SolSeraph

Review

“In the beginning, there was only Chaos, as far as the eye could see, until one day Sky Father and Earth Mother drove the Chaos away and made the world. They made the stars and the sun and the waters and the land. And then they made plants and animals, and finally, their favorite creation: humankind. When they were done, Sky Father and Earth Mother left the world, so it could grow freely on its own.

But the Younger Gods were arrogant and cruel. They resented humans because humans had been granted the gift of storytelling; the gift of memory. So, they tormented humankind with fires, storms, and floods, until all the tribes were scattered across the land, struggling for survival. But Helios, Knight of Dawn, the child of God and Man, came to humanity’s aid...”

After a short story introduction, you play as Helios, Knight of Dawn. After flying over the land, you descend and land at a place called the Plains of Widhu. From here you find yourself in front of a big circular stone with five of the Gods depicted upon it. This is where you play the game as a platformer, making your way through the level defeating anything in front of you. While here, you’ll be given information on how to attack etcetera as you progress. You will have various monsters and creatures that make their way towards your plain of movement from either the background or foreground of the screen.

You have your sword, bow and shield to help you defeat the monsters and creatures you come across. Swinging your sword will not cost any mana but the bow will cost mana each time you fire it. Your shield can be raised to help protect you from incoming arrows or other flying objects. As you make your way through the level you’ll have to jump and double-jump, either over obstacles or to higher areas and platforms. You will also make your way underwater, where you’ll have piranha's, huge jellyfish and armoured crustaceans all standing in the way of your progress. When you near the end of the level there’s a small circular object; standing on this will allow you to save your progress before you continue towards the levels boss, which is waiting for you close by.

After defeating the level boss you’ll slam your sword into the ground and take off in flight, after which you will find yourself above the ground, a dark sinister cloud surrounding some sort of building with a light emanating from within. Hovering over the light is a dark object with eyes on the side. Before you can check out this mysterious object and cloud, you can feel someone calling you from the north. So, you fly off heading north to see who is calling you, where you come across some open land with a bonfire in the middle. Hovering over the bonfire, you’ll be able to select it; this will then set off some chat between Pria and Manu. It was Manu, an older man, who had called out to Helios; Pria is Manu’s granddaughter. It’s from here that you’ll start the tower defense part of this game; the bonfire must be protected from what is about to head your way.

The humans will build around the bonfire and other nearby buildings you construct as they don’t like to live in isolation. You will need to give the humans commands on what to build and do. To start with, you’ll need to build housing so that you can increase the population of your newly created town. Each house you build will increase your population by five. Erecting houses and other buildings will cost you varying amounts of wood. To build anything, you’ll need to open the Building Commands and then select the building you want to construct. To begin with, not everything is unlocked, but they will unlock as you progress. You need to build a house by the bonfire and from there you can spread out around the surrounding area.

Once you’ve placed your house, Pria will speak to her grandfather about the land that is covered by dark clouds, and from where all the animals have fled in fear. As there now are no animals to hunt, you’ll need to grow your own food. Helios has powers which he can use to manipulate the weather; you can use these powers to make Rain and Lightning, summon a Sun Guardian and Speed Up Time. Using the Rain power will fertilise the land, allowing the people to grow food. Controlling the weather will cost you energy, although should you run out of energy you can just replace it by flying through the clouds to absorb more. Once you have fertilised the land you can then select the Farm from the basic building's menu and place the farm where you fertilised the land.

Farms and other buildings will require workers to man them; different buildings will require a varying number of workers. Farms will need one worker to farm for food, and you’ll require more farms as your population grows. However, before your population can grow you will require wood to expand your town, which can be collected from nearby trees.  To collect the wood, you must first create a pathway to the trees and then build a lumber mill beside the trees. Once built, you will need to assign workers to chop down the trees.

After building the lumber mill, strange creatures will soon appear from the north. They will follow a path which goes through your growing town and towards the south. The creatures are coming from a place that’s hidden under a dark sinister cloud. To combat these creatures, you’ll be required to build some Barracks. To build Barracks you will need to select them from the Building Commands and by selecting the Defense Buildings. As you progress you will unlock new basic and defensive buildings, such as Archery, Magic Towers and Forges etcetera.

You will need to build these in the north for now; you won’t have long before the creatures start making their way to your bonfire. You can see how much time is left before the incoming creatures start their assault in a bar at the bottom of the screen. If they reach and destroy your bonfire then it’s game over and you’ll have to restart. The incoming creatures come from within a lair, above which are dark clouds and a dark object with eyes. To push back the dark clouds, you will need to build a shrine/temple. Once this happens and the creatures have stopped attacking, then you can fly Helios over the creature’s lair and attack the lair.

This will take you back to the platform part of the game where you will be required to fight your way to the end and defeat that levels boss. Once you complete this task you’ll head back to the overhead view of your town. Creatures will still spawn at these lairs, but now that the dark clouds have been dispersed you can move into new areas to collect resources etcetera. Each time you defeat one of these lairs, it weakens the King of Trees and will lower its defense. There are several of these lairs that you will need to defeat before being able to attack the King of Trees. After defeating the King of Trees you’ll be able to move on to another region and disperse the dark clouds covering the lands and free the humans from the wrath of the young gods.

In the options, you’ll find settings for Audio (Sound and Music Sliders), Video (Resolution, Window Mode, Brightness, V-Sync, Quality), Advanced (Texture, Effects, Shadow, Postprocess and Resolution Quality), and Controls (Gamepad and Keyboard binds).

So far, I’ve enjoyed playing the game. The platformer part of the game wasn’t too hard (currently).  I liked the tower defense of the game, and while I was struggling for resources at times, I could use Helios’s powers to help combat the onslaught of the creatures. Building around the bonfire and expanding your town was easy to do, although at times I had to destroy some buildings in order to be able to build more houses and barracks, as I couldn’t collect anymore wood, and none was currently available.

Now I’ve seen a lot of folks moaning about how the game isn’t as good as ActRaiser, and I find this a bit harsh. Yes, ActRaiser was a good game in its day, but that was thirty years ago. If you downvote games just because they don’t match up to games from the past, then we’d never have any games with a thumbs up. I judge games on the now, not on similar games from the past, and as such I think that SolSeraph is a pretty decent game. I think that’s how people should judge this game, and not on something from thirty years ago. I for one have enjoyed playing it and give it a Thumbs Up!

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com!