Action roleplaying game with outstanding music, great gameplay and lush graphics.

Story

For many years people have been enjoying their peaceful lives. But now, vile monsters from ancient times return to attack human settlements around the land. The king of the Soleil town has already sent many brave heroes to fight the rising monster threat, but it has not helped much.
When the young boy Corona turns 14 years old, he inherits his father’s sword and shield. The king encourages Corona to start training to become a great hero and sends him to the training grounds. Soon after that something strange happens – Corona loses his ability to speak with other people and instead gains the ability to speak with animals and plants. Will this change hinder him or will it help him in the fight to become a great hero?

The Game

Soleil is an exclusive action roleplaying game for the Sega Mega Drive. It features a simple but fun real-time combat system, great graphics, adorably awesome music and has a unique animal companion feature. In the game you play as the young boy who just celebrated his 14th birthday and set out on an adventure to become a hero. The game is played from a top-down view and the story you play is semi-linear, meaning that you are free to explore the world as you see fit, but in order to proceed in the story there’s always something specific that must be done, which then triggers the next story event.

Content

The quest is very light on the talking and instead focuses on puzzle solving and fighting monsters. Fighting is very straightforward – there’s only two basic attacks you can do – slashing and throwing the sword. However, your animal companions will grant you new attacks and abilities so you’ll have plenty of chances to develop your own preferred fighting style.

Most of the puzzles in Soleil revolve around pushing buttons, hitting switches, moving objects, avoiding hazards and jumping on platforms. The puzzles in the game are tricky but not frustrating. More often than not you have to use the correct animal companions to solve the puzzle, but it may take some experimentation before you get it right. The game does a great job at introducing new elements and mechanics as you go, so it never becomes overwhelming.

The game has 15 chapters and your first play-through will probably take around ten hours or so.
You will need to explore many labyrinthine dungeons, caves, palaces, forests and swamps. There is a healthy number of secrets and bonuses to explore around the world, and you’ll face many different types of enemies, bosses, traps and hazards. You’ll also encounter various environmental hazards – strong winds, spike traps, lava floods, slippery ice and sinkholes to name a few.
Although the game has lots of environmental variation and different ways to use your animal companions and their abilities, the biggest weakness is that it feels too short. For a younger audience the 15 chapters does provide a formidable challenge, but since the game is so fun to play you’ll wish that it lasted a few hours more.

In your adventures you’ll need to befriend many different animals that will help you in various ways. Each animal will grant you a new special ability that typically will allow you to reach new areas and proceed in the adventure. For example a hare will give you the courage to jump, a flying squirrel will make your sword bounce off of surfaces when thrown, allowing you to hit hard to reach switches and a cheetah will make you run faster. There are 16 different animals you can befriend and each one will have a more or less important role in your quest. As the adventure goes on you will eventually find them all and learn how to best use their abilities. Even though you can befriend all of these animals you can only have two of them out at any given time. You can switch between them freely as you see fit, and you will also notice that some combinations of animals give you extra synergy bonuses.

As the game begins your hero will be able to take eight hits before he is knocked out. Once you get into battle you will notice that you must keep an eye on your health. Health power-ups can be found here and there, but you need to look for them as they’re often hiding in treasure chests and in tall grass. You can increase your health bar (represented as red apples) by helping people, defeating bosses and finding the rare golden apples. You’ll also find gold coins called Malins, which is the currency of the world. Malins will let you hire certain animal companions for a limited time – for example Kitty the cat who will revive you if you become knocked out.

Typically when searching for Malins or apples, you will run around cutting down tall grass which is pretty tedious – but once you learn the locations of the items you can be sure that they will reappear at the same locations next time you visit the area. So, in theory you could exploit this by walking back and forth between two areas to collect the same health power-ups until you’re fully recharged to your max health. This of course isn’t an ideal solution but since health can be hard to come by otherwise, there’s always a risk that you will need to resort to such tactics in order to survive.

Another minor issue in this game is the way your sword hits (or does not hit, rather) when you swing it. You can rapidly press the A button to swing your sword, but you need to time your swings, because there are frames in the animation where your sword will simply go through the target but not damage it. The reach of the sword is also very short, so be prepared for some real close quarters battles. It takes some training before you’ll learn how to stay at the optimal distance.
Early in the adventure you will learn how to throw your sword, and this certainly helps as you can attack enemies from afar. The trade off is that you can’t attack while the sword is flying through the air, making you vulnerable to nearby monsters! Your positioning is important as you want to avoid becoming surrounded by enemies. Needless to say this game will demand some tactical thinking but it will all come naturally once you start playing.

Soleil has support for up to four save slots, so sharing the game cart with family and friends is possible. You can save your progress in the game almost anytime, so it’s easy to pick the game up and put it down again even if you’re on a busy schedule.

Graphics

The graphics are very nice – it’s colorful, varied and features many detailed sprites and it really captures your imagination in a sublime way. The animation is also great, and the game runs like a dream, so you will be enjoying fluid and responsive action. It’s simply a joy to explore the beautiful fairy tale like world of Soleil and quest among all the cute animals. To name a few of the locations, there’s deserts, forests, swamps, snowy forests and mountains. It should be noted that the various locations in the game are all very well designed and all have their distinct look and feel, both visually and gameplay vise.

Sound

The music is perhaps what sets Soleil apart the most from other similar games. I really adore it, as there are many great memorable songs here. If you have a soft spot for 16-bit video game music, there’s no excuse to pass this one up. It’s catchy, dramatic, cute and incredibly well produced – all the emotions in the adventure have been taken into account with these tunes. I’d even go as far as to claim that the music in this game is among the best music you’ll find on the Sega Mega Drive!

Summary

It has been claimed that Soleil has 40-80 hours worth of gameplay in it. That’s not true. Not even if you explore every inch of the world will it take that long for you to beat the game. If it would be that long, it would have been the perfect game. With that said, the ten hours or so that you do get is high quality content. There is no filler or tedious monster grinding here, it’s all good stuff.
Once you get into the game you’ll have an incredibly good time and chances are that you will want more of the same. The graphics are very charming, the puzzles are numerous and challenging enough to make you think for a while. The music is near perfection and the overall experience is very engaging and something that you will remember for the rest of your life.
Soleil has enough unique features to stand on its own as a solid one-of-its-kind action roleplaying game that every fan of the genre should play.

Developed By: Nextech
Published By: Sega
Version Reviewed: Sega Mega Drive
Genre: Action Roleplaying
Players: 1
Released: 1994