Soul Blazer

SoulBlazer, known in Japan as Soul Blader, is a Super Nintendo Entertainment System console role-playing game developed by Quintet and published by Enix (now Square Enix). SoulBlazer was released on January 31, 1992 in Japan, on November 27, 1992 in North America, and on January 27, 1994 in Europe. Similar to the company's previous game ActRaiser, the player takes the role of a divine angel/lesser-deity/avatar, sent by a divinity called the Master to rebuild a ruined world. SoulBlazer was scored by Yukihide Takekawa.

According to the game's Backstory, a greedy king made a Deal with the Devil, gaining the power to exchange the souls of living things for gold coins. As the king's treasury grew, the population decreased until practically nothing was left alive. That's when the Master (originally God - effectively the Abrahamic God) sends his servant Blazer on a mission to destroy monsters and release the captured souls of a world's inhabitants. Blazer is armed with a sword, and has the ability to speak with any living thing and be understood. He battles the hordes of Deathtoll with the assistance of his Soul helpers.

It was followed up by two Spiritual Successors, considered to be all the same series, Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma.

Tropes used in Soul Blazer include:

• Absurdly High Level Cap: Reaching level 50, the maximum level allowed, is completely useless. Your attack and defense stats stop increasing after level 25, and your hit points (of which you have more than enough at level 30 or so) stop increasing after level 47. If you really do want to reach level 50, expect to spend a day and a half of your life Level Grinding for 41 million useless experience points.
• After Boss Recovery: The game gives you full recovery after the boss is dead, to make sure you don't die horribly trying to get to the teleporter out of the dungeon.
• Ambidextrous Sprite: Averted. Blazer is unambiguously right-handed.
• Anti-Grinding: The game limits the number of enemies. When they're dead, the Mook Maker shuts down. A few places have infinitely-spawning enemies to grind on, but they're more difficult than usual.
  • Until right before the Final Boss anyway, then it's easy to grind. However, the game still averts it as you really don't need to grind at all to beat the boss.
  • Also, it's possible, albeit time consuming, to "reset" monster lairs. Each one contains a set number of enemies to kill; leave one alive, and then either leave the screen or free a creature from a previously-emptied layer, and the count will be returned to full.
• Awesome but Impractical: The Flame Pillar and Spark Bomb spells, which get attached to fixed positions and are generally too difficult to use in combat when Light Arrow or just a basic sword swing are so much more dependable.
  • They can be useful against enemies that are stationary or confined to a small area, though.
• Back Tracking: In order to beat the game, you must backtrack to defeat previously-invincible enemies in early areas once you obtain the appropriate swords.
• Blind Idiot Translation
• Break the Cutie: Lisa is taken hostage by Queen Magrid and gets to watch her father die saving her.
• But Thou Must!: During the game's ending, Lisa asks if the Blazer will remember her. The only option available to choose is "Yes".
• Collision Damage: Occurs even when enemies are paralyzed; see Mercy Invincibility below.
• Continuing Is Painful: You lose all your gems when you die. As gems are your magic, this can be especially annoying towards the end, as you can't hurt the final boss without magic. This is even part of the storyline: the final boss is aware of the fact that you can never die and mentions it before the fight in a highly philosophical manner.
• Convection, Schmonvection: The lava areas in the Fire Shrine and the Durean volcano. Granted, you are an angelic avatar or whatever, but that doesn't explain why you still get hurt by hot coals directly above the aforementioned lava.
• Door to Before: The transporter tiles serve this function (one generally appears at the end of the first combat zone in an area, and another near the boss lair), as do various stairs and passages opened by clearing monster lairs.
• Eleventh-Hour Superpower: The Phoenix-based projectile unlocked in the middle of the last level.
• Eternal Engine: The basement of Dr. Leo's Laboratory.
• Frictionless Ice: ...though you can cancel the effect by wearing the Mushroom Shoes given to you by a kid you rescue.
• Ghost Ship: Serves as the boss arena for the ocean area.
• Give Me Your Inventory Item: Done with the Big Pearl, Harp String, Delicious Seeds, Goat's Food and Mole's Ribbon items.
• God Save Us From the Queen: The king's wife manipulated Dr. Leo into summoning Deathtoll to the world.
  • The Mermaid Queen isn't the picture of niceness either. At least according to her subjects before you release her.
• Invincible Minor Minion: Several types are invincible until you obtain the correct sword.
• Journey to the Center of the Mind: The Dream Rod lets Blazer enter any creature's dream.
• Light Is Not Good: Arguably. The World of Evil makes its home within the aurora borealis up above the Mountain of Souls.
• Lightning Can Do Anything: Your magic spells can't hurt rock-tossing metal apes, but lightning can. Justified in that it's explicitly lightning coming from the Master.
• Macro Zone: In one level, Blazer is shrunk down to fight toy soldiers in a model of a town.
• Meaningful Name: Deathtoll, a demon who buys the souls of the living in exchange for wealth. Doubles as Names to Run Away From Really Fast.
• Mercy Invincibility: The enemies have it for a short time after they spawn. One of your swords has the power to stun enemies that it can't damage. They not only enjoy invincibility during that time, but can also damage you if you walk into them.
  • Your character also has it upon getting hit, and one type of armor can extend the duration.
• A Million Is a Statistic:

King Magrid: I know this sounds strange, but in the world of humans, if a person kills one man, he is a murderer. But if he kills 100 people, then he is praised as a hero.

• Money Spider: Averted, as you neither receive nor require money at any point in the game. While the number of Strange Bottles is limited, you can obtain unlimited Medical Herbs from the right townspeople (or plants, or animals).
• Mook Maker: The majority of enemies in the game come from these, although there are some "free-range" respawning enemies.
• Musical Spoiler: The dog in the Greenwood area.
• Our Souls Are Different: All living things have them, and they can be restored to life if they're ever sealed away by demons. Also, some of them can assist angels directly with special powers.
• Phantom Zone Picture: Type 4, an abstract piece called "The World of Evil". The artist is trapped within.
• Plot Coupon: The six Stones to open the World of Evil, as well as the three Red-Hot items used to free the Phoenix.
• Portal Picture: One of the dungeons is located inside a painting.
• Reincarnation: A central theme in the SoulBlazer trilogy.
• Rouge Angles of Satin: Among the many errors in the English localization, one spell is called the Magic "Flair" in-game, though the instruction manual does label it Magic Flare.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: The King of the Mountain of Souls is instrumental in calling the Phoenix.
• Scratch Damage: Can be avoided with the Light Armor.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The mountain areas in the 4th area.
• Speaks Fluent Animal: And plant too.
• Spiritual Successor: To ActRaiser. Similarly, Illusion of Gaia is the successor to this game.
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: The Bubble Armor surrounds Blazer in a magical bubble full of air, allowing him to enter the underwater dungeon and stay underwater indefinitely.
• Talking Animal: But only because Blazer is an angel. He cannot understand them as a human in the ending.
• Talking to Plants: And they talk back! Even after they've been cut and turned into something else like, say, a chest of drawers.
• Too Long; Didn't Dub: The Zantetsu Sword. Zantetsu means "iron-cutting", tying in with its purpose of killing metallic monsters.
• Uncommon Time: The music inside Leo's painting and model towns has a drum track in 7/8 time and all other instruments in 5/8.
• Unstable Equilibrium: If you do well and avoid dying, you'll have more gems than you know what to do with, thus enabling you to spam magic to your heart's content. If you die frequently, you'll have fewer gems... which necessitates more close-range combat, and an increased chance of damage and death. Saving often and resetting after death is recommended.
• Useless Useful Spell: All of them (minus the last spell), when dealing with bosses (except the final boss) or metallic/spirit enemies that your sword can't damage.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: Blazer is doomed to create the modern, industrial world and free generally evil people regardless of how much affection he or others may have for their fantasy world.
• Victory-Guided Amnesia: After killing Deathtoll, the Master allows the Blazer to return to Earth in exchange for losing all of his memories and his ability to converse with any creature except humans.
• Visible Invisibility: After finding the Souls of Detection and Reality, the soul orb that orbits Blazer will expose a specific radius of invisible things to make them visible to the player.
• "Wake-Up Call" Boss: Metal Mantis.
• Wanton Cruelty to the Common Comma: Commas are very often omitted where needed or, added where not needed.
• We Are as Mayflies: In the Mountain of Souls, Blazer meets up with a group of people who live for only one year. They make the most of their lives and are incredibly happy.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: The Big Bad Deathtoll is a believer of this and want to teach it to the hero apparently by killing him again and again. It might explain his actions in the game.