Does anyone remember...

[DaWrestla]

...Lagoon for the SNES? It was released by Kemco-Sieka. It was my first RPG and, at the time, I loved it.

Also, is the SoulBlazer trilogy (SoulBlazer Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma) a loosely held together trilogy? Or was the overall story-arch pretty tight? I've never played, but always wondered.

[LUNARverse]

That trilogy technically isnt a trilogy in any other way than that they are three action RPGs from Enix. Also Terranigma never released stateside. It only saw an english release in European territories. Its ashame too, its such an amazing game.

[Alunissage]

I've certainly heard those three grouped together, though. Never played any, though I have Illusion of Gaia around here somewhere.

My housemate and I played through maybe a third or so of Lagoon a while back. Got stuck on a boss and gave up. I rather liked the system of mixing and matching canes and jewels (or whatever it was) to get different spells, and a ecological save-the-world was kind of cool.

[Shiva Indis]

Judging from the fact that there is no agreement on what the 'trilogy' is named (I like 'Soul Trilogy' personally - got it off of a Japanese website) I'd say that it is simply fans classifing the games together. There is a lot of commonality in themes (balance of light and darkness; helper souls; they all deal with the origins of the world;) and they were developed by the same company, Quintet, but the plots are independent.

There is a prototype rom image floating around which makes it look like NOA was concidering calling the middle game 'SoulBlazer: Illusion of Gaia' or something like that, but I doubt the developers had anything to do with that.

Quintet still has a website (www.quintet.co.jp/) and they published into the Dreamcast era, but they haven't done anything lately. I wonder what happened to them...

[DaWrestla]

My housemate and I played through maybe a third or so of Lagoon a while back. Got stuck on a boss and gave up. I rather liked the system of mixing and matching canes and jewels (or whatever it was) to get different spells, and a ecological save-the-world was kind of cool.

I guarantee you the boss is either the boss in the ice cave, or the boss where you gotta hit the two red things sticking out of his face. Both are real b:tches. The former because it took me forever to figure out you have to kill the six things on the side before hand, and the latter because the sword is so short that it's almost impossible to hit him w/o taking damage.

Overall, it is a bad game for even the Chrono Trigger/ FFIII/VI era of the SNES. However, it will always hold a special place in my heart. I LOVED the intro cut-scene, at the time I thought it was the coolest thing ever...and I still LOVE the intro rock-themed music. The graphics were ok. The terrible thing about the game was the incredibly short sword the hero has.

Yeah, the spells were cool, but in reality the corresponding level spells were all the same (i.e. water l1 was the same as fire l2, and so on).

[Angelalex242]

Illusion of Gaia I remember well.

Sadly, I never bought it. I did beat it, though.

[Kale]

Lol, I STILL have a working copy of Lagoon. never got passed the first part though.

[Vane Premier]

Wow, Lagoon.

I haven't played that since probably 1994. A friend of mine bought or rented the game, I can't remember and pretty much had a tough time with the game so I ended playing most of it. I don't remember much of the bosses except the last boss which I had to replay about 20+ times because he was just that tough. The ending was amazing from what I remember of it or felt it was worth it for the many times I had to refight the last boss.

Didn't care much for Soul Blazer but I loved Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma. Got to the last in Illusion of Gaia but couldn't beat him but I did finish Terranigma.

[DaWrestla]

Yeah, the last boss(es) (you fight 4 in a row) in Lagoon were incredibly difficult for someone with the finger dexterity of an 8 year old. I remember putting the game down for awhile and then picking it back up one day before I could beat the last boss.

Then I replayed it when I was around 19 (I'm 22 now) and I flew through the game in a heartbeat. Last boss was a cinch.

The ending did more to conlude the story than the ending of my fave RPG of all time did...Secret of Mana. For such a great game, the ending is terrible.