long ago, creating an uncertainty in Will to want to know the whereabouts of his father. The days passed in the South Cape as always, until one day a girl named Kara arrived, from her arrival all around her she emanated mystery and secrets, we soon discovered that she is a princess and that she has escaped from the guards of his castle, when she arrives at the town, she meets Will, so she asks him to hide her from the guards, but Will can not do anything and the guards take her back to the castle.
As expected, the meeting between Will and Kara only brought problems to our protagonist, since the next day, he is cited by means of a letter by the same King, in that letter Will require him to appear at the castle and bring I get his father's ring, a ring he does not know about. When appearing before the King and saying that he has no idea about that ring, the King does not believe what he is saying and Will is sent to the dungeons, to be imprisoned. So we must leave that place and at the same time, rescue Princess Kara. Parallel to this, there is a meteorite that will fall on the planet Earth, whose impact will cause total destruction, so our mission, like those of almost all games of this style, is to find a way to stop this meteorite and save to our world, so we will travel to various places to find the 6 Mystical Statues that will help us avoid the destruction of our world. But the story does not just stay there, between this argument there is a more mysteries that we will discover throughout the game, everything about the ring, the disappearance of Will's father, as well as the mysterious telekinetic power that our protagonist has, a power that will be of great help in our adventure.
Illusion of Time / Gaia is one of those few games of the old generation that even today, where the graphics of video games resemble reality, it looks pretty good. There is always something that I have in mind: Do some developers think very much about the future when it comes to making their games? Because there are many games from the same time of Illusion of Time / Gaia, which do not look good at all, as they have aged badly, but this game looks pretty good, with a good color palette striking in sight, both in its large amounts of scenarios, as in its characters. Similarly, the decoration of each of the scenarios where we have the opportunity to go, are very well designed for what you want to present the game, are very varied and very different scenarios. And not only can we find great details in the scenarios, but also in their characters, although in this aspect it is understandable since in most games or at least in games of this style, always the characters stand out more than the others, even the enemies. As I have always said, this kind of retro graphics have always been and will be my favorites, since with something simple you can create something spectacular, in a few words Illusion of Time / Gaia has overcome the challenge of time in terms of graphic quality.
The melodies of the old games have a distinctive style that makes them special and very recognizable, especially in RPG games where music plays an important role in the gameplay and in the way of telling a story. Illusion of Time / Gaia has one of the best soundtrack of the games of its generation, with melodies loaded with feelings of all types, they are in charge of transmitting infinities of these in many situations that occur throughout the game, saying that this game in particular it has one of the best soundtrack of its generation and it is a lot to say, taking into account the excellent games that came out on the market in those years, but something that Illusion of Time / Gaia deserves.
Illusion of Time / Gaia is a simple Action RPG, its playability is very basic and to learn to control our character, it is a task that will take us a few minutes. Being the battles in real time, some enemies will have the ability to move around the stage, quite the opposite with the RPG by turns, which normally remain static one position and attack or we attack according to the order in which we have our characters. In Illusion of Time / Gaia the fights are more dynamic, on screen or in each scenario, there are always a number of enemies and depending on what we have to do, we can choose between fighting with them or ignoring them and continue with our path. The controls are easy, we have classic basic attack, we can defend ourselves and also, throughout the game we will learn certain special abilities or special powers that will help us eliminate certain enemies in an easier way.
In few words there is not much to emphasize in this game with respect to your gameplay, since it is very typical and simple, it is a perfect game for those people who for the first time want to try a game of this style, since by not having a type of demanding gameplay, is the right game to start in the world of Action RPG.
Illusion of Time / Gaia is an excellent Action RPG of fantasy, with a good graphic section, but above all with an excellent list of melodies that will accompany us throughout the duration of the game, a classic of the old generation and a classic in the industry of the video game.
Those games have the best ambient than new comercial games.
That's true, you could tell that these games were done with a lot of dedication and love.
Nice write up fred, I know it as Gaia.
as I get older I appreciate 90s enix over square more and more.
whats up, bro? how have you been?
Enix developed his games with great affection.
I've been well man.
SNES era Enix was really on another level, and it was very overlooked in the states due to marketing and in many cases, no localization. Such a shame.
They were good times in the video game industry when Enix had not yet joined Squaresoft.