Soul Blazer: all things bright and beautiful

I’m not a religious man, but I do have some enduring memories of my time attending a Church of England primary school.

One of those was, presumably as part of our government-mandated Daily Collective Act of Worship, hearing stories of what God, Jesus and friends had been getting up to in Olden Times, but presented in child-friendly picture book format. (The Guideposts Bible Story series, if you’re curious.) The image of these books — beige in colour, with large, simply presented titles on the front and attractive, painted illustrations — has stuck with me over the years. But what has stuck with me more is the tone in which they were written — or perhaps more accurately, the tone in which our headteacher, a gentle man to an arguable fault, read them to us.

And, while I was playing Quintet’s Soul Blazer, a truly excellent Super NES action RPG, my mind just kept coming back to those afternoons in the “Group Room”, sat on the green carpet, listening to these tall tales. There was something not only calming and pleasant about the tone in which this game told its story, but something that felt like it carried deeper, spiritual meaning. I hesitate to call it a “religious experience”, because that’s pure hyperbole — but I will say that Soul Blazer is one of the most potent examples of how the ideas and philosophies of a religious outlook on life can be effectively used in a game. Join me after the jump and let’s talk about that a bit more.

No pressure, guv.

If someone says “religious game” to you, chances are you think of something like those awful Wisdom Tree NES platformers, Super 3D Noah’s Ark or suchlike. These are all attempts to gamify Bible stories, presumably in an attempt to make them more “accessible”, particularly to youngsters. In practice, they all failed at what they did because they forgot the important bit: if you’re making a game, then you need to make sure the game part is actually worthwhile and interesting if you want anyone to pay attention to your message.

Soul Blazer, by contrast, is not explicitly based on any particular religious text, or even a particular religious philosophy. Given its release in the early ’90s, its English version also fell foul of Nintendo of America’s complete refusal to even slightly broach anything that might be seen as “controversial”, such as directly referencing a real-world religion. As a result, the game’s God-like figure — literally just called kami (God) in the Japanese original — was rebranded as “The Master”, and the villain, known simply as “Deathtoll” in English, was more grandiosely known as “Demon King [or Devil] Deathtoll” in Japanese. The intent is still incredibly obvious, however, so one has to wonder why anyone even bothered changing anything.

Get your mind out of the gutter.

“But Pete!” I hear you cry. “Tackling religion isn’t uncommon in role-playing games at all!” Uh-huh, I say. Go on. “In fact, one might even argue it’s a cliché!”

Well, hold on there, sailor. Did I say that Soul Blazer was a scathing takedown of organised religion that culminated in you punching out God? Because that’s the cliché you’re thinking of — and, as an aside, I don’t care what it says about me, I still get hyped every time I play a game like that.

No, Soul Blazer instead takes a markedly different approach. It’s not really about organised religion at all. Instead, it places you in the role of what is essentially a divine messenger — whether you’re an angel, a demigod or some other form of divine entity is left deliberately vague — and tasks you with indirectly sorting out the mess that humanity has gotten itself into by associating a little too closely with ‘im downstairs. Specifically, by the power-hungry King Magridd making an ill-advised (and not especially well-defined) deal with Deathtoll, failing to realise that this would result in all the living creatures of the land becoming trapped in monster lairs, doomed to wander around with early ’90s game AI for the rest of eternity.

Not even in a pineapple.

Notably, at no point in Soul Blazer is your divinity really revealed to anyone — though other “people from the sky” recognise you immediately and join you to add helpful abilities to your arsenal — and, unlike in Soul Blazer’s spiritual precursor (no pun intended), Actraiser, the regular, mortal people you encounter give no indication of believing in The Master and His powers — or even having any awareness of Him whatsoever.

Your presence — and apparent ability to remain unaffected by Deathtoll’s curse — is never really questioned, in fact, but the way in which you are the one going around helping everyone get back into their more familiar forms is noticed and acknowledged. And your selfless attempts to mend the world help a lot of folks — including our devil-dealing King — develop a much healthier outlook on life and their place in the world.

Interestingly, at no point does your divine mission extend to passing judgement on or punishing the people you are rescuing. You might think that King Magridd, being the one who got everyone into this whole mess in the first place, would be first in line for an unconditional, no-stopping ticket to The Bad Place, but no; The Master is, apparently, a benevolent and forgiving deity, and as his disciple, it is not your place to judge — particularly if those who have wronged appear to show genuine contrition for their actions.

Steady on, bossman.

Moreover, a late-game plot twist, which I won’t spoil for you right now, reveals that while Magridd did a very stupid thing, he did it for an even stupider reason, and arguably there is someone else who is even more to blame for everything that went down. That person very much gets their comeuppance, however — though, again, not by your divine hand. Only two people outright die as a direct result of Soul Blazer’s unfolding plot, and neither of them are cut down by you; the only things you beat up are monsters.

Over the course of Soul Blazer’s runtime, you come into contact with a variety of different cultures. Each of the game’s main “areas” corresponds with a different people: in the opening stage, you are working to rebuild a human town, but as the game progresses you will also find yourself helping out woodland creatures, mermaids, dolphins, mountain spirits with a lifespan of a single year, sapient furniture and a whole lot of cats. One unique quirk of your divinity is that you are able to able to communicate with “all living things”, which includes all of the above. Yes, even the furniture.

This means that, in exploring each area, you may well find yourself discovering insights about the local culture that no-one else is aware of — but which are heartwarming to discover. One of these turns up almost immediately in the first area, where you meet a man who is lonely without his wife, who passed away before they could grow old together. Only you know, thanks to the fact that you can speak to and understand all living things, that his wife is actually standing just outside… only now she’s in the form of a goat that the man started taking care of after she started hanging around his house. This is just the first of many such encounters you’ll have in the game; it always feels like you are in a uniquely privileged situation — blessed, you might say — to be able to witness these.

Yep, even that one. The one you hate.

Much of Soul Blazer’s message is about hope. Not necessarily hope that something indisputably wonderful and specific is about to happen, but rather a warmer, gentler sense of hope: the feeling that things are Probably Going To Work Out All Right. The feeling that life is based on a natural cycle, and that as long as you feel like you spent your time on the planet in a way you found fulfilling, you will have no regrets — and you might even end up being able to reunite with the people you thought you had to leave behind.

“Like good sleep comes after hard work, good rest comes after an honest life,” says the spirit of Turbo the dog, deceased for some years but still widely beloved after building a community for the creatures of GreenWood. It’s something you end up having to confront in the game’s ending sequence — though again, I’ll leave the exact details of that for you to discover yourself. (And you should; Soul Blazer is not a long game.)

For me, the overtly “religious” feeling of Soul Blazer came from a number of different sources. First and foremost is the incredibly earnest way in which it’s written, which is probably the thing that reminded me the most of those old Guideposts books. While the English translation is, at times, a little awkward, there is obvious feeling behind it; a clear desire to deliver a message, and to do so in a way that feels warm, kind and caring, but without being obnoxiously preachy or self-congratulatory about its enlightened attitudes.

Sound life advice there, though it’s easy to say when you’re a mushroom.

Make no mistake: while I’m well aware that describing something as “religious” will probably be anathema to some people, Soul Blazer is not a game interested in telling you how to live your life, how to feel or even what to believe. Instead, it’s a game in which you are the one providing people with the invisible but nonetheless recognisable comfort of divinity and faith; you are the one helping to rebuild a better world; you are the one creating a Promised Land where people can live in peace.

To put it another way, Soul Blazer is not interested in the details and doctrine of religion, but rather the simpler, more primal, spiritual sense of belonging that religion brings to many people across the world. And a big part of that warmth comes across from the very way the game is written; the very way that people speak to you; the very way that those you free from their torment react not with fear and distrust after their ordeal, but with love and acceptance for their saviour; you might even say their messiah.

Another big part of the overall vibe that Soul Blazer creates comes from its music. The booming organ music that blasts out of your speakers any time you return to The Master’s shrine to report on your progress is a clear musical expression of the fact that you are face-to-face with a divine being — even though The Master is never shown directly, only depicted as “a voice from above”.

A little more patronising, O Great Master. I don’t see you doing anything.

Meanwhile, the delightfully contrapuntal compositions that accompany your time in the various settlements reflect the complexity of life and a society that struggles on through its ordeals, day after day, each person trying to do their own bit to build a better world — all in the name of that amorphous hope that Things Can Get Better. Soul Blazer is unsubtle in its attempts to create an atmosphere and a feeling in the player’s heart, and the results are undeniably effective.

Where things get a little strange is when you delve into the game’s dungeons for the bulk of the action. Contemplative organ music gives way to energetic, modern sounds and beats — oddly anachronistic, but somehow always fitting for the things you see unfolding before you. Under the ground is a different world; a dangerous world. And you, sword-swinging indeterminate divine entity that you are, are the only one who can do something to make that world a bit safer.

The actual gameplay of Soul Blazer is very simple at its core. In order to rescue the inhabitants of each area, you must clear out the monster lairs in the dungeon beneath the town. Monster lairs, as the name suggests, spawn monsters, and will continue doing so until they run out; sometimes, a new monster won’t emerge until you have defeated the previous one, while in other cases it’s possible for multiple monsters to emerge in rapid succession.

Annoying enemies call for creative solutions. And a little help from the man upstairs.

Once you have defeated the last monster of a lair, it will become vulnerable, allowing you to step on it and release whoever or whatever was trapped in it. In doing this, you will not only return all living creatures to their appropriate places, you will also reconstruct each settlement, as the town’s landscape will often change in various ways with each new monster lair you clear.

Initially, the path forward will be obvious, albeit circuitous. As you progress through the game, the dungeons will become more complex, sometimes requiring that you make use of particular items in order to proceed, while at other times, specific inhabitants of the settlement you are restoring will be able to aid your efforts in some way. Thorough exploration of each area is eminently worthwhile, as not only will your numerous battles reward you with experience points that make you stronger, you will also come across various treasures, including new swords, sets of armour and magic spells to use.

In practice, it’s very difficult to miss anything super-important in Soul Blazer; the only really “secret” thing to discover is a set of eight “Emblems” concealed across the game world, with your reward for finding them all being a magic bell that allows you to cast magic spells without consuming the “Gems” currency that powers them under normal circumstances. Some of these Emblems are in slightly fiendish places — particularly as they’re often just lying around unmarked, requiring you to step on a very specific tile to find them — but if you’re thorough about exploring you’ll probably stumble across most of them, and they’re by no means required to beat the game anyway.

This seems fair and normal.

Soul Blazer is pretty breezy difficulty-wise for the most part; your only penalty for dying is returning to The Master’s shrine, having dropped all the Gems you had accumulated, and the latter aspect can be mitigated if you remember to equip a “Strange Bottle” item before losing the last of your health. Similarly, if you have a Medical Herb item on hand and equipped when you expire, you’ll immediately heal to full and be able to keep on fighting. You can only carry one Medical Herb and one Strange Bottle at once, however, and if you have one of them equipped, you cannot use other useful items such as stat-boosting bracelets or the aforementioned magic bell at the same time. There are several sources of endless Medical Herbs in the game, so you never have to be without one before a new expedition, but Strange Bottles are a limited resource.

In practice, all this only really becomes a consideration in the boss fights that conclude each area, as each of these are a notable difficulty spike compared to the preceding dungeon. None are so difficult as to be complete roadblocks — though many players find that the first boss is actually one of the toughest, and it was specifically made tougher for the localised version — but they do put up a bit of a fight, at least until you establish what their clear and predictable patterns are, and learn to take advantage of them.

To fight in Soul Blazer, you have a few options. You can swing your sword, or you can hold it out in front of you while performing what the game calls a “crab walk” — actually simply locking the direction you’re facing. Enemies hit with the sword being held out in front of you will take considerably less damage than those hit with a good old swing — in practice, the difference is between taking the sword’s base damage for the former, and taking the sword’s base damage plus your strength statistic for the latter, which can add up to a substantial different in the late game.

Actraiser fans will be at home in this delightful sequence.

Interestingly, Soul Blazer doesn’t take the common approach of mirroring the player sprite when facing different directions. This means that you always swing your sword in an arc out to the right, regardless of which direction you’re facing, and with careful positioning you can use this knowledge fight a lot more effectively. The breadth of your swing means you can hit enemies slightly to the side and behind you, for one, and the fact that you favour a swing to the right means that an enemy caught in the apex of your slash’s arc will actually get hit multiple times by a single attack as the animation passes through them. It’s immensely satisfying to get right — and very helpful later in the game, when enemies become much tougher.

Over the course of the complete adventure, you’ll also gain access to a variety of spells. Honestly a lot of these aren’t super-useful — particularly as they fire from the “Soul of Magician” that constantly rotates around you rather than from where you are actually standing — but there are a couple of instances where the spells can hit far-off enemies that you otherwise can’t reach with the sword. You also get the obligatory super-spell to use on the final boss; technically you can miss this, but after said boss splatters you across the nearest wall, your divine ability to regenerate none the worse for wear (albeit a little lighter in the wallet department) allows you to just go and correct your mistake before trying again.

Soul Blazer is a lovely game. While it has its clunky elements that are corrected by its spiritual successors Illusion of Time (aka Illusion of Gaia) and Terranigma — most notably the four-directional movement and the rather stiff feel to combat — it’s hard not to immediately fall in love with everything about this wonderfully honest piece of work. It’s a game that strikes a brilliant balance between delivering an effective and impactful message to its audience and allowing the player to just get on with things.

The obligatory “Now We’re In Space!” dungeon.

It’s short in comparison to many of its contemporaries, but that’s no bad thing; on the contrary, I found Soul Blazer to be just the right length to deliver the story it wanted to tell. It keeps things constantly moving forward, meaning each new play session feels like you’re discovering new things; it keeps things interesting with an escalating challenge factor and sense that your character is growing in power; and at no point does it fall foul of common genre pitfalls such as excessive backtracking or a need to grind.

Honestly, I’ve been meaning to play Soul Blazer through for years at this point, and have made varying amounts of progress every time I made a start on it. I never stopped because I wasn’t having a good time with the game; it was always because I ended up getting distracted by something new and shiny. It’s not a good excuse, so I decided enough was enough, and now was the time.

Well, now having finally taken that time to see the whole thing through from start to finish, I can say with confidence that I should have taken this journey a whole lot sooner. And preferably before complete-in-box copies started selling for the high end of three figures. Thank The Master for MiSTer and emulation, eh?

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More about Soul Blazer

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Want more Pete? Check my personal blog I’m Not Doctor Who, and my YouTube channel ThisIsPete. If you enjoy what you read here, please consider buying me a coffee.

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