Actraiser Renaissance (2021) [Switch]

He who wishes to be obeyed must know how to command.

-Niccolò Machiavelli

In a surprise announcement no one saw coming Actraiser Renaissance was revealed and released the same day on the Nintendo Direct presentation of September 23^rd, 2021. I had to buy it immediately. I was lucky enough to come across the original SNES release, and like many gamers back in those days, I regrettably traded it away, but I never forgot it. Years went by and I still looked back on the fun time I had with fondness. For the longest time, I kept telling myself I should seek it out and replay it to relive the good times. Luckily, Square Enix heard my silent pleas and decided to remake the game for modern consoles.

In Actraiser Renaissance you play as a long-dormant god who has awoken into a world filled with evil fiends ruled by Tanzra, the main antagonist. You’re greeted by your new flying companion simply named ‘Angel’ who guides you to the first land to be rid of the evil menace. The side-scrolling hack-and-slash action is the first type of gameplay you’ll be introduced to. After you cut and slice your way to the end and defeat the boss, the perspective then shifts to a top-down view of a forested land with a temple in the middle. Here is where you’ll spend most of your time.

Build Them Up

Actraiser’s town-building aspect doesn’t allow for much control. You simply “guide” your townsfolk by instructing in which direction to expand towards, but it’s as simple as selecting adjacent cleared tiles. You can use your “miracles”, often lightning, to clear away obstacles for town expansion. That’s really the extent of control that you’ll have on the settlement. The roads and structures are all built automatically without any additional input. All the while there will be some flying fiends rising from lairs who constantly attack, though your cherub companion can shoot them down with arrows, also controlled by the player.

As the town levels up, your subjects will be able to build better homes and structures. But as your angelic right-hand points out, they lack the basic common sense to upgrade their homes on their own. So what is the solution? Unleash a storm of lighting upon their outdated homes killing anyone and everyone in your path! I’m not even kidding. It is certainly a funny way to expand and grow by way of destruction which I found oddly satisfying every time it came to it. I just wish I had control over the placement of the structures.

It Takes a Village

While you’re building your town, the townsfolk will often appear at the temple to pray and ask their lord for help with various things. Periodically, they will let you know when they’re ready to take on one of the lairs spread throughout the land. In those lairs, you will take human form once again to defeat the “spawner” that constantly sends fiends to town. These side-scrolling, single-room battles are quickly over but offer a nice break from the simulation aspect.

This remake has a surprising amount of dialogue that is delivered visual-novel style. You will be interrupted very often, a lot more than I would’ve wanted, to hear the next phase in the developing story. Every land also has a hero that the town’s story usually revolves around. Very often you will hear the plights of the townsfolks, whatever thing is troubling them, through quests. There’s not really much to it though, as all the objectives are usually solved by either expanding the town further or through normal gameplay. Each town’s story neatly wraps up after a few hours of gameplay and culminates in a second side-scrolling stage that ends in yet another boss battle. Afterward, you will be free to continue to the next land-in-need with its own story arc. The continent has six lands in total.

Get Your Act Together

Actraiser Renaissance also introduces yet another genre: tower defense. The town will occasionally be overrun with raiding monsters trying to destroy your town or the temple. There are varying win and loss conditions, but if your temple is destroyed it’s game over. For defense, you can set up forts along the roads, though you have limited choices: defensive gatehouses that block roads for fiends on foot or offensive towers that shoot projectiles from a distance. Each town’s resident hero can be commanded and sent to help where needed and you’ll also have your arsenal of “miracles” available to damage foes.

I’m not usually a fan of tower defense games (the only one I enjoyed was the Final Fantasy-themed Crystal Defenders). But with Actraiser Renaissance I actually found myself having some fun with this mode. Eventually, you get additional defensive options and the power to summon heroes from other towns and the action can get quite hectic and overwhelming. However, I did have a problem with how often I had to handle these sieges which are mandatory to advance the story. I also disliked the lack of placement options; I usually was not able to provide a good defense strategy because of the very limited spots I was allowed to place towers or gatehouses. By the end of the game, I was very much over the tower defense portions to the point where I sighed every time I had to do yet another one.

This Renaissance is quite the expanded experience from the original Actraiser back in 1990. While a lot of the changes are very welcome, I can’t help but wonder whether the more streamlined original served its players better. I remember it being a very balanced and well-paced experience that the remake fails to meet. Regardless, it’s still a worthwhile game to enjoy and a hopeful return of the Quintet legacy.

The 8-Bit Review

Gameplay: 7/10

There’s quite a lot going on here in this side-scrolling, hack-&-slash, god-sim, tower-defense, real-time-strategy hybrid. Luckily, they don’t throw everything at you all at once and instead introduce things one at a time to make sure the players have a good understanding of all the separate elements. After you get settled into the substantial gameplay loop there is a lot of enjoyment to be had here. The constant interruptions and frequent Siege raids hold it back from being a smooth experience overall.

Visuals: 8/10

The beautiful 16-bit pixel art of the original has been converted into pre-rendered sprites and backgrounds. The art assets are detailed yet of low fidelity. It invoked feelings of playing early PS1 RPGs where every background was pre-rendered but here it is presented in HD and delightful charm. The environmental effects, constant movement of different things in the backgrounds, and other effects really added to the odd beauty of this title. Plus, there’s fact that each land has its own unique look to the structures and people to add variety. It simultaneously pays homage to classic games while providing a modern flair. The score is only held back by stiff animations of characters and bosses.

Audio: 10/10

The soundtrack was one of the highlights of the original Actraiser and luckily Square Enix included the option to play the entire game using the 16-bit tunes. Though I’m happy to report that the orchestrated arrangement of this classic score is just as good! The side-scrolling levels have upbeat Castlevania-esque music, while the town-building tunes offer soothing melodies worthy of any relaxation playlist. I often struggled with whether I wanted to listen to the modern sounds or enjoy the classic beats. Luckily, you can switch back and forth at any time from the menu.

Narrative: 7/10

Each of the towns you help rid of evil have their own self-sustaining story arc that wraps up with a neat little bow at the end. The hero’s arc usually involves some type of transformation where they redeem themselves and become a true hero by the end. While each story is unique in its own way, they all were rather predictable. However, I do appreciate the thought put into each land’s lore and the attention to detail and unique personalities. The heroes of each land had interesting enough struggles to overcome to keep me interested throughout.

Challenge: 4/10

The thing I like least about the game is the unbalanced difficulty. As an experienced player, I felt I should start off on ‘hard’ mode to see how I would fare. The first few levels felt extremely difficult, mainly because my character was underpowered. As I grew in strength the ‘hard’ difficulty felt like it provided a perfect challenge for me, since playing on ‘normal’ became too easy. The siege (tower defense) battles, however, were still very difficult to the point where I had to switch back to ‘normal’ difficulty. I was forced to constantly switch back and forth between ‘normal’ and ‘hard’ in order to enjoy my time with the game, something that I’ve never done with any other game.

Replayability: 8/10

There’s quite a lot to do here. After completing the main story missions in a town and moving on to the next, players have the choice to return to a previous town where additional side objectives are given. The more you do, the more you can level up yourself and the heroes within the towns. After spending over 20 hours and finally defeating the final boss, credits rolled and the game ended… or so I thought. Surprisingly there is even more post-game content to enjoy. There is no shortage of content here and I look forward to seeing what else I can uncover.

Uniqueness: 9/10

There was nothing quite like Actraiser when it originally launched for SNES. Hybrids like this often combine two unlikely genres to create something new. Actraiser Renaissance takes it a step further and brings in three genres for an experience that you won’t soon forget, similar to how the original was unforgettable. To my knowledge, there is only one other game that attempted this unique combination, the fairly recent game Sol Seraph also tried to recreate the magic of a side-scrolling and town-builder hybrid.

Personal: 8/10

For as many genres this game delves into, I feel like they only explore each one at surface level. The side-scrolling action never felt too deep and the town building never got too complex. But with so many elements mixed in it still feels like a fully-fledged title that grabbed hold of me and didn’t let go until the end. After seeing the end credits, I was surprised to learn that this was actually developed by a relatively small team. It is a well-crafted game with a few things holding it back from being the truly glorious experience that the original was back in those days. Either way, I’m glad that modern gamers will be able to get a taste of Quintet’s lost magic.

Aggregated Score: 7.63

Kalas, aspiring content creator (but failing horribly at it) has found a wonderful community of friends to share his love of games through Twitch, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube.