I am going to take a shit on my copy of Actraiser, set it on fire, piss it out and then stomp it until my foot bleeds.
As the new year came, I was in the mood for something a bit older. People had been giving me shit for never playing Actraiser, so I threw it in and got ready for some action.
The game, if for some reason you don’t know, consists of two segments. The first is an action RPG platforming mode and the second is a simulation mode. One is fairly simple yet fun and the other is pure excruciating pain.
The simulation mode is fairly painless. Tell people where to “move” and they will build in that direction and also seal off enemy creating pits. You, at this point, play as an angel who does various things such as killing the monsters flying around, casting various weather-based magic to change unusable land into usable, and setting fire to your people’s houses so they will fuck more to build up your population. Those little bastards need some good ol’ wrath of God sometimes to get to the fucking.
See, you want the people to fuck like crazy because the population is your experience points. The more people in your world, the stronger you are when you are trying to dodge plant tentacles and rocks being thrown at you by orcish midgets. Those little bastards sometimes throw at an angle, and your lumbering avatar need to be able to take as much damage as possible.
The other thing your people do for you is find various shit that can be used to solve problems in other towns, or give you more lives and magic for the platforming segments. And holy fuck on a stick did I need them.
I was talking with some people about the game and at first they didn’t quite understand my complaints. I chalked it up to me not playing actiony type games that much. In other words, I suck. But when someone linked me to a video of someone fighting a boss I was having trouble with, things finally became clear.
The US version of Actraiser is not the same as the Japanese version.
In this day and age I think the US generally gets the harder version of things, but damn if it weren’t the opposite in the past. Just in this boss fight I could see two major differences. The first one was that the boss’s head did not retract like it does in the Japanese version. This means the player is able to get a lot more hits in before they have to move away to dodge the tentacles of hurt yo’ ass.
The second one was that the cost to cast the magic spell that destroys most of the bosses was half. I only had 7 total points of magic available. When the spell costs two points instead of one, well, the amount of damage you can do decreases. Not to mention that the head of this boss in particular can pull back and make it so you can’t hit it at all. If your timing was a bit off you get nothing but a tentacle up your ass.
That said, I made it begrudgingly through most of the game. Had a great time with the simulation segments and pounded my way through the action segments until I could finally do it. This was all well and good until a goddamned boss gauntlet at the end.
Up until this point most of the bosses were easy because even if I could cast half of the magic as a US player, I could still spam the hell out of a spell, knock the boss down a good bit and then pick it off damage wise. It didn’t matter if I used up all my magic because I would get it back on the next stage.
But since the boss gauntlet is its own stage your magic doesn’t come back. Your HP doesn’t either unless you die. So if you managed to get through the previous bosses without actually learning how to beat them sans magic, well, it hurts.
Most of the bosses took me a few tries to figure out how to beat them with minimal damage. The fifth one, a goddamned snake king or some such bullshit, is not readily available for you to hit. In order to do so you have to wait near it so that it will try to drop down on your head or have it drop spiked platforms that you can ride up and have a short period of time to attack the boss.Â
Problem is if you ride certain ones and sit on certain parts the boss may never bring the platforms back down. Jumping down would be an option, were it not for the fact that you must duck to avoid getting killed by the spikes. Can’t move while ducking, so the options become stand and die, or wait for the rest of your time and hope he calls the platform down.
I waited the clock out at least 3 fucking times.
So I had to use patience and have him drop his spiky ass on me enough times that I could kill him. The next boss, a big fucking dragon was trivial in comparison.
So this lead me to fighting Satan.
Yeah, not sure what it was called in the states, but you do play as God in the Japanese version of this game, so it only makes sense you fight against Satan. (I named God Sex.)
You should have heard my cheering when I beat his silly floating head. And the cries when second form appeared.
I lost.
But the second time through I managed to finally beat the asshole and did myself a little dance. The game was pretty tough at points and caused good amounts of rage. I hear the sequel dumps the simulation parts and just gives an action segment with higher difficulty.
I think I’ll pass.
