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A short while a go, I published two profiles for Terranigma, a late SNES action RPG that I quite enjoyed. There's nothing wrong with the profiles themselves, but while I was originally under the impression that Terranigma was a standalone game, I was... kind of wrong. The game is completely self-contained in terms of story, gameplay and in a way, even setting.
However, it does contain ties to the developers (Quintet, a developer company that worked under Enix until they just kinda stopped existing in the early 2000s)'s previous game, Illusion of Gaia, which I only learned as I was playing that game. The rabbit hole runs deeper than that, though, here is the full continuity.
So, what does this mean for the two existing profiles? Well, let's start from the top. Here is all 12 profiles I wish to make for this verse. That sounds like a lot but the bottom 6 are just minor characters from Renaissance I wanted to make for the sake of making the Master's profile 100% complete, since he can summon them. The sandbox also contains Dark Gaia's revised P&A and AP justification. As you may notice, they now have a "possibly 4-A" rating, which will scale to Ark too (as will his capacity to hit Dark Gaia past their Incorporeality, and resisting their corruption-based abilities). The former's profile name will be changed from "Dark Gaia (Terranigma)" to "Dark Gaia (Illusion of Gaia", and that's all really.
Some may find it weird that the Master doesn't scale to the Soul Blazer's tiers, given that y'know, usually one would assume a god to be more powerful than the angels that serve them. But... try as I might I couldn't really find an actual reasoning for scaling. We don't know the timeline between AR and SB but despite coming after Soul Blazer, ActRaiser 2 doesn't acknowledge his existence (Neither does Renaissance). Deathtoll is a demon like Tanzra, but those don't really have consistent workings between the series (They're beings genetically modified by ancient humans in IoG, beings born from the darkness of mankind's heart who reside in a universe of their in SB and just evil beings created by Tanzra in AR), and are likely just three unrelated types of beings associated with the same concept by different cultures. In the English translation of Soul Blazer, the Master's magic can be used to aid the Blazer at one specific point, and the greatest spell is sort of vaguely associated with him, but I checked a fan translation and neither of those things are present there. So, yeah, the Master doesn't scale to the Blazer, as weird as it is.
By the way, I only played Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma, and I would say, they've all aged quite well! Soul Blazer has a really fun gameplay loop, Gaia has great dungeon design and a very ambitious scope, and Terranigma has probably the best realized story and world of the three, coupled with some of the SNES' best visuals. It's honestly kind of a shame Quintet sort of just faded away, their stuff was among the best and most original on the SNES and it's unfortunate it never took off.
... Y'know, last revision, I pointed out how Deus Ex and Marathon shared a lot of similarities, and I was thinking of joking about how that's obviously not going to be the case with a fantasy JRPG... but then I thought about it, and just like Mjolnir Recon and JC Denton, Ark from Terranigma is, unbeknownst to him, a human engineered by a third party to follow their goals of world domination, and at the end of his journey, after making contact Light Gaia itself, is pointed out to be akin to a god, having been the one to shepherd the world's rebirth and humanity's growth.
This keeps happening. Help.
However, it does contain ties to the developers (Quintet, a developer company that worked under Enix until they just kinda stopped existing in the early 2000s)'s previous game, Illusion of Gaia, which I only learned as I was playing that game. The rabbit hole runs deeper than that, though, here is the full continuity.
- ActRaiser: First game in the "series", it recently received a remake named ActRaiser: Renaissance.
- ActRaiser 2: Obviously a sequel to ActRaiser.
- Soul Blazer: At a first glance this game might seem unrelated to AR, but the one sending you, the titular Soul Blazer, upon Earth to fight evil, is none other than the Master, protagonist of the ActRaiser games (Lord of Light in the remake).
- Illusion of Gaia: In the bonus dungeon, you meet the first game's final boss, who even talks a bit about his fight with the Soul Blazer
- Terranigma: IoG and Terranigma share their primary villain and final boss, Dark Gaia.
So, what does this mean for the two existing profiles? Well, let's start from the top. Here is all 12 profiles I wish to make for this verse. That sounds like a lot but the bottom 6 are just minor characters from Renaissance I wanted to make for the sake of making the Master's profile 100% complete, since he can summon them. The sandbox also contains Dark Gaia's revised P&A and AP justification. As you may notice, they now have a "possibly 4-A" rating, which will scale to Ark too (as will his capacity to hit Dark Gaia past their Incorporeality, and resisting their corruption-based abilities). The former's profile name will be changed from "Dark Gaia (Terranigma)" to "Dark Gaia (Illusion of Gaia", and that's all really.
Some may find it weird that the Master doesn't scale to the Soul Blazer's tiers, given that y'know, usually one would assume a god to be more powerful than the angels that serve them. But... try as I might I couldn't really find an actual reasoning for scaling. We don't know the timeline between AR and SB but despite coming after Soul Blazer, ActRaiser 2 doesn't acknowledge his existence (Neither does Renaissance). Deathtoll is a demon like Tanzra, but those don't really have consistent workings between the series (They're beings genetically modified by ancient humans in IoG, beings born from the darkness of mankind's heart who reside in a universe of their in SB and just evil beings created by Tanzra in AR), and are likely just three unrelated types of beings associated with the same concept by different cultures. In the English translation of Soul Blazer, the Master's magic can be used to aid the Blazer at one specific point, and the greatest spell is sort of vaguely associated with him, but I checked a fan translation and neither of those things are present there. So, yeah, the Master doesn't scale to the Blazer, as weird as it is.
By the way, I only played Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma, and I would say, they've all aged quite well! Soul Blazer has a really fun gameplay loop, Gaia has great dungeon design and a very ambitious scope, and Terranigma has probably the best realized story and world of the three, coupled with some of the SNES' best visuals. It's honestly kind of a shame Quintet sort of just faded away, their stuff was among the best and most original on the SNES and it's unfortunate it never took off.
... Y'know, last revision, I pointed out how Deus Ex and Marathon shared a lot of similarities, and I was thinking of joking about how that's obviously not going to be the case with a fantasy JRPG... but then I thought about it, and just like Mjolnir Recon and JC Denton, Ark from Terranigma is, unbeknownst to him, a human engineered by a third party to follow their goals of world domination, and at the end of his journey, after making contact Light Gaia itself, is pointed out to be akin to a god, having been the one to shepherd the world's rebirth and humanity's growth.
This keeps happening. Help.
