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Prequel vs. sequel: ActRaiser I & II
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United by love... and divided by fate. Rated R.
According to Psalm 68 of the Bible, "...God will smash the heads of his enemies, crushing the skulls of those who love their guilty ways." In other words, he's a badass, and you best watch yourself, lest he take ye olde lead pipe to your face. Yet somehow every so-called "God game" I've ever played is noticeably short of skull-crushing. Instead, they force me to perform pointless chores like building fire departments, maintaining road networks, and so on while my followers get to do all of the noggin' cracking on my behalf. What a gyp. Now, there are a few exceptions to this rule, most notably Overlord and the Dungeon Keeper series, but in those games you're more of a demigod, and no matter how hard you try you're always aware that you're just a little bit short of omnipotence.
Not so in Quintet's cryptically titled ActRaiser games, released for the SNES in 1990 and 1993, which are gracious enough to deliver both the heavenly thrill of godhood and the earthly joy of smashing the heads of your enemies. But which game in the series holds up better almost two decades later? Let's take a look at six key areas and find out.
Story:
ActRaiser: You're God. There's some evil stuff goin' down. Make it stop.
ActRaiser II: You're God. There's some evil stuff goin' down. Make it stop... again.
Really... that's about it. Trust me.
Verdict: Draw
Variety and Innovation:
ActRaiser is still considered a classic because of its bold meshing of a Sim City-like overseer aspect where you had to help your worshipers with their troubles, and a Mega Man-like sidescroller aspect where you just had to kill things. Though both modes were pretty simplistic by today's standards, the ability to switch between the two was something that hadn't been seen before, and it made for a unique experience. Plus, you got to float around on a gigantic cloud fortress. Now, it's quite common in the video game industry for a sequel to be nothing more than a re-hash of its predecessor's gameplay components with a fresh coat of paint thrown over it. ActRaiser 2, however, represents an extremely rare backward step, offering less variety of gameplay than its predecessor. In fact, it removes the city-building aspect entirely in favor of pure platforming. Considering that mixing the two genres was what made the original so intriguing in the first place, this proved to be a poor choice. The fact that they were forced into that decision by time and money constraints doesn't soften the blow any, though I'll admit that the platforming element both looked and played better than its predecessor. Still, nobody bought an ActRaiser game so they could play a simple platformer, whether it was good or not, and I count myself among those who were deeply disappointed by the change. Plus, they took away my cloud fortress. That's just plain unacceptable.
Advantage: Prequel
Avatar Sex Appeal:
If the adventures of Zeus taught us anything, it's that there's no point in being a god if you can't spend a little time charming the mortal ladies. Check out the abs your avatar gets in ActRaiser 2. You could grate a block of Parmesan on those babies, and the loincloth doesn't leave much to the imagination either. The women (and dudes, if you're a particularly open-minded kind of god) are gonna be all over you if you come down to Earth sporting a physique like that. Now take a look at the goofy costume you're stuck with in the original: you look like a low-rent version of Ultraman. The only action you're gonna get with that is at a Cosplay convention, and I can only hope that a god has higher standards than that.
Advantage: Sequel
Potential for Arbitrary, Malevolent Destruction:
I've never really been keen on the idea of a caring, benevolent God; when it's me pulling the strings I like to slap my followers around a little bit, if only to stave off complacency on their part (and boredom on mine.) In the first ActRaiser, you can indulge your perversities a little by dropping lightning on your people's crops and houses, or leveling parts of their village with earthquakes, or just letting monsters eradicate them. These little punishments become even more fun if you call the little buggers "insects" or "supplicants" in a booming voice... at least until the police arrive with a bunch of nonsense about "disturbing the peace." Anyway, ActRaiser 2 doesn't give you any opportunities for that brand of harmless fun, instead forcing you to go about solving all of the world's troubles one after another like some sort of superhuman errand boy. It's utterly counterproductive: if you let your worshipers boss you around like that, and you'll never get any leisure time. They'll end up calling on you when they so much as stub their toe, and you'll probably be so whipped that you'll come running. The other Gods will laugh at you, and rightly so, because you're a wuss.
Advantage: Prequel
Boss Fights:
Now, just because I like to keep my followers on their toes with the occasional catastrophe doesn't mean I object to helping them out by felling the forces of evil every so often. But unless my unholy foes are entertaining to massacre, it won't be long 'till I feel like blowing up houses with lightning again. In this respect, ActRaiser 2 does the better job at keeping me happy, especially in the area of bosses, all of which are based very creatively on the Seven Deadly Sins. You've got a massive snail representing sloth, a golden dragon with some serious bling for greed, and a disturbingly large fetus with a womb for lust. Okay, so maybe that last one is a little too bizarre for it's own good, but the game makes up for it by having the last boss be very similar to Satan trapped to up to his waste in a lake of ice, as he was in Dante's Inferno. 14th century literature references are, as ever, the quickest way to an English major's heart.
Meanwhile, the original's lineup of bosses (which you fought only in the platforming aspect of the game) consisted of, in part, of a centaur, a fiery wheel with eyes, a dragon made out of ice crystals, and a giant golden Pharaoh head. It's almost as if they pitched out a bunch of boss ideas, but instead of deciding which ones were actually good they just drew out of hat... it's about the only explanation I can come up with that doesn't involve faster-than-light travel.
Advantage: Sequel
Mushroom Forest Count:
As I indicated in my Illusion of Gaia retrospective, the tendency to put forests consisting of giant mushrooms into their games is the most worrisome blemish on Quintet's otherwise excellent track record. Now, I'm not saying they were chewing things they ought not to have chewed, but it definitely raises suspicions. Also, it's just so goddamn weird. Since the first ActRaiser has no mushroom forests whatsoever, and ActRaiser 2 has one, I have no choice but to hand the original the deciding point.
Advantage: Prequel
Verdict: Prequel
While it's a closer fight than most fans of the first game would have you believe, I have to admit that when push comes to shove, the originality and variety of ActRaiser trumps the superior graphics and polish of ActRaiser 2. If it were up to me, a third game would have been made to bring together the best of both worlds but alas, it was not to be.
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