He's got some sort of pig power. Let's Play Illusion of Gaia!

I played this for the first time a couple of years ago. It's strength is certainly its aura. I liked the mechanics just fine, but I was really intrigued to carry on with the story and talk to the NPCs. I have never really wanted to talk to NPCs before except out of a sense of obligation to gather information.

Despite the bright pallette, there is an overwhelming morose vibe to the whole thing that is rarely achieved even in modern games. Man...

Well, when you consider the bounty hunter on your trail, an ancient civilization dying before reaching a new home, plagues, slavery, gambling your life, parents dyingetc...

After a good night's sleep Will wakes up ready to face the world!



His uncle eat that last piece of pie before Will woke up! That fiend! After reading the letter, Will's grandmother has an eerie feeling.



Lola's Melody

Instead of a spell however, Lola sings a song to Will. Oh granny, you and your belief that you're a witch. Such a dear! Anyways, Will is quite sure that he doesn't have a crystal ring. He resolves to head to see the king and tell him that face to face. And while he's there, he can chat up that Kara girl, Eric isn't man enough for her anyway. Why, his parents are both alive and he doesn't have a mysterious past at all!



Edward's Castle

Edward's Castle is very majestic, with columns in the hall on top of the carpet, and guards everywhere. In fact, two guards stop Will from entering the castle until he shows the letter he received.



When Will follows one of the two guards, he walks away and hides behind a pillar. Seeing the wildness in Will's eyes, he bribes him into acting like a human being by giving him a Jewel. He then heads upstairs, where a guard is professing his love to a maid. Across the bridge nearby is a guard protecting Kara's room. Or possibly attempting to keep her in.



When Kara questions who is going to let her in, the guard acts as everyone does towards Will, and insults him. Kara however is a master of the insult duel and puts the guard down. Once Will comes inside and tells her why he came to the castle.



After Kara tells Will this shocking news, the soldier forces him to leave. Kara is frightened since her parents seem to have changed. She passionately asks Will to come back and rescue her. The guard ignores this, and Will goes on his way. Man, a princess is basically begging him to kidnap her! He is so in! Will goes back downstairs to head to the king's room and get this ring business finished with. Maybe the king will want Will to find the ring, and he'll go on a great quest! And then get the princess! Yes, this is what is definitely going to happen.



The king however, doesn't react well to how shabby Will looks, and feels even worse when he's told Will doesn't have the ring. Man, is everyone going to call out Will for his shittiness?



The queen is not pleased by Will's referring to her as an old lady, either. Man, this is the opposite of what Will wanted to happen!



Left with nothing to do in his cell, Will paces thinking of his fate and feeling hard put upon. Even when a soldier tosses down a loaf of bread and a bewildering non-sequiter the loaf is terrible. And Will has tasted some terrible things in his day.



Will, it hasn't even been an entire day, and you're having hallucination dreams ALREADY? Come on man! I'm sure your father has immensely important things to tell you though Will.



Uh...alright. I guess that's a good thing to start off with. I mean you did leave Will forever and he had to walk home from the Tower of Babel by himself, but fine.



When Will's dad mentions the left hand wall, a silvery orb falls into an inaccessible area. Luckily for everyone involved, Will's psychic twirling of his flute can bring silvery balls into his possession as well as disgruntled statues. Will's father's voice informs Will that his grandfather knows the secret of the orb, which will drop from his enemies. The orb's power comes from a mysterious Crystal.



After giving orders to the kid, Will's dad leaves him. Luckily Will is pretty used to that by now. As he sits there rotting in his cell again, the silence is crushed by oinking.



Fanfare

Kara's letter tells Will that she is a prisoner also, in silk and gold. Oh you poor dear, I'll be sure to feel bad for you once Will gets out of this damp cold cell! I can't feel too annoyed however, since she does send Will the cell key, along with assurances that tonight they will both be free.



Outside of his cell, Will find's a convenient portal to Dark Space. Gaia gives him some advice, telling him that if he kills everything in an area his power will go up. This is the main way that strength is increased in Illusion of Gaia, so it's important to be good at mopping up enemies. Will currently has two basic attacks. He can swing his flute to do damage, and hold down a direction button after attacking to do some extra damage with a jump attack. After killing the three bats outside his cell he gains additional HP. Bats are no real problem since they merely fly around.

In the next room are two new foes, Canal Worms, and Ribbers. Canal Worms will shoot fire at Will, but the fire can be blocked by a flute so it's no big deal. Ribbers will throw bones. By pressing start, a map will come up showing enemies locations as well as any items and whether or not the stat up for this screen has been granted. Also of interest is the fact that defeating enemies can cause the map to change. In this case, killing the canal worm causes a ball of light to blow up part of the nearby enclosure, freeing the Ribber and allowing Will to kill him. Will then passes over another bridge and kills the last enemy in the room.



For killing the final enemy of that room Will received Strength. In the next room, a small floating dandelion seed starts to hover around Will. How the heck did a dandelion manage to float into a dungeon? And why can it follow him so easily?! Will takes out his confusion by moving some of the statues in the room with psychic powers. It's a good thing these statues are so cheap and every dungeon has enough to buy them, or Will's powers would be worthless!



While fighting a bat, Will accidentally strikes at the dandelion. It speaks! Dangit Will, this is what happens when you make mental fortitude your dump stat! You'd think you would have more...what is the word. A stat relating to mental fitness and controlling your mind...ah well. In any case, the dandelion seed warns Will to follow it, and it floats away, past some moving spiked balls that are slow enough to be easily avoided.



Past those are some spiked balls blocking passage next to a conspicuous button. By hitting the button, the spiked balls move out of the way allowing Will to continue on and find an herb in an overly large treasure chest. Remember, herbs are valuable because there is no money in the game. Will then continues on into the next room.



Here there are a series of winding passageways. In addition, spears come from the top of the screen, dealing damage if they hit and blocking passageways for a couple of seconds until they disappear. At the end is a rusted button, however by jumping down from above and landing on it Will is able to persuade it that the best course of action is to go down.



In the room that opens up is a Red Jewel, as well as a helpful talking spirit that informs Will that for every 100 Dark Gems that he collects, he will earn an extra life, that will allow him to spawn close by when he dies. Back in the main room, a King Bat blocks Will's passage onward. Stronger bats are still bats though, so it's barely a speed bump. Will is puzzled by the next room that he comes into after the door explodes open though. A button and a flower?



The flower helpfully speaks up and tells Will to play Lola's melody on his flute. After doing so a voice comes from nowhere and commands Will to head to the other side of the room, where there is a second button. On the count of 3 both the strange voice and Will hit their button, opening the path forward and causing a strange noise to sound.


Phenomenon



In this chamber is a problem. The nearby button is clearly required to proceed, but Will's stubby small boy arms are unable to reach it. Thus, Will instead goes to the left, defeating some demons and opening up a gate to Dark Space. In Dark Space is a new surprise! A statue of a large man with a sword waits to the left of the entrance. Gaia informs Will that if he wishes it, he may take the form of this swordsman. Will kneels in front of the statue.



A voice speaks in Will's head. As he loses consciousness he can feel his form shifting. Will quickly awakes in a new, more powerful body. Unlike Will, Freedan only has one attack, but it's a doozy. His sword swing does as much damage as Will's jump forward strike. In addition, Freedan's range is longer than Will's strike, and he is thus able to hit the button blocking the way forward.



Here is a new enemy, a Skull Chaser. They act like a normal Ribber, however when they die their head lives on, and it flies around quickly doing a lot of damage. If you aren't careful, it's an easy way to die. Freedan is able to make a menacing pose with his sword that acts like Will's Flute twirl in that it pulls Dark Gems to him.



Continuing on, to the left of a passage Freedan finds a chest with another Red Jewel. Man, Gem is gonna be stoked! We have enough for an extra point of defense already, and were edging up on a point of HP! And that's it for the dungeon! In the next room Will feels safe enough to revert to his original form.



In addition, to the right of the room is a barrel with a Red Jewel in it! That'll teach the king to lock Will away! We'll loot his immensely valuable barrels! What's this though? A girl nearby says that she can change shape like us, since she is protected by the flower spirit. This must be the floating seed from before! Her name is Lilly, and she wants to know how we know a melody known only by her people. Will explains that Lola hummed it whenever she was upset. Wow Will, she hummed it all that time and you still never learned it until just now? And what's this all about? Is Lola a member of Lilly's people?



Wait...if you knew Will's grandmother, why did you ask how he knew the melody? And what ever happened to that demon you said would get me if Will didn't follow you. You didn't even wait up for him to be able to see you, you just flew off until now! I'm sure these mysteries will be cleared up in due time (hahaha).



After she flies off, Will finds himself in the basement proper of the castle. As he walks to the Princess's room, various maids ask if he is going to rescue Kara, and to treat her well. SO in.



Kara is glad Will came to rescue him, and performs a last coup de grace in the insult duel with sleepy outside. When Will mentions that Hamlet came with a key for him, Kara is unsurprised that Hamlet was able to do so. Will then takes Kara in hand and heads downstairs, ready to leave the castle. However, Kara thinks that they should get some food from the cellar to east on their travel. Not wanting to screw up what he has going on here, Will acquiesces and manages to find a leg of yak. I'm sure that will never again come up however, because despite how hilariously large a leg of a yak would be to carry, it's not near enough food to last for their travels forever. It should make a good weapon though, maybe a spear. Armed with their new lunch, Will and Kara head for Will's home, since Kara fears for his family after the King sent soldiers. Join us next time, when Will finds his family fine, and after a courtship goes on to become King of Edward's Castle!

Are those giant letters carved into the landscape like the Nazca lines? And if so, considering the King is already enough of a megalomaniac to name his castle after himself, why doesn't he have his name out there too?

I think we figured out in the previous incarnation of this LP that this was a mistranslation that should read something along the lines of "You can suck on the moss if you get thirsty".

I was always under the impression they chose stylistically to represent you literally walking on a map.

As for the 'Even moss drinks water' line, I'm not sure what its supposed to mean but its kind of interesting that such a sentimental turn of phrase came out of very possibly a mistranslation.

Also, this game? Fantastic. They did such a good job of tying the extremely realistic and serious (the raft sequence, City of Roses, the Vampire's Tomb, the poison suicide, the Incan ship, hell almost every single plot point actually) to the surreal and downright fantastic (the part where you shrink down and cross plants covered in dew comes to mind as particularly striking). All of its set pieces are awesome and its breezy to play, you're never really stuck in one place for too long, which also helps preserve some mystery to each area.

Decapitation by an oversized novelty collar. How tragic.

Incidentally, I recently acted on an urge to play this game again, and I finished it. It's still one of my favourites, just for the atmosphere and soundtrack. I mean, the story and gameplay goals are all pretty heavy for a role-playing game starring a bunch of kids. It's not like there's even a Great Evil that must be chased and fought at the end, unless you count the Red Star, which is a mysterious entity more than anything, until the very end. Instead, Will corrects all the human error and mis-evolution that occurs as a result of the Star's influence and sets time and happenings back on their right course. It's just...odd.

And unlike SoulBlazer, Terranigma, or even Actraiser, Will remains a kid in the "new" world, though his role in that new world is very ambiguous. Do he and Kara still love each other, or are they just regular school chums after possibly being mind-wiped and starting their lives anew?

I agree with Kishi, the ambiguity of this game--which is only strengthened by its weird translation--is one of its biggest strengths.

I pretty much like every level in this game except for that stupid mushroom mountain place. I get lost like every time I get to that point.

Ugh, same. Not a great dungeon design. Also, the enemies float off screen a lot and make leveling up tedious.