June 2016 Community Playthrough - Illusion of Gaia

[singlebanana]

Yeah, I'm guilty of not starting the game yet as well. Lack of sleep with an infant has been catching up to me. Tonight's the night though.

[Fleach]

Still struggling with the first boss. No matter what, I just can do it. Ughh....

EDIT

I gave myself one last try before calling it quits for the day and I beat Castoth! Holy cow, that was tough!! I made it out with one thing of health left. The bouncing fireballs made this whole thing so frustrating. So glad I'm done with him.

[douglie007]

Still struggling with the first boss. No matter what, I just can do it. Ughh....

EDIT

I gave myself one last try before calling it quits for the day and I beat Castoth! Holy cow, that was tough!! I made it out with one thing of health left. The bouncing fireballs made this whole thing so frustrating. So glad I'm done with him.

 

I'm at him now, what a pain...

[Fleach]

Just a little piece of advice: if you stand against the wall where you entered the boss fight the line of fire can't hit you. Also, your sword (as Freedan) has a longer reach than you'd think.

[Addicted]

I just hit the second checkpoint. The third boss fight is a lot easier once you realize you can

Spoiler (hover to show)

 hit the vampires from across the columns as Freedan.

[Disposed Hero]

I was asked to record a short gameplay clip for someone, so I recorded one of my game sessions to capture the footage.  I uploaded the clip to our channel in case anybody wants to check it out.  Note that the video may have some story spoilers if you're not there yet (not that this game has much story to spoil).

[Raidou]

Curious.  The UK Australian version (Illusion of Time) uses a Green Enix logo (not purple). 

[img width=500 height=343]http://i1170.photobucket.com/albums/r534/Blood-Spattered_Angel/Community%20Playthroughs/IllTime%20-%20GreEnix.jpg[/img]	[img width=500 height=310]http://i1170.photobucket.com/albums/r534/Blood-Spattered_Angel/Community%20Playthroughs/IllTIme%20-%20Title.jpg[/img]
Green logo.  I believe that purple logos were only used in North American SNES releases.	"Illusion of Time " title screen, for comparison.

I've also come across a couple of curious glitches:

Incan Ruins [img width=500 height=290]http://i1170.photobucket.com/albums/r534/Blood-Spattered_Angel/Community%20Playthroughs/IllTime%20-%20Incan%20Ruins%20Glitch.jpg[/img]	Spoiler (hover to show) Ankor Wat [img width=500 height=300]http://i1170.photobucket.com/albums/r534/Blood-Spattered_Angel/Community%20Playthroughs/IllTime%20-%20Ankor%20Wat%20Glitch.jpg[/img]
Managed to see past the bottom of the screen.	Found two tiles meant to be solid (but aren't). (Sorry image is upside-down - Photobucket decided to screw up)

EDIT: Thought I was playing the -UKV variant, turns out I am playing the -AUS version.

[singlebanana]

I made it to Checkpoint #1 last night. And here are my initial thoughts on the game:

1. The story is very vague and kind of matter-of-fact. We are kind of thrown into the middle of "oh, you just woke up and your father's gone," but get very little intro or backstory.  Though this was frustrating at first, as I've moved along, the story is kind of piecing itself together, which is actually a very nice use of storytelling.  After the initial bumps, I'm quite invested and enjoying this.

2. The controls are good and I have little complaints with them outside of some odd hit boxes.  Not a big fan of the item menu and I find it a little odd that the A button is defaultly mapped to action and B is secondary item us. I dunno, maybe it's just me.

3. The graphics are just okay and nothing too great IMO. The first boss was nicely done and detailed, but the character sprites look a little washed out and less detailed to me compared to titles released around the same time.

4. I really like the concept of clearing rooms and earning stat upgrades. This is a new and quirky concept that I've never seen in a game prior to this one and I dig it.  It seems to make the game more challenging, as risk vs. reward if you will.

5. The linear gameplay is pretty good, since you don't have to concern yourself so much with a guide or have to figure out, what do I have to do next. However, the downside is that I'm currently stuck at a point where I can't seem to make the action move forward. I know that there is something I have to trigger and I'm getting a little annoyed running around town wasting my time and trying to figure it out.

6.  I like the idea of changing forms (though I have no idea what it means or why I can do it yet) and it goes well with the puzzle mechanic in the game, which I really enjoy.

7.  The first boss was a bit of a slow burn in terms of learning how to approach the fight.  It definitely takes a little learning, but I was able to down him on the 4th try after learning the fight, being more patient with my actions and focusing more on dodging than attacking, and going through some herbs.

8. The raft scene.....well, let's save something for the podcast.

Anyway, I'm happy to see how active this thread is and am catching up on posts right now, since I wanted to avoid spoilers.  Looking forward to discussing this game more after I get "unstuck."

[Fleach]

Good points, Rich.

The graphics look very much like other games Enix was putting out at the time. Specifically the towns that look they're made of buildings stacked on top of one another as opposed to giving the town a sense of depth. The towns look very dense. The sprites look nice and one detail I especially love is that the text colour matches a a colour in a character's hair or clothes so you always know who's talking.

This game also bridges the gap between action games and RPGs really well. Illusion of Gaia is kind of like Zelda with character stats.

As for the raft scene.... finally some depth to the previous paper thin characters!

[singlebanana]

I didn't even notice to color coded text for the characters. That's a nice touch!  However, some of the text seems kind of thin like it's missing pixel, but I think that's just some effect they were trying to pull off. I'd like it better if it stood out more

Good comparison to Zelda and I'd also throw in that it might even be closer to Beyond Oasis. However, this is quite more enjoyable to me than the latter.

[Addicted]

@Nanners: I would draw the comparison to Beyond Oasis as well.

[Disposed Hero]

@Raidou:  Interesting stuff!  I don't think I've ever seen any Enix logos other than the purple one used here in NA.  It's also cool to see the Illusion of Time title screen that was used in Europe and Australia.  I've read that Nintendo had them change the logo to what we got so that it would more closely resemble the Legend of Zelda logo.

[GrayGhost81]

I just made it to checkpoint #2. Had some trouble finding Ishtar, dang secret passages.

I'm really enjoying this game. I feel like it has been forever since I've played any old-school game.

I feel like talking about the story will be challenging. The characters just get dumped from place to place with seemingly no justification. 

[Raidou]

Up to the final boss.  Well, stuck on the final boss.

A few thoughts:

Dark Power Renewal System
This was meant to be one of the game's key features, incorporating a lives system into an action RPG.  Dying and respawning in a level is okay, but dying in a boss fight causes more problems than it solves.  Respawning at the start of the fight with half health is pretty much prolonging the inevitable (especially if you've used your herbs).  Every time I died and respawned on a boss, it was easier for me to reset the console and start the fight fresh.  Especially noteworthy are two end game sections:

Spoiler (hover to show)

During the Tower of Babel section, you have to re-fight all five bosses.  You can save and refill health before and after the first two fights, but the last three have to be fought one after another before you can save/heal again.  This is the only time the renewal system was beneficial.

Spoiler (hover to show)

During the final boss fight, I found that if you die with 0:00 DP, you will restart the boss fight with full health (instead of half).  In other words, it is better to have no DP whatsoever entering this fight.

The Pyramid

Spoiler (hover to show)

This is an odd level aesthetically, because it mixes Egyptian and Mesopotamian (I believe Akkadian in particular) imagery.  The wall reliefs depict Lamassu/Shedu amongst clearly Egyptian-style depictions of people, and the icon on the world map looks like an Akkadian bust.

[Addicted]

Almost to the third checkpoint.