This past March, I downloaded Terranigma, per recommendation by Scottishduck17, a favorite Let's Player of mine who is retiring that career soon. I loved it. It's an action RPG. I beat the game back in April. I beat Soul Blazer two months ago. And today, I beat Illusion of Gaia.  Now, under my old account (which I can't access anymore because my Windows Live ID got hacked and I don't have a phone to reactivate it with) I made a post about how great it was. But some guy commented about loving Terraria. Then I explained to him that Terraria is a two dimentional Minecraftia while Terranigma is an SNES action-RPG.  But he made some herp-derp about how "I know but I" he just said that he meant Terraria. Oh, well. That's one game he'll miss out on. The games have their own standalone stories quite satisfactorily, like the MOTHER games, but they do have references to events and people in the series's other games.

So just what is the series? Soul Blazer is an action-RPG created by Quintet (published by Enix and Nintendo) with mediocre sprites, sound effects, and to some extent, music, but fairly good gameplay; in fact, easy at times. The enemies aren't that tough usually, but the bosses sure are. "Monster Lairs" spawn enemies out of the ground, and the player needs to attack them until they die. Unfortunately, it gets monotonous sometimes when the player can spam the monster lair as the enemies keep coming out. You only have two basic attacks (or to put it more bluntly, one attack that repeats over and over again a la Minecraft and has too much knockback, and one somewhat passive, crappy ability that passes for an attack.), making attacking one enemy constantly a pain unless you have a wall nearby You must advance through six worlds, resurrect people and animals, collecting "souls" to give you new abilities: Soul of Magician, Soul of Light, Soul of Shield, Soul of Detection, Soul of Reality. Apparently the Soul of Detection is unrequired to beat the game because quite frankly, I never found it. You also collect enchanted weapons, magical abilities, armors, and more. The item system is weird because you may only hold one of each type of item at any one time. This gets annoying, as having multiple Medical Herbs would be very helpful. You must defeat Deathtoll, the evil king. Like EarthBound, you can name your character.

Illusion of Gaia is the indirect sequel to Soul Blazer. The combat system showed slight improvement over Soul Blazer, although combo attacks haven't been introduced quite yet. Will, an average boy, realizes he has telekinesis. He gets drafted by Gaia to find the six statues, rescue his father, and save the world from a demon comet. On the way, Will must transform into three different forms. Standard, or "Will" is as mediocre as Blazer was near the beginning of the game, until he learns some sweet Dark Powers down the line. Freedan, the Dark Night, has a bigger sword (which has longer range, too) as opposed to Will's little stick-thing, has higher attack power, and is all-around the best character for combat situations, as his Dark Friar attack is useful for out-of-range enemies and switches. Shadow is the Ultimate Dark Warrior. He is introduced nigh the end of the game. He is made of pure starlight and has much higher attack power, making Freedan almost obsolete. He looks like Chaos from Sonic Adventure...hmm...He has no long-range attacks, but his shielding move covers his entire body rather than just the front of him. He also uses the phoenix magic in the final boss. All playable characters share Telekinesis, particularly used for certain objects in-game, as well as the useless dark gems that enemies drop. Exp is removed from the game entirely, rather, players must increase the stats of Will by defeating all enemies in a subdivision of an area, gaining an increase to a stat. The item system is like that of Paper Mario 2: low capacity, but you can hold multiples of an item. Like Soul Blazer, however, you must have an item equipped to use it, though. Will's name cannot be changed. (Sorry Ninten, Ana, and Lloyd!)

Terranigma is hands-down the best game in the series. It has pretty darn good graphics for SNES standards! Ark, a mischievous young adult living in the underworld's only town with civilized life, triggers a prophecy rendering the world inert, and he must resurrect the world by defeating bosses and whatnot. The combat system is five times better: with combo attacks, a spinning midair attack, and more. Magic rings can be used once each, with powerful attacks. Summon Pins can also be used for different needs such as HP recovery, status ailments, or invincibility. Unlike the other two games, Terranigma introduces a money and shop system, where you can buy all sorts of items, weapons, armor, and magic (all categorized separately). Items, weapons, and armor are purchased with gems alone, but for magic rings/summon pins, you need to buy them with a certain amount of "Magirocks" too. The item system finally got its act together: You can hold up to nine of any one item at one time, so inventory space is never a problem. Like Soul Blazer, you can also have more weapons again. The weapons you collect are successively more powerful than each other, but some have enchantments on them. For example, the first weapon, Crystal Spear, recovers your HP over time (only in the Underworld), the RocSpear (8-character limits apply to items, magic, armor, and weapons in this game) can break rocks, but the Sticker has more attack power. You also have Yomi, who acts somewhat like Tippi from Super Paper Mario in many ways (mind you, Francis) but he's much more cocky than Tippi is; following you throughout the entire game. The story is more developed than in the previous two games, and unlike the previous two games, Ark's bae Elle is already with him - Blazer and Will didn't get their girlfriends until mid-to end game!

That was pretty good. i should work for Wikipedia.