Theologically deep ending for a Nintendo game. Surprised me.
Another aspect that is a highlight for the game is the breathtaking terrains and scenarios. This is one of the most colorful SNES titles I've yet witnessed. The game seems to burst with artistic beauty. One of my favorite bosses was a diamond colored dragon that would glisten with lights towards the end of one of the last levels. Everything from the dense jungles of the Marahna to the snowcapped mountains of Northwall is detailed and pleasing to look at. This is a beautiful game.
With the aesthetics aside and the music on mute, Actraiser is more of a whole package based on the innovation of two genres rather than in part. It seamlessly combines 2D side-scrolling platforming with overhead, bird's eye simulation. Looking at the package as a whole Actraiser is a good game. However, taking it apart and judging the two game modes individually the game falls short. When comparing the complexity of the sim mode with that of other simulations, such as SimCity. There really isn't anything deep or special about it. In fact, as you progress and your civilizations continue to expand the experience becomes so what deadening. As your experience points are directly related to the population of your city. I would often become bored just sitting there waiting to level up with all enemies destroyed and the towns people constructing at their own pace. I found myself leaving the game on and unpaused while I left the room and did something else to occupy my time until my population maxed out. One factor in favor of the game, though it was theologically inconsistent with the rest of the game, was that you could create an earthquake destorying the weak structures so that the towns people would have to build larger better structures increasing your overall population. The downside was that this technic could only be used once before your population was permanently maxed out.
The second mode/genre was the platforming mode, which on its own was pretty weak when compared with other contemporaries of the same genre. With no way to block and extreme stiffness, the protagonist appears to have been on a heavy dose of Risperdal. Thankfully the boss battles were incredibly easy, so this didn't create a real annoyance in the long run.
Probably the most surprising aspect of the game was the ending theme , which was simple, yet theologically deep for a Nintendo game or any game for that matter. According to Wikipedia, some of the characters in the game were edited, such as "God" was changed to "Master" and the name "Satan" was removed. Along with the ending dialogue, in which the "churches" are empty due to peoples' forgetfulness, ActRaiser was supposedly an explicit implication of Judeo-Christian beliefs. I would disagree though on several conditions. First (and most obvious) is that the protagonist more closely resembles a Norse Mythological God, such as Thor, then a Judeo-Christian entity. Secondly, as a result of people's contentment, they forget the "Master" who provided them with the beautiful land in the first place. While this could easily be related to some of the stories out of the Old Testament where the children of Israel continued to forget God, the "Master's" response is far from biblical and is in fact more of a deist ideology. The Old Testament Hebrew God was constantly trying to win the affections of His people back to himself. However, the "Master" sees the people's contentment without him, and he simply leaves. As mentioned before this is a surprisinly theological game.
When looking at the game's individual parts, the gameplay isn't all that impressive; yet looking at the whole package, ActRaiser is infact an very beautiful game that can be enjoyed for its aesthetic beauty and incredible music score.