Battle Evil From The Dawn Of Time
No light, age of darkness... The very beings that squirmed upon this earth... since then, called monsters mutants... No one knew where they came from, or when or how they appeared, for even the animal and plant life that proceeded humankind had yet to be born... Some time passed... Then one day, an unforeseen occurrence befell the ground army... "That Light!" Then, as though the voice were a signal, light began to overflow... The mutants had little power to resist the light, and most of them perished... Again, time passed... it seemed like an eternity... Before long, flowered plants began to sprout and small animals were born... However... The mutants hadn't died out... Living in the dark bowels of the earth, they had multiplied, as though awaiting a complete rebirth... The story is about the mutans' revival, and how the subsequently stretched their influence...
— The Opening Monologue presented in the cover and manual of the Japanese version,
An 1994 Action-Adventure game for the Sega Genesis, also known as Soleil in PAL regions and Ragnacënty in Japan. It was published by Atlus.
Gameplay and visuals are similar to those in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past or the SoulBlazer series, with a few exceptions. Instead of collecting items, you have animals join your party. Two animals may be equipped at a time. Certain animals may be equipped with certain other animals to produce a unique or upgraded effect.
The game starts with a boy named Corona on his fourteenth birthday, surrounded by his mother, his female childhood friend Alice, his frenemy Billy, and their young friend Pico. On this day, he receives his first sword and becomes a man. In Soleil Town, it is a law that once a boy reaches the age of fourteen, he must carry a sword. It's not just any sword that Corona inherits, but it's the old sword (and shield for that matter) of his father, a great swordfighter and hero who was killed in battle. After learning to throw it, he ventures out into the world to fight monsters and have a good ol' time. Except that not all is as it seems.
Crusader of Centy provides examples of the following tropes:
- Ability Required to Proceed: The player needs to acquire abilities to advance the plot. In fact, some abilities are required to acquire abilities required to proceed. For example, in order to head north from Dahlia Valley, the player needs to learn how to jump. However, in order to do so, he must learn how to speak to animals in order to be able to learn the jump ability from the rabbit.
- Amplifier Artifact: The Moa Bird, which makes the other animal's ability more powerful, increasing damage, duration, or effect, as appropriate. The elemental attacks become explosions, the bouncing and controllable swords durations become indefinite (you can cancel them manually), and the speed-related abilities become even faster.
- Ancestral Weapon: The rusty sword of Corona's father.
- Androcles' Lion: Many of your recruited animals must be saved first.
- Animal Talk: To the point that when you first receive the ability, you can no longer speak to humans. You get better though.
- Anti-Villain: Monsters turn out to be this. When the player goes back to the beginning of time, he discovers that they're trapped by an energy being and must defeat it to get them back to their own world.
- Born in the Wrong Century: The imprisoned adventurer in the epilogue. See Hero of Another Story below.
- Boss Rush: In order to access the Final Boss, the player must defeat the five sensations, five bosses based on the senses. Luckily, despite a few of them being Puzzle Bosses, they're not terribly difficult and you can talk to the Mother Monster between fights to replenish your health.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: The cheetah can be bribed to run slower in the cart race with him.
- The Cameo: Sonic the Hedgehog could be seen sunbathing around Anemone Beach.Sonic: Tsk... Tsk...! I'm a gallant hedgehog. Don't mess or you'll get burned.
- Canine Companion: The first companion you obtain is Corona's family dog.
- Childhood Friend Romance: Corona's childhood friend Alice originally admires the brave, heroic types and may have a crush on Corona, but her pacifistic nature shows her the harsh reality of being a warrior, which involves killing others. She since devotes herself to praying at the church, and is excited to see Corona when he returns. In the new timeline shown in the epilogue, the last scene before the credits sequence has Alice revealing that she has something to tell Corona, but decides to wait until he comes back from his walk with the dog. Chances are it was a Love Confession.
- Circling Birdies: The Big Bad Wolf's attack consists of hitting himself on the head then using the stars to damage you.
- Convection, Schmonvection: A stage is set around and inside of an active, near erupting volcano. Falling into the lava only removes 1 apple (life point).
- Cool Sword: The Holy Sword you get as a Hero. It swings faster and is more powerful in addition to being golden. It's also required to pass by a certain character.
- Disappeared Dad: Corona's father ain't around much. Don't despair. You have his father's sword and his best friend Johnny/Mac/Pochi the dog by your side.
- You get to see him again in Heaven. He doesn't have a name, but he's stereotypically dad-like and refills your health. It couldn't be anyone else.
- His father eventually reappears in the epilogue, alive and well in the family's house. Because the monsters never appeared in this world, Corona's father was never killed by them in the first place.
- Dub Name Change: Not just from the Japanese to English version, but characters names between the US English and UK English versions are significantly different (as they were translated by different companies). For example, the dog is Mac in the US version, but Johnny in the UK version. The only animals with the same name in all versions are Moa, Leviathan, and Dodo, though Kitty has the same name in both English versions, and Leviathan is abbreviated in the Japanese version (to just "RIBA")
- Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Averted. The Leviathan decides that Corona is not a bad person when he protects an illusory copy of his mother when fighting him.
- Faceless Eye: The Sight sensation boss is a disembodied eye that hides under destructible floorboards. The Spirit Energy has a large eye that must be opened to hurt it.
- Floating Platforms: Many many many floating platforms. Half the floor in some stages is such. Standing on the floor too long will make it collapse into a never ending pit/lava/ice etc.
- Fox-Chicken-Grain Puzzle: Featuring a chicken, a caterpillar and a flower.
- Genius Loci: One stage takes place around and inside a giant monster.
- Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: The Final Boss is an energy being that is blocking the gate back to the underworld, trapping the monsters in the world of Soleil.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: The player is asked to enter their name at the beginning of the game, though the default name is Corona.
- Heroes Prefer Swords: Especially since they act more like boomerangs and you spend most of your time throwing them at stuff.
- Heroic Mime: Just like Link, Corona never speaks throughout the whole game.
- Hero of Another Story: Amon, the newly crowned hero the player meets upon first visiting the King of Soleil. The player comes across him at various points in his adventures, even rescuing him from a block of ice in Fresia. In the altered timeline at the end of the game, Amon is portrayed as a Blood Knight who ends up in prison.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: One of the monsters says this exact phrase in the past Soleil's church after the town's soldiers massacre them. The game itself though does zigzag this a bit. The humans have been total jerks to the monsters; but as much the game wants you to sympathize with them, the monsters' retaliation has been overall just as violent. In the end both sides have serious issues to sort out.
- Kill It with Fire: The lion's ability allows the player to throw a sword that's on fire.
- Kill It with Ice: The penguin's ability allows the player to throw an icy blade that freezes enemies.
- Both the Fire and Ice attacks can be made more potent by combining them with other animals (Moa and Dodo, which turn them into area of effect and damage over time effects, respectively) or with each other (which generates a more-powerful damage over time effect).
- Magikarp Power: The Caterpillar is utterly useless at first. It literally has no powers. However, after the party returns from Freesia, it is exhausted from the journey and goes into a pupa. On returning from Heaven, it emerges as a butterfly and now gives the player the ability to control his sword mid-throw.
- Moon Logic Puzzle - One of the animals you get is an armadillo that can be used as a platform to jump on (previously only used to cross water). One puzzle requires you to throw it into a bottomless pit where it will float unsuspended in the air allowing you to use it as a stepping stone.
- The Plan: The seer gives you the ability to talk to animals and creates a path to the past in an attempt to have you bring about world peace.
- Playable Epilogue: You get to walk around Soleil town after defeating the Final Boss and see the effects Corona's time traveling has had in the world. The statue of the hero in the town's fountain has been replaced by a statue of a goddess, Amon is locked in jail and the player's father is alive. It's implied that the player and all his animal companions remember the old timeline. It's also possible to die in this if you walk into the fireplace for too long.
- Puzzle Boss: Many many many.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Even if you change the effects of time, you remain the same. Zig-zagged in the ending, where despite monsters now no longer co-existing at the same time as humans, therefore your quest never having taken place, you retain the ability to jump, but not the ability to understand animals, despite the latter being an in story requirement for the former.
- The Rival: Billy (Bull everywhere outside of America), who appears at Corona's birthday party at the start of the game. His friendship with Corona is questionable, as he cheers on Corona and insists on Corona telling him everything, but he also berates him for getting his father's old sword, bragging that his sword is new, and mocks him for going to the playground, even though you can catch him there yourself. When Corona finally becomes a hero, he harshly proclaims that he hates him for it. This might be averted in the epilogue's new timeline, as the lack of monsters requiring swords at their age and the plaza not being built yet would force him to be on good terms with Corona instead, and he even goes as far as referring to him as his "buddy".
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: With a touch of TIME TRAVEL, of course!
- Shifting Sand Land: A desert setting with quicksand pits that don't suck you in but do spin you around and throw you. Necessary to reach some areas by slingshot jumping. Some pits have spikes in the middle.
- Shout-Out:
- Snoop Dogg, Little Red Riding Hood, The Wizard of Oz, and The Bible. The witch in Iris has this for her chant: Ziggy...zaggy...oy...oy...oy.
- The Taste sensation boss battle is basically the gameplay mechanics from Pac-Man, with Pac-Mania's jump mechanics.
- In the NTSC region, the lion's power description has the phrase "Fire! Fire! Heh heh heh!"
- To reach Heaven from the top of the Tower of Babel requires the player to plant a magic seed and climb a stalk.
- Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Complete with killer snowmen. Melts into a water level.
- Spikes of Doom: Averted, spikes only do minor damage.
- Stock Video Game Puzzle: All over the damn game.
- Tanuki: The shapeshifting Wong is one of these.
- That's No Moon: The first mountain range where you battle monsters? It's a single giant monster. At the end, you talk to it at a time before it became so large.
- Theme Naming: Many locations in the game are named after flowers.
- The Three Trials: The player must complete three obstacle courses in order to obtain the three medals required to become a Hero. You can't beat them all without progressing the story, as certain abilities are required for each one.
- Throwing Your Sword Always Works: The first technique you learn with it. Handy for cutting down grass (familiar, no?) and necessary to beat some enemies/every damn boss. Even works as a boomerang.
- Tower of Babel: The actual tower appears and it leads to Heaven.
- Turns Red: The Octopus. Its attack pattern completely changes, too.
- Under the Sea: Complete with lack of oxygen. Also considered as
That One Level. - Upgrade Artifact: All the animals. Varies from fast running to an extra life to a rideable dinosaur. Many for your sword too. You can make it bounce of walls, guide it manually in flight, light it on fire or make it a freeze thrower.
- Wanton Cruelty to the Common Comma: The American version has some translation issues.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: This game is all about the morality of killing monsters. Whether they deserve it, who starts the violence and how if effects their families.
- Witch Hunt: Travelling to the past in the Camelia Desert when there was a nation there shows that this happened on a regular basis and it led to the downfall of their civilisation.
- You Bastard!: It is revealed that the monsters are intelligent and (initially) innocent, and you've spent the whole game committing genocide because you assumed they deserved to die. An interesting premise, but its presentation leaves much to be desired.
- You Have Researched Breathing: You can't actually jump until you talk to the rabbit in Dahlia Valley.
