Taking inspiration from having finished Breath of Fire, I decided it was time to finish this one off too. There are RPGs that hold your hand, and there are RPGs that don't care what kind of mess you get yourself into with no hope of rectifying the situation. Illusion of Gaia falls at the tail end of the former and leans over into the latter. You see, you don't earn stats the normal way by grinding and leveling up, you earn stats by clearing out rooms. The final enemy of each room gives you an upgrade of strength, health or defense. There is no magic really to speak of, rather you transform into stronger characters.
While Illusion of Gaia is kind of an entry level RPG to ease people into the genre, I felt I had a pretty good grasp on finishing the game. Everything was hunky-dory until I hit that final home stretch. An often overused trope is to force the player to defeat every single boss they've already defeated, just to pad out the game's play time due to developer laziness. While Illusion of Gaia was very generous with save points, which double as healing stations, in the last few parts of the game, I figured I was perfectly fine and this was going to be a piece of cake with ice cream and chocolate pudding on top. The sad reality was the game was luring me into a sense of false superiority and plotting my downfall with each step I took.
In any normal RPG you would carry a stock of healing items, or at the very least healing spells, again of which there are none in this game, to supplement any damage you take after a battle. With Illusion of Gaia I was lured into a false sense of security with as often as I could just pop into a save point, heal and save my progress. Herbs are available to take with you, but that is if you can be bothered to find them as they're hidden in chests, rather than sold by vendors. I felt there was really no need, instead I chose to keep my inventory open for the items I felt I would need along the journey, rather than needlessly hunt down herbs to heal what the save points would already do.
Illusion of Gaia also has a life system, which is kind of useful, but not really to me. Most enemies will drop an orb, each orb gives different points towards an extra life. You can have a maximum of 9 lives and 100 points from collecting those orbs earns an extra life. If you should die in battle one life is spent and you're allowed to restart from the entry of the room where you died. I've used a few lives along my journey, mostly due to my lack of patience. When it comes to bosses though, your life is spent, your health isn't completely replenished and you're forced to start the fight all over again. Meaning you're worse off than you would be just restarting from your previous save, no matter how far back the previous save was.
Some might say that Illusion of Gaia's traps are my fault, and I would say maybe you're right. However, when an item has been useless 90% of the time you've played a game, and you forget it's even a thing because it has been so useless, but when you finally need it the game doesn't allow you to leave the tower to go back and find it, well the item is still useless and this game is just a trap. I did beat this game, but it was a long, hard road. I don't hate this game, that hatred is reserved for Lagoon! Fuck that game! Illusion of Gaia was a nice, charming little introductory RPG that I did enjoy most of my time playing through. I'm glad I finally got through it. I might even play through it again, but just to unlock the final red jewel mansion.
 |
| "I want to burn you into my memory." |
No comments:
Post a Comment