Those brief flocks of enemies and each of the massive bosses are there to suck you dry so that you reach Efter with low health. (courtesy of YouTube user King Arthur Pendragon)Īs a last note on gameplay, I’d say familiarity with enemy behavior is the defining condition to succeed in Sol Divide. Intro and attract mode of Sol Divide on the Sega Saturn Hint: go to the options and switch Score Display to ON to see your score and the multiplier tags. Aside from the enemies in the level, in order to achieve higher scores it’s imperative that players dispatch all bosses with a ×4 multiplier. All enemies that are killed with the final blow of the slash combo have their base value multiplied by 4, a factor that’s reduced to 2 if you happen to register the kill in the second-to-last slash. While the main purpose of magic is to facilitate survival, melee slashing is the key to higher scoring. There’s also an exclusive powerful spell that’s specific to each character: “Phoenix” for Kashon, “Summons” for Tyora and “Nightmare” for Vorg. A few magic spells are only obtained through items for a single use only, and the more powerful the spells are the bigger the amount of magic energy they consume. These can be power-ups, health potions, magic potions and herbs (increase max health), some of them with different sizes. Most enemies when defeated release items that bounce around for you to pick up. Naturally Kashon comes off as the easiest character to play with because of his combo and the better reach of his melee weapon. Each character has a specific set of commands to do the combo though: the sequence for Kashon is slash, slash, slash, →, slash, changing the directional to ↓ for Tyora and ↑ for Vorg. That’s when performing slash combos are useful, since they inflict good damage and stun enemies while pushing them back. While you can shoot enemies from afar, they will eventually get close and unless you react they’ll end up taking up huge chunks of your life bar. “So are magic and slashing more important than shooting?” As weird as it might seem, YES is the answer to this question.
Magic efficiency varies according to the enemies you’re facing, consisting in the most important aspect of the gameplay besides the slash attack.
Each character is able to fire, to slash and to cast magic spells (all inputs configurable) chosen from a wide assortment of magical powers shown below the health meter. Kashon the hawkman stands as the most balanced of the three, with the clear advantage of having the best melee reach thanks to his long spear. Vorg is the dark knight specialized in sword fight and with stronger melee abilities. Tyora is the only woman in the group of playable characters, a wizard with decent shot and magic power but terribly short melee reach. Kashon faces an escapee from the Prehistoric Isle Once again I haven’t even dared to dip my toes in Original, focusing on a new challenge for Arcade mode: loop the game with Tyora. Original is a special version designed exclusively for consoles, infused with RPG elements and with rearranged stages/enemies. The disc comes with a straight rendition of the arcade game in its Arcade mode. Each level is preceded by a brief dialogue showing a little of the interaction between these characters, too bad the Saturn port came out only in Japan and all in-game texts are in Japanese. Graphics and music reflect this ambience quite decently, I must say.
The story of Sol Divide involves an elderly evil man named Efter and three brave heroes who stand up against him to end his reign of terror in a medieval world where knights, undead creatures, wizards, sylphs and winged beasts dominate the skies of several villages.
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It’s extremely short and intense while absurdly overwhelming at times, thanks to a series of random elements that are capable of draining that precious health bar in a snap. Sol Divide’s borderline experimental gameplay mixes shooting and melee slashing and is unmatched in its pace, clunky mechanics and overall uniqueness – or weirdness, some might say. However, bearing of horizontal orientation is pretty much the only common ground Sol Divide shares with Sengoku Blade. Similarly to Toaplan, Psikyo was a company more akin to vertical shooters, so it’s no wonder it only made two horizontal shmups during its entire lifetime. I myself remember distilling my hatred against it everywhere when I first started digging into the fascinating universe of shooting games, and it wasn’t until I was practically forced to play the Playstation port that I actually saw something beyond the almost insurmountable layer of presumed mediocrity.
It’s a particularly elusive subject for trash talk and it’s got the potential to bring out the worst from even the most sensible player out there. If widespread reputation is any sign of how a video game should be perceived without even being played, then Sol Divide is the epitome of failure, of dread, of sheer shmupping horror.