ActRazer

A bizarre hybrid of Final Fantasy 6 and ActRaiser, this game caught my attention from the moment it appeared on this site. After all ,who doesn’t love both of these games? Playing an ActRaiser-styled game form the point of view of Kefka, the god-like destroyer of worlds? That must be a real experience. And it is, although a mixed one.

The story picks up an alternate timeline in the story of Final Fantasy 6. Kefka has destroyed the world and generally had his fun destroying everything in his path, but alas, his abuse of the Warring Triad’s power has left the Three Goddesses drained of their magical power, and left Kefka himself greatly weakened. One day, however, he discovers a new statue; The Master from ActRaiser, left in permanent stasis. The Angel, a servant of the Master, appears to Kefka and tells him this statue can bestow him with great power, but first he must recover all of its pieces. Kefka and his unlikely assistant set off on a quest to recover the Statues and generally be pricks to everyone.

Balance 3/5
The game has two main parts, just like the original ActRaiser; The Sim-levels where you will command the angel build destroy civilization, and action levels where you command Kefka’s party in search of the statues.

The Sim-levels take the form of a surprisingly well-done ABS system. Before you can find the Statue pieces, you must harass the local citizens to get them to loosen their tongues and tell you where they might be found. The people will unleash enemies at you that take the form of RTP animals. However, these enemies will not simply wander around waiting to be shot, oh no. Bats will charge at you if you cross paths with them, sheep will repair destroyed buildings, dragons will fire projectiles at you, the enemy diversity is pretty good. Your Angel himself fights much the way he did in ActRaiser, by firing arrows at his opponents. You’ll also gain access to various attack and healing skills, although depending on the difficulty mode you are in, you might not find any new skills. Basically, pretty much everything you’d expect in a real-time action system is here and executed quite well.

Your goal in these segments is to accumulate SP by killing enemies. With enough SP, you can use skills, but your goal is to gain enough to unleash Kefka’s Light of judgment to destroy buildings. Once you’ve destroyed enough buildings to break the peoples’ spirit, you can proceed. The only problem with these segments is they seem to take a bit too long, and without the healing skills they can be fairly difficult. You also lack a period of “mercy invincibility” which can allow enemies to rapidly drain your entire health bar if you get unlucky.

The action stages where you enter dungeons are unfortunately far less interesting. It is basically straight RM2k3 combat with no twists thrown in, although the way you develop your experience is a bit different, You gain “levels” simply by clearing out all enemies in an area, and you will also gain an item for every enemy group you defeat. However, these are entirely supplementary and it seems to be perfectly possible to clear the game without any grinding.

Level Design 3/5
The most obvious observation to make is that the game makes a pretty good effort to preserve and emulate ActRaiser’s play style. Even the HUD of the Sim levels has been pretty accurately recreated, and everything from entering levels to communing with villagers has been faithfully applied. There are plenty of little details to appreciate.



For the game’s dungeons, you will find a large number of cunningly-designed puzzles, but unfortunately these puzzles are often so elaborate and lacking in any explanation that it can be nearly impossible to figure out what you are suppose to be doing. Again, the difficulty setting comes to the rescue here and will allow you to skip any puzzle if you really can’t figure it out.

Characters and Story 1/5
Unfortunately, this game has a pretty significant flaw in the portrayal of the universe’s characters. The dialogue basically reads like terrible fan fiction and pretty much no one acts anything like what they’re supposed to. The writing seems to be aiming for a really over-the-top parody and shock value comedy, but it really misses its mark, and with characters as beloved and iconic as these, it’s more likely to make you cringe than laugh.

In fact, the only character who acts anything like the character they’re supposed to be based off of is The Angel, who is as loyal and helpful as ever, and over the course of the game is slowly corrupted by Kefka in amusing ways. It’s a lot more effective than the rest of sorely misrepresented cast.

Fortunately, the majority of the game’s storyline is in the game’s introduction, which is completely optional. I implore everyone to ignore this part entirely and just enjoy the nicely crafted action battles instead.

Music and Sound 3/5
Pretty much all the music are midi renditions of the soundtrack from ActRaiser itself. Given that this is a fangame, this is completely appropriate. It helps that the soundtrack is extremely awesome, but unfortunately not all of the midi tracks are of high quality.

Overall 2.5/5
I went into this expecting a highly comical adventure. After all, playing as Kefka annihiliating civilization ActRaiser style? How could you go wrong with that? I was disappointed in that department. Fortunately, the game as it exists is still worth playing. With its well-crafted real time battle system and mind-bending puzzles, this is a title that is probably of interest to anyone who liked the original ActRaiser as much as I did. But don’t say I didn’t warn you about the writing.