“Something very dreadful has occurred. A monster appeared from the old castle by the lake and demanded a sacrifice of us.”

Quintet’s inaugural title, ActRaiser, combines a solid platformer with a rudimentary city-building sim, neatly tying them together with a mythic story and a superlative soundtrack to deliver a final product that is much greater than the sum of its parts. Indeed, considered in isolation, neither its side-scrolling action nor its overworld god game provide a superior experience. Whether the player—who is The Master, i.e. a supreme deity—is assuming the role of a butt-naked cherub and flinging arrows at the demons that have invaded their territory while gradually restoring the tainted land and rebuilding civilization, or animating a statue fashioned in their divine likeness and slashing their way through the 2D dungeons/castles/pyramids/volcanoes/swamps/forests, little about the game sets it apart from its contemporaries. The baroque music (from composer Yuzo Koshiro), I suppose; maybe a few of the boss battles (the serpent, the fire wheel, the ice dragon); the visually distinct level and enemy designs; the grandiose thematic material. In a nutshell, the aesthetics. They’re superb, but a good game aesthetics do not make.

Rather, the hybrid game is distinguished by the rhythm established between its two disparate modes; the way it changes gears between perilous platforming levels and the more leisurely civilization expansion segments. Just as you grow weary of mindlessly zipping around as the angelic avatar, slaying monsters and purging pagan religions while your worshippers whinge incessantly and occasionally give you offerings, you transform into the armored warrior for a stint jumping and hacking through another level. Well, that’s not quite true. The simulation levels are far too simplistic to justify their lengthiness. In fact, I’m pretty sure you cannot fail these levels, making them little more than intermissions. So while not combined in the proper proportion, then, these two rather ordinary games, which are tied together with scripted story events and character attributes, together form an oddly gratifying whole. If ActRaiser was only practice for Soul Blazer which was only practice for Illusion of Gaia which was only practice for Terranigma, I’m not complaining.