How Does Soul Blazer Rebuild the World?

By emptying dungeons and refilling towns with the same souls, one lair at a time.

Soul Blazer (Japan, January 31, 1992, as Soul Blader; North America, November 27, 1992) starts from an emptied world. The demon Deathtoll has bought every soul in the Freil Empire from its king, one gold piece per soul, and sealed the living in his monster lairs. The Master sends down a warrior who can speak with anything alive. The game's engine is a single verb: release.

Every dungeon is a set of monster lairs. Destroying a lair frees the soul bound to it, and the soul reincarnates exactly where it belongs: a mayor returns to his house, and the house returns with him. A freed soul might be a person, and it might be a dolphin, a snail, or a talking tulip, each with information, gratitude, and small errands. Towns literally assemble around the player as the dungeon below them is cleared, and the boss of each region holds the soul of the town's head. Six regions, six magic stones, then the World of Evil and Deathtoll himself.

Under the charm sits Quintet's recurring bleakness. The world was emptied by a bargain: King Magridd, counseled by his queen, sold his subjects' souls and was imprisoned by his own customer. The inventor Dr. Leo, whose machine summoned Deathtoll, dies undoing the deal, and his daughter Lisa is the hero's one human attachment. The ending grants the warrior his wish to live as a human, at the price of every memory of who he was. He wakes in Grass Valley; Lisa recognizes him; he does not know her. They start over.

THE SYSTEM

Lairs, souls, towns

The lair as a lock

Progress is not measured in keys but in population. A dungeon is finished not when its boss dies but when its town above is whole again: the design Soul Blazer contributed to everything Quintet made after.

Everything can talk

The hero's gift is conversation with any living thing. The tulip and the dolphin are jokes with a thesis inside them: resurrection in Quintet's world is not reserved for humans. Terranigma would build an entire chapter ladder on the same idea.

Three artifacts, one phoenix

To face Deathtoll, the hero assembles three sacred artifacts and calls the phoenix. The structure is a tour of the rebuilt world: the world itself becomes the weapon.

Dr. Leo's paintings

Leo's inventions and his captivity drive the plot between regions; his sacrifice to kill the queen is the game's first statement of the theme Terranigma would take furthest: restoration always sends someone a bill.

THE RECORD

Release and afterlife

Three releases, then nothing

Japan and North America in 1992; Europe followed on January 27, 1994, though the game was never released in the United Kingdom. It has never been re-released in any form: no Virtual Console, no remake, no collection.

295,000 copies

Quintet's reported split: 200,000 in Japan, 70,000 in North America, 25,000 in Europe. The smallest seller of the three fan-trilogy games, and by most accounts the hardest to play legally today.

The notices

Electronic Gaming Monthly's review crew gave it the Editor's Choice Gold award and compared it with A Link to the Past as an equal in challenge and fun. Nintendo Power covered it across pages 83 to 89 of volume 40 and scored it 3.875 out of 5.

The music

Composed by Yukihide Takekawa, a working rock musician outside games; the soundtrack album was published by Apollon on February 21, 1992, three weeks after the game.

The Trilogy Question The History of Soul Blazer More from the Library

How Does Soul Blazer Rebuild the World?

THE SYSTEM

THE RECORD

THE FIRST WORD