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PC|PS4|SW|MOB Actraiser Renaissance

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PC|PS4|SW|MOB Actraiser Renaissance

Unread postby Beakman » 27 Oct 2021 06:20

Actraiser Renaissance | Launch Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ivq_c40aiqE

https://square-enix-games.com/en_EU/gam ... enaissance

Actraiser Renaissance is available now on PlayStation®4, Nintendo Switch™, Steam®, iOS and Android.

Actraiser Renaissance combines 2D platforming action (Realm Acts) with a City-building simulation (Realm Management) in the ultimate battle between good and evil!

Featuring the soundtrack that sent shockwaves through the gaming world when it was first released, composed by the legendary Yuzo Koshiro - now remastered!

Help humanity flourish by playing as the Lord of Light and their loyal angel in a world beset by evil.


https://square-enix-games.com/en_GB/new ... enaissance

Teague Emery wrote:Actraiser was an absolute gem of the early 90s. The genre-bending platformer/city-sim was released on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1990 and put players in the role of the Lord of Light. Through various forms and gameplay styles, it was up to you to cleanse a world beset by evil and defeat The Evil One.

Now, it’s back! Actraiser Renaissance, a full, stunning remaster of the game has been released today on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PC and mobile devices. As in the original, this release will see you simultaneously taking down the creatures of darkness while building, developing and protecting your own safe haven of civilisation.

This is a remaster fit for the gods, so let’s jump in to some of the reasons we’re excited to get our hands on it.

A Remaster Fit for the Gods

30 years after its original release, this remaster breathes new life into a cult classic. It’s clear from the get-go that this is no ordinary remaster - the complete graphical overhaul adds stunning detail and atmosphere to the game’s varied and far-reaching environments. From volcanoes to snowy landscapes, dark castles, dense jungles, and perilous deserts, each location has been lovingly recreated for this new version.

Paired with a re-arranged soundtrack by composer Yuzo Koshiro (“SORCERIAN”, “Bare Knuckle”, “Shenmue”, “Etrian Odyssey series”), which includes 15 new tracks, the game takes the audio delights and visual splendour of the original and takes them to new heights.

Alongside the visual and audio upgrades, Actraiser Renaissance is packed with additional content… but we’ll get to those in time.

Building a City Worthy of Worship

There’s no denying that Actraiser Renaissance is unique, seamlessly tying two vastly different genres together with ease.

First up, the Realm Management segments, which tasks players with creating their own havens, safe from the grasp of The Evil One. Become the Lord of Light’s trusted angel and guide your new and budding civilisation to salvation, clearing barriers, destroying monsters and sealing their lairs to make way for construction.

Actraiser Renaissance‘s enhanced development mode gives you even more ways to build a perfect town for your followers, with new levels of housing and buildings based on how advanced your civilisation has become, and new defensive structures for the “Settlement Siege” mode. On top of this, there’s also a new area and map for you to expand your influence.

However, as your oasis grows, so does the threat of The Evil One. As an angel you must use your mighty bow and arrow to protect your people from incoming monsters, or call on the Lord of Light to perform miracles such as summoning a bolt of lightning or an earthquake.

It doesn’t stop there: Actraiser Renaissance adds a new “Settlement Siege” feature which takes the form of a real time strategy game where you must make careful decisions to protect your people from the oncoming horde. In Realm Management mode, you must strategise where to place your city’s defences, from magehouses, forts, and blockhouses in preparation for the siege that lies ahead.

When under siege, you’ll also need to place blockades and palisades, then make use of heroes to fight against the attacking foes, recruiting one from each region that you spread your influence to, and also conjure powerful miracles to help protect your followers and deal out divine justice to the advancing monsters.

Side Scroll to Save Humanity

With each new area you develop there are new monsters that need slaying, and there’s only one way to do it: bring to life a sword wielding statue and slice your way through tense, side-scrolling environments known as Realm Acts.

These areas have been beautifully reimagined, and you’ll want to soak up all of the beautiful detail while hacking and slashing your way through all manner of gruesome monsters. Work your way through these enemy strongholds until you reach the boss watching over it, and vanquish your foe to bring your people one step closer to safety.

Budding Gods can also enjoy new action phases in which they can infiltrate and destroy monster lairs. These short battles task you with evading monsters and trying to defeat the monster spawner within a limited amount of time, meaning new tactics and strategies may be needed to make short work of your foes.

Not only do the original environments look stellar, there’s also a whole new area added in Actraiser Renaissance, giving even the most hardcore of heroes somewhere new to explore.

In addition to the new area, there’s also a new boss battle to look forward to, giving players an even greater challenge once they’ve managed to usurp Tanzra from his evil throne.

And One More Thing…

Alongside all of the incredible improvements and new features above, there are also special bonuses* for anyone who purchases Actraiser Renaissance before November 1st**.

Those quick to act will also get two sets of rewards in the form of a themed wallpaper, two new songs, and three remastered songs composed by Yuzo Koshiro.

When purchasing on Steam and the PlayStation store these will be instant download rewards***, but please note that those purchasing the game on Nintendo Switch will get access to a unique code and URL, allowing them to download these incentives separately.



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Beakman
 
Joined: 26 Apr 2009 17:30
Location: Mexico City

CULT LIVE: Actraiser Renaissance

Unread postby Beakman » 27 Oct 2021 07:55

Actraiser Renaissance (Hard) with Beakman 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lO7SsoNPbAc

The original Actraiser was my first contact with a "god game" (of the vein of Populous or Black & White) and one of the best games that I played but never owned in the early '90s. A friend loaned it to me and I think I was pretty far in the campaign when I had to give it back. Since then, I've started it multiple times but never reached the point where I was back in the day, and not finishing the game has been one of my life-long gamer pet peeves. So when I saw the announcement that a remake was being released, I immediately got it. Here are my impressions of my first three hours with the game.

This is not a mere graphics refresh. This remake adds multiple mechanics to both its 2D action and its god game portions.

In the 2D action levels, the hero moveset has been extended (e.g. a back dash, double jump and a forward thrust have been added, among other moves). The layout of the levels themselves has been adjusted to accommodate the new moves. There's nothing too spectacular about the remade 2D levels, and my sense is that the new moves made traversing and the boss fights easier than the original (even on Hard), but they're successful on making the 2D action portion feel more dynamic. They added mini-levels for when you destroy a demon spawner.

The god game portion has the addition of tower defense events ("Settlement Sieges") where you protect your town from demon hordes. These events are separate from the regular, constant demon attacks that you fend off with your angel's bow and arrows. You need to gather resources and build workshops to build defenses, and the game now features heroes that take part in these battles. When you are besieged, the ability of attacking directly with your angel is removed and you have to rely on your defense setup and in positioning your hero to deal with the demons. This is no They Are Billions, but I got pretty engaged with the sieges, I lost a few because I overestimated their simplicity. The interface is very straightforward and there are only two types of defense buildings (fort gates and archer towers) that can be upgraded twice. These tower defense events are nothing too special by themselves, but they mesh really well with the god game portion, in part due to the addition of light resource gathering, in part because the heroes add story elements to your conversations with the town dwellers.

My biggest gripes with this remake are the inconsistencies in its art styles and varying quality of its graphical assets. It feels as if Squeenix originally intended this as a purely low-budget cellphone game with a port to proper platforms as an afterthought. This was the case with the remakes of the first two Seiken Densetsu games, for instance. Renaissance is leaps and bounds better than those, but you can still find big-ass touch-friendly UI elements and low-budget assets sprinkled around, like some unexplainably low resolution pre-rendered sprites (the worst of them being the hero in the 2D action portion, sadly. I think they intended to make it look "retro" or some shit, but its pre-rendered, downscaled sprite looks completely out of place). On the other hand, the background layers in the 2D scrolling levels look nice, the remade OST by Yuzo Koshiro is pretty good, and the character portraits and general artwork are beautiful, if with inconsistent art styles between characters. The town peasants have better portraits than a lot of protagonists in Western games. The overworld and town maps in the god game portion look really nice with very high resolution assets that look like watercolor paintings.

There's a technical gripe as well: The game stutters every 6 frames due to a desync between the refresh rate and camera scroll, as explained by Digital Foundry in their technical review [ > ]. According to them, this happens in every version of the game and other Unity-based 2D scrollers. They mention it's fixable, but the Steam version has not been patched since launch.

As with the original, no portion of the game by itself is too noteworthy. There are much better 2D action games, god games, and tower defense games. But there aren't many games that mix these genres into one experience (I've yet to play SolSeraph [ > ]). This remake improves upon the genre-blending spirit of Actraiser that resulted in a game much better than the sum of its parts. I was expecting the same game with better graphics and was pleasantly surprised by the mechanical additions—you could say that even of a new genre with the tower defense events. I intended to play for one hour because I had some work to do, but I ended up doing it sleep-deprived because I couldn't let the gamepad go until I banished every demon from the first town. Fun times.
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Beakman
 
Joined: 26 Apr 2009 17:30
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