If you go looking for Sol Seraph you’ll almost immediately see it mentioned as a logical or spiritual successor to ActRaiser, the classic SNES title. In ActRaiser you play as an emissary of the Gods, sent to earth to cleanse evil and make way for the civilizations of men. Sol Seraph borrows this theme and much of the gameplay, but it also adds a tower defense mode that increases complexity of the familiar civilization building modes.
As a fan of ActRaiser, those comparisons are what originally drew me to Sol Seraph, but they were also part of my initial disappointment with the game. My nostalgia for ActRaiser definitely colored my initial impressions of Sol Seraph and forced me to question my own assumptions about the original game.
First off, Sol Seraph is a good game. It’s not game of the year material, but it does a great job of mixing multiple game modes to create a game experience that works in service to a compelling story. The story, told though cutscenes is sparse but well executed. Since this is an arcade style game I wouldn’t expect a ton of story but it is obvious that the folks at Ace Team put a lot of thought into it here. The Story is also important because it is the only way the game gives you hints of how to proceed. The overworld map in entirely open and it is very easy to go to places far beyond your current power level without any indication that you’re doing so. The story gives you hints and pushes you in the right direction.
Once you enter an area, you play a short side-scrolling action sequence to open the area, then you start building a settlement and setting up defenses. I’m generally not a fan of tower defense style games, but I really enjoyed it in Sol Seraph. Building settlements relies on a pretty deep technology wheel which forces you to manage your population and what vocations your people are assigned to. How you plan these parts of the settlement drive your ability to manage the defenses and placement of fortifications. Ultimately this more robust approach to tower defense feels more like the original Warcraft or Starcraft games than a modern tower defense title.
The only area where Sol Seraph falls down is in the controls of the action sequences. Controls are just loose enough and the level designs are just punishing enough that what could be a satisfyingly challenging exercise more often feels frustrating. It’s not easy to balance an action platforming game and it almost feels like there was a lack of testing in these parts of the game. It’s a shame because while the rest of Sol Seraph more than makes up for these control shortcomings, the action sequences serve as more of a looming threat than a challenge you look forward to throughout the game.
That lack of balance is also where Sol Seraph fails in comparison to ActRaiser. ActRaiser was not an easy game. Like most classic games, the industry was still applying design language from arcade development that prioritized difficulty and replayability over story telling, with long term engagement coming through a desire to reach peak ability on a difficult yet rewarding game.
Sol Seraph does a great job with this in almost every area. During the civilization building sequences you are forced to think quickly and react to incoming waves of enemies. The side-scrolling action sequences do require some proficiency with the system to play, however the design isn’t tight enough to feel consistent and it rarely feels like your proficiency is responsible for your success. Despite that, Sol Seraph is a fun game and hews close enough to the original formula that made ActRaiser fun that if you’re looking for a fix, it will certainly do the job.
Sega has announced that a new fantasy action game called SolSeraph is in the works by ACE Team and it will be coming out quite soon as it will be launching digitally on July 10th
