ActRaiser Renaissance released (Yes, really)

[Duraframe300]

 

[Pots Talos]

Wow, I never expected ActRaiser to ever be revived. Just bought it on Steam after seeing this post, going to play through it this weekend.

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[GhostCow]

I fucking loved ActRaiser as a teenager but I'm not dropping $30 on this until I hear about it from Codexers who have played it

 

[TwoEdge]

This came out of left field for me. I'd never even heard about it until today. The original is such a classic that I always expected it to become a genre, but it only got a few clones of very questionable quality. Here's hoping this remake manages to carry the torch.

 

[Pots Talos]

Alright so I played a little bit of it.
I’m surprised how much they actually changed; it isn’t just graphics like I had originally thought. I only played the first Fillmore battle and almost all the Fillmore city building section, so I’ll give my thoughts on these.

For the side scrolling action section the stage layouts are changed almost completely but they kept the same elements and environment. Character animations are smooth, you can do an evade backwards slide as well as standing combo sword attacks, upward slash, and a downward sword smash. The centaur boss was definitely more challenging than the original but once you know his attack pattern, he can be beaten without taking a hit (I’m playing on Hard). Overall, I really liked the improvements to the side scrolling section.

Now the city building is where the remake faulters in my opinion. They added so much story to it that you barely even get to play around, every 2 seconds there is another cutscene or the angel is talking about some crap I don’t care about. Maybe this is just because the first town also has mandatory unskippable tutorials that are thrown in between each story element that it just feels like I’m clicking through endless dialog and scenes. Hopefully this won’t be the case in the next town.

They added “Hero” human characters for each town that are in almost all the story cutscenes and these heroes are used for the new tower defense minigame they added to the city building section. Now as your town progresses, they will give you supplies like wood which you can use to build gatehouses that are used to block roadways during the tower defense section. The enemies spawn in from these little portals and try to attack your city center. You can direct the hero to walk around and guard different sections while you rain down lightning from above. For some reason the angels bow doesn’t work during the tower defense section.

Other than that, you still must use your powers to change the landscape and use your bow to kill the flying enemies before they attack the village. You guide the people in the direction you want them to build roads and buildings, but they won’t let you just bring the people to monster lairs because it has to get broken up with the tower defense game and a bunch of story scenes before the people are “powerful” enough to attack the monster lair. Oh, and when you do attack a monster lair, they have you go into it as the sword swinging avatar to clear it out which is just a little small scene room with a glowing gold orb you have to attack while enemies constantly spawn and try to kill you. It has a time limit and is fairly enjoyable, I can see these getting challenging in the later sections of the game.

I’ll try to beat the game this weekend but with all the bloat the city section has I might not have the time.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Holy shit, I forgot how good the music in this game was.

 

[Falksi]

Why? (yes easy cash, I know)

Actraiser is a fucking all time classic. It doesn't need a remaster, nor it's fantastic pixel art butchering with fanny anime style crap splurged all over it. Silly cunts have no clue at all as to what makes something great anymore.

Would love a good sequel, but I'm quite happy playing the original, nigh on perfect, Actraiser as it is.

 

[samuraigaiden]

It doesn't look half as bad as I expected when I clicked the link

 

[rusty_shackleford]

whoa hey there, remember that game you liked as a kid?
YEAH I SURE DO
yea well we remade it with gay weeb graphics
????

why can't they ever remake these games with the same artstyle?
and don't even try to tell me it looked like gay weeb shit you weebs, we're perfectly capable of looking at the ingame material/box art/advertising material of actraiser 1 & 2

 

[Duraframe300]

whoa hey there, remember that game you liked as a kid?
YEAH I SURE DO
yea well we remade it with gay weeb graphics
????

why can't they ever remake these games with the same artstyle?
and don't even try to tell me it looked like gay weeb shit you weebs, we're perfectly capable of looking at the ingame material/box art/advertising material of actraiser 1 & 2

To be fair, true. Even the manga adaption/additional story that was released alongside the game didn't use this artstyle. Neither any art the devs did in a more manga like style.

The only source I could find that square could have taken inspiration from is a piece of fanart ffs.

Spoiler

Art from the japanese manual

Edit: BTW: Long Hair on a modern male anime face looks like garbage. No wonder everyone's short haired in anime nowadays.

 

[GhostCow]

I ended up putting a couple of hours into this. So far it's pretty fun. The tower defense stuff seems like a needless addition but it doesn't really bother me. The music is fantastic though. They really could not have done better than what they gave us. I don't remember how hard the original game was but so far this one seems pretty easy. Personally I like the new art, but I am a weeb. The angel could stand to be a little less flat chested but meh

 

[Great Deceiver]

Holy shit, I forgot how good the music in this game was.

Yuzo Koshiro composed all the remixes for this version, too. They really went above and beyond.

 

[Pots Talos]

The angel could stand to be a little less flat chested but meh

The angel is a guy though.

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[GhostCow]

The angel could stand to be a little less flat chested but meh

The angel is a guy though.

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Fucking anime art, you tricked me again!

 

[Machocruz]

Yuck, another 3D graphics sidescroller remake/sequel. Please stop, game industry.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Can't say I love the rendered sprites. I'd prefer 3d models or full pixel artwork.

Also I miss the enemy death sound that was re-used in basically every Quintet game.

 

[Machocruz]

I thought they were using 3D models. Either way I have yet to see one of these I didn't think looked bland and inferior to the 2D sprite originals. And a shittier art style/missing the point usually comes with it. And they're never on the level of the Trine games or Ori either.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

whoa hey there, remember that game you liked as a kid?
YEAH I SURE DO
yea well we remade it with gay weeb graphics
????

why can't they ever remake these games with the same artstyle?
and don't even try to tell me it looked like gay weeb shit you weebs, we're perfectly capable of looking at the ingame material/box art/advertising material of actraiser 1 & 2

To be fair, true. Even the manga adaption/additional story that was released alongside the game didn't use this artstyle. Neither any art the devs did in a more manga like style.

The only source I could find that square could have taken inspiration from is a piece of fanart ffs.

Spoiler

Art from the japanese manual

Edit: BTW: Long Hair on a modern male anime face looks like garbage. No wonder everyone's short haired in anime nowadays.

New art on top, old on bottom. The old is the Japanese SNES box art.

New one looks better. Although I miss some of the extra details on the hero.

 

[TheDiceMustRoll]

Having lots of fun

 

[Poseidon00]

Came totally out of nowhere. Good to see it seems relatively faithful to the original.

Had to tell my brother when I saw this thread. Me and him would pass that snes controller along trying to beat that game as kids.

 

[Ninjerk]

The angel could stand to be a little less flat chested but meh

The angel is a guy though.

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Fucking anime art, you tricked me again!

 

[Jack Of Owls]

If it's got the faggy anime style, forget it. I played Actraiser 1 on original SNES hardware near its initial release and enjoyed it very much. I think it was the first thing I ever played with town-building mechanics. However, during my playthrough I got into the habit of using my accumulated power-ups to defeat end-level bosses, so when I reached the end game where you had to re-fight all the game's bosses, one right after the other, I was helpless because I didn't have any of those powerups provided earlier and I didn't hone any type of actual fighting skill so I had to quit.

 

[TheDiceMustRoll]

If it's got the faggy anime style, forget it. I played Actraiser 1 on original SNES hardware near its initial release and enjoyed it very much. I think it was the first thing I ever played with town-building mechanics. However, during my playthrough I got into the habit of using my accumulated power-ups to defeat end-level bosses, so when I reached the end game where you had to re-fight all the game's bosses, one right after the other, I was helpless because I didn't have any of those powerups provided earlier and I didn't hone any type of actual fighting skill so I had to quit.

>skill

you mean you didnt learn the one thing you needed to do to cheese the boss and win

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Lmao why does the Hero look like Griffith.

 

[TheDiceMustRoll]

Lmao why does the Hero look like Griffith.

Because he did nothing wrong.