The Final Word game review

Illusion of Gaia -- Nintendo/Enix

R.I.P.
I'm still not sure how I feel about this title. Supposedly, the sequal to Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia really doesn't compare. There is no real interaction in the storyline, and your characters are constantly making decisions based on information that they got from... who knows where! Graphically, this game is pretty good, sound and music are about average, and play control is very clean. My problem comes from the "puzzle" solving aspect of this game. On every level there is a trigger of some kind that will enable you to go to the next level. Personally I would blast through a level, and then when I got to the "puzzle", I was usually forced to walk over every square foot of the stage to find the trigger. One example is at the end of, I believe the second level, you have to stand on a square within a room of 20+ squares, for 10 seconds. Nowhere does it tell you this time requirment, and if you never stand there long enough, you don't solve the level. Another example is in I believe the third level where in order to find the last key, you have to either stand motionless next to every wall to see if your hair russles from a breeze, or take attacks at all the walls until you find the one that thumps, so that you can break the wall down. These are NOT puzzles by any stretch of the imagination, but are more an excercise of frustration control. In the end, after playing this game I can't really recommend it to anyone.

(05/95)