Quintet's Act Raiser

Act Raiser was developed by Quintet and published by Square Soft (Square Enix). This game put a big mix on the Final Fantasy RPG aspect with a city building sim all in one game. Released in 1990 for the SNES, it was one of the first games available with the release of the SNES, and really helped show the potential of the system.

Now this a game that is a little more detailed than other we have covered so far. The plot of the games follows "The Master", a god-like character, who was defeated in battle by Tanzra, a devil/demon like character. After the battle, The master returns to his Sky "Palace" where he falls into a deep sleep while recovering from his wounds. He awakens to one of his angle servants who tells him that while he was asleep, for a few hundred years, an the world has been taken over by Tanzra (sounds a lot like the whole Apocalypse end of the world thing don't it).

The game play consists of the player playing as The Master. Even though the player never actually controls The Master, you enter the game world as an angel that shoot arrows and looks a lot like cupid, or as animated statues (which really makes me think a lot of Dr. Who). As you play as the angel, you fly around shooting demons with your bow, or telling The Master where to use his "magic" such as lightning. As you do this, the people build their city's, with your control, and close lairs where demos spawn. They also give you gifts in your honor every now and again. When playing as the animated statues, you go into a side scrolling plat former style game play, where you fight demons to clear the land of their presence so that the land becomes habitual for the people again. The goal of the game is to defeat Tanzra and his six lieutenants, while reviving the people's faith in you.

Now if you ask me, all this game is a game to let people play god. You are pretty much just trying to rid the world of demons that have risen from the depths of wherever they came from, and you fight them with your army of angels and god like powers, without ever leaving your sky palace. Now this seems morally wrong, the game is actually a lot of fun to play.

At first I was really confused on what to do in the game, but when I finally figured out what to do, I though the game was just a plat former side-scrolling action game. After I got past the first "level" though, I found out how it is also a city building sim. Now anyone that is a fan of city building games but don't want the complex game play such as Sim City, I really recommend this game. Now the city building doesn't really include you know like pipelines, and electricity and what not. But you do control the direction of the building direction, and you have the ability to clear the land from obstacles (more than demons) to allow the building process. People who play a lot of city sim games know that they are a lot of fun...for the first ten min. Then you just get bored, but Act Raised helps cure this by adding that side scrolling action fighting in between building city's. Now if you ask me, the game is not super fun. It is very repetitive, but oddly very addicting to play. Even though it is morally wrong for one person to "play god" and control others, in a video games it is very addicting and is kind of the answer for that forbidden fruit.

Now I did like playing this game. Mainly because I enjoy to play both City Building Sims and Action-Adventure RPG's. You can see how this game really made an impact on showing the true potential of the SNES with its intricate game play. But you can also see where it set the standards and influenced city building sims and other sim like games in that class. Even though in a lot of today's generation of games you dont fly around as a half naked arrow shooting angel (sorry Kid Icarus), but controlling the building and progress of the city, along with intervening if people live (we all know that in Sim City, when you get bored you just let lose a random tornado or something) is something that all sim games have in common. But lets not forget the action adventure part of this game though....but there really wasn't anything special about it, lets emit it just try's to replicate Super Mario like a lot of its kind during the time. So I am not really going to go deep into that.

But anyone looking to play a good game that helped set the standards for the SNES, I recommend checking out Act Raiser

Remember To play this game you have to download the emulator and ROM

 References:
http://www.gamespot.com/actraiser/reviews/actraiser-review-6172407/
http://www.flyingomelette.com/reviews/snes/actraiser.html