Soul Blazer was created as a "spiritual sequel" to Actraiser. It was never intended to be directly associated with the previous release, but the similarities are apparent. Set in the Freil Kingdom, the story begins with a pair of selfish and foolhardy royals: King and Queen Magridd. A brilliant inventor, Dr. Leo, is imprisoned by the royals and given the task to create a machine. This machine is to contact an evil spirit named Deathtoll, who is essentially the anti-thesis to God. The deal with the devil is a simple exchange, a piece of gold per each soul given. Under advisement of the queen, the king agrees. Ultimately, the souls of every living being are entrapped within Deathtoll's monster lairs. It is not long after this that a nameless hero (a "blazer") is sent to Earth to fix everything.

This is where the quest begins. The game consists of Zelda-esque top-down style game play with 6 monster-filled dungeons and barren towns. Much of Soul Blazer requires simply crawling through dungeons, defeating a fixed number of monsters, and unlocking a switch revealed by destroying the monster's nest. Each time the switch is depressed a portion of the lair is sealed, and a soul is freed into the town. As souls are released, people, animals, staircases and buildings are replaced in the wasteland of a city. Talking to town members provide clues to the story, quest items or otherwise advances the plot. It is a formula that works, but quickly becomes repetitive.

Combat requires swinging a sword (in a left to right slash, or holding it in a straight "poking" position) and casting magical spells. More often than not, swordplay is your primary method of attack. Magic is expensive, and is best replenished by collecting magic dropped by slain opponents. Additionally, the magic is cast by a soul orb that rapidly flies in a circle around the hero. The soul orb makes magic difficult to aim, and with the cost of magic, it is best saved for hitting switches that are otherwise inaccessible by sword.

Bad things have been said about the graphics of Soul Blazer. Most recent reviews state that much of the graphics are dull and uninspired, but they fail to take into account that the game was created a year after the launch of the console. Visually, it is on par with other games at the era. Avatars are mostly faces, and the colors utilize range from dull brown to super-saturated red tights (as seen on our hero). The best visuals in the game are the moments when buildings are released into the world, which resemble a time-lapse video of someone building a house with Legos. I'm not going to say it is the most visually impressive title ever created, but it's certainly not the worst.

As an unfortunate turn, Soul Blazer did not have the same attention to the auditory detail as its predecessor, because Yuzo Koshiro was not utilized as the composer. Much of the music is generic, and it often repeats for many situations, such as towns and dungeons. Oftentimes, the music is so ambient that you barely even notice that a tune is playing. Additionally, much like other Quintet titles, the sound effects are often repeats of samples used in previous games. The main character in Soul Blazer makes a deep, guttural grunt when taking damage identical to the "oof" noise produced by the hero in Actraiser. This is terribly out of place, considering the protagonist of Soul Blazer is a waif of a boy, compared to a hyper masculine god-creature in Actraiser. When sounds were not recycled from prior works, they were often repetitive and grating.

One of the most disappointing aspects of the game is that the story does not progress much past the preface. As most people are released, more of the back story is revealed, but ultimately the game consists of simply slashing your way through to the next dungeon. There is an underlying love story in the game involving the main character and Dr. Leo's daughter Lisa, but I honestly there was so little interaction with her I did not notice a budding relationship until the game's ending. I'm not sure if I can chock this up to a poor translation or not, because few events place them together

Flawless, Soul Blazer is not. I have a pension for dungeon crawlers, and this game has that in spades. The combat can be a bit kludgy, but after about 20 minutes of game play, you get used to the short reach of your sword. It is rewarding to see that every time you beat a group of monsters a new building or person will appear, which makes slogging through wave after wave of enemies rewarding. The game may have been lacking in many ways, most of which can be attributed to being a relatively early generational title for the Super Nintendo. In comparison to further releases on the Super Nintendo, it is still one of the best adventure titles that I have ever played. It just shows how a compelling hook can really make the game.