The only thing wrong with the town building levels on the original was that it got the shortest, least interesting piece of music in the entire game. Not that it was bad per se, it more that it was the tune I'd hear most yet it was both the weakest track and had a short loop.

That one has been on my Steam wishlist for a while, just waiting for the price to go down

​@@SNESdrunkThe switch version will probably be on the eshop black Friday sale. Only difference with that version is the farming sections are 30 fps.

​@@SNESdrunkthe physical switch copy is $20 on Amazon currently.

@@SNESdrunk Seconding this recommendation 100%. Another thing it has in common with Actraiser is fantastic music, although of a different style. Great character design and (Japanese) voice acting for an indie game too.

Huh, never heard of that one but it sounds interesting. Will have to check it out!

Tower defense bullshit killed the game. I just stopped playinv

@@KainsAddiction It should have only been to help manage enemies. Let the player do other things without having to just keep vigil on the villagers constantly. In the original, I had to stop giving construction orders to go shoot more monsters. Towers would help with that.

@@TimedRevolverThat would have been a welcome change, instead they killed an otherwise great game. Pretty sad

He can't stop complaining. He complained that the city building was gone from Act Raiser 2 and now that it's back he is still crying.

*Switch drunk

I was wondering about that song, it really sounded more like a Castlevania song then one I recognized from Actrazor. But, its also been years since I last played Actrazor so I might have just forgotten the particular song.

I always felt that ActRaiser's music in general could have come right out of a Castlevania game, so you're not the only one

The music sounded Castlevania-esque to you too huh? The whole time I was thinking "this sounds like Actraiser by way of SOTN."

@@EdmondDantes224 I definitely felt some of the visuals were SOTN-ish too! Glad it's not just me!

If you want ActRaiser but with better combat sections then play ActRaiser 2. It's a really fun game - just not as special as the first one. The slow hero takes some getting used to but he has a really cool and interesting set of moves - it's much better (for those few who actually gave it a chance) than the simple "sword, duck, jump, spell" power set of the Master in the first game. (Then you can satisfy your longing for the wistful story and setting of ActRaiser 1 by playing Illusion of Gaia or something immediately afterward.)

Ehh. I feel like that game is too easy during the sim sections. Build a thing that makes poop fertilizer, make food, then assign jobs. Everything takes care of itself.

Sounds similar to the frustration of the original game's boss rush.

Thr tower defense shit ruins the game

I paid full price..I finished it, and was pleasantly surprised how much I liked it..having not played the original...than again, I like the tower defense stuff ..it had some minor rts elements with the heroes..

Same here

Perfect description of how I felt as well.

For me it wss Final Fantasy 7 remake. I gave up after a few hours and went back to play the original.

same

You just summarized the video

Big fan of the old. But I was even hesitant in the first action section in Renaissance. The fighting was fine, but the visuals look like a no-budget Indy mobile game. And then I got to the overworld and put the game down in 10 minutes. The only thing that seemed to get better was boss fights. Everything else was too busy, ugly, repetitive, and just offering nothing that a hundred other games don’t do better.

It's possible it was a mobile-only title at first.

​@@justsomebody-1665he didn't? Thats not what Drunk said at all

Agreed on this. SNES Drunk's suggestions are the kind that SOUNDS logical on a surface level- I like action AND the city building, so surely I'd like the city building if city buiilding was more advanced! What is my closest reference to a more advanced form of strategic city building game? A 4X-style strategy RTS! Do that, it will surely work! But nah. I think that'd make the game more complex than fun, but also doing so "properly" would kill the pacing AND be a big waste of dev-resources. In order to make a good 4X-strategy game like... first off you couldn't mix that properly with the sidescrolling action parts. There NEEDS to be a certain lightness to both parts to be "Actraiser", whereas 4X demands a sort of "heaviness", a depth that would require the developer to invest too much in that side of the game, get experienced devs that could do such a game justice. I fear it would ultimately just create two very different styles of games that just do NOT go together, the "spirit" of one genre is just not a good fit for the spirit of the other. Pity that the mixture they did go with here didn't work either, but I do think that on the whole tower defense was a better pick.. they just had to "nail it" but... didn't.

The tower defense is what ruined it for me.

Came here to say this. I reviewed Smelter when it came out a couple years ago. Quality stuff.

I agree on Smelter, and I also think SNESdrunk is harsh on Sol Seraph, which is actually a fun game.

Uh, no. Actually making the city building more complex would actually add to the game and is what people actually wanted. SnesDrunk even pointed out the perfect example of exactly the level of complexity needed, which is Age of Mythology. Essentially a town focused RTS, a step or two down in complexity from full sim city.

Actraiser Renaissance is not a Switch exclusive. In fact, the Switch version was the worst version of the game to get, especially at launch. I got the PS4 version. Don't get this game. The original is better by far. Just listen to the soundtrack, play the original, and support the composer directly if you want to support him.

and yet people eat it up

Inscryption Sayonara Wild Hearts Vampire Survivors Hades (hell, anything by Supergiant) Immortality Deathloop Returnal The Outer Wilds That's just the popular games I could think of from the last 2-3 years. There are tons of great, super innovative games these days made by wonderful devs doing amazing work. You're just too stuck in your retro bubble to see them.

@@ValkyrieTiara Those games are not that popular and a few them are good only in the context of comparison, certainly not if we consider what could be done. Vampire Survivors? That was good for killing a few hours but come on.

@@mojebi3804 Funny thing is that most of those games have probably sold more than Actraiser did, and could as such in one way be seen as "more popular"... but perspectives have shifted so much ion what makes a "success", and with so many other games coming out there's so little time to focus on one game before another comes out.

@@mojebi3804 Don't move the goalposts. The games being popular or not have nothing to do with the point. The OP said there are no new ideas and innovation, and devs are completely out of touch. This is demonstrably untrue. I only mentioned popularity to acknowledge that there is even more modern innovation happening deeper in the indie dev scene. And the idea that they're "not that popular" is COMPLETELY LAUGHABLE. They're only "not that popular" compared to the very largest franchises like Pokemon and Call of Duty. With the exception of Immortality and MAYBE Sayonara Wild Hearts, the weakest among them is Returnal which is over 700,000 total sales. That is very successful for any indie game. Sayonara Wild Hearts has over 200,000 units sold JUST on Steam, and it's mostly known as a Switch game. Hades has sold over 7 million units JUST on steam, and is in the top 100 performing games of all time on the platform. To say nothing of Switch, Playstation, and other platform sales. That's an ABSOLUTE smash by ANY metric. It's also worth noting that Actraiser itself was NOT a very popular game at the time, at least not in the west. It sold about 600,000 copies. That puts it WELL below such world-famous SNES carts as "Derby Stallion III", "Wonder Project J", "Derby Stallion '96" and "Super Tetris 2 + Bombliss". Also only about 200,000 of those 600,000 were sold in English speaking regions, putting it well below all but the weakest performers on my list, even adjusting for gaming's rise in popularity over time. Actraiser is famous today both because it's an excellent game that has stood the test of time and ALSO because Quintet's later work would go on to be incredibly popular and influential, caused it to be found and elevated as a "hidden gem" by retro fans. But in the early 90s? I was the only kid I knew who had even heard of the game, and only because I had a magazine that did a feature on it. Nobody I knew or met had ever played it, much less owned a copy. tl;dr You are wrong on every conceivable level lol The majority of the games I listed are VERY popular, and even if they weren't then neither was Actraiser, and even if NEITHER of those were true (which they are) it doesn't actually matter anyway because none of this was even salient to my point to begin with.

Agreed. I much prefer a somewhat focused review even when speaking about the perceived negatives instead of just being overall dismissive and vitriolic, as that tends to be very grating and unproductive.

Its sad when people trust reviews over judging games for yourself and forming your own opinions. But letting other people form your opinions for you is a growing trend these days so not too surprised really

Same, that game was a lifesaver, same with Gorillaz Tiles and Doodle God

Soul Blazer at least did. God from Actraiser is directly mentioned as the one who sent you down to the land to save humanity.... after it's been pretty much wiped out for the second time in the series. He sure likes to wait until the last minute to get off his ass and do something about it. =P

@@cormano64 Kinda funny how the English translations, by censoring "god" (generically, not like Zeus or the christian God) and replacing it with "The Master," accidentally made these two games directly related. In the JP scripts they're only connected thematically.

What special ending? I think I've done everything in SNES ActRaiser and I've only ever seen one ending.

Yeah, that part is pretty true to the original. I think they expected you to burn through a good amount of your MP by the time you got to the boss, but the levels weren't hard enough to need to.

RE4 remake and Dead Space are pretty good efforts.