The first thing i have to talk about in this game is the intro movie that plays when you boot it up. Basically its anime style clips mixed with gameplay and guitar wailing music over the top of it. Granted it may not sound amazing, but when i first saw it at my friends house when i was younger, it blew me away. Not just because it was completely awesome but because i had never seen something like that for any game let alone a Zelda style fantasy game. When I saw the box art i expected a sort of Final Fantasy low key kind of music and intro so it totally shattered my expectations right off the bat.

    You play as Alundra, as the game name implies, an elf-like guy who has the ability to dreamwalk, during which he can enter peoples dreams if he is in direct contact with the person. This becomes the focus of the story for most of the game.     The boat he was traveling on becomes shipwrecked and he ends up in the small village of Inoa. As time passes and he meets more of the villagers, they start having nightmares that manifest in reality and kill them. Alundra takes it upon himself to try and help these people and find out whats causing the terrible nightmares.

    The gameplay itself has a very familiar style. You can take on the quest right away or wander around the surrounding wilderness and explore. One big gripe i have is the lack of a world map. The villagers do hint at where you should go next and there are signposts around, but a world map would have been an invaluable tool to have. Its your basic hack and slash dungeon crawl through caves, crypts and other monster infested places. The puzzles in them are what make the game what it is though. One minute you'll see a puzzle and know exactly how its done and breeze right through it. Then in the next room you might spend twenty minutes figuring out what the trick is and slapping yourself that you didn't see it earlier. There are definitely some puzzles that can induce a rage in you but overall they are cleverly done.

    The music was also an interesting part of this game. It had some forgettable tracks but there were a few that stuck with me. The village music and the music for the nightmare levels were a just a few, they fit their locations really well and added to the mood and setting.
    I would be remiss if i didn't talk about its similarities to the Zelda series. I always imagined this game as if there had been a Zelda game in between the super Nintendo and the Nintendo 64 ones. The similarities to its peer in some ways almost borderline on plagiarism namely the seven guardians/crests you need find to defeat an ultimate evil, and many of the items you find. Even with some of its blatant similarities it does differentiate itself very well, with its darker tone and really well done art and animation. 

    The dark tone in particular was one of the prime reasons i fell in love with this game. It dealt with death in a real manner, people would grieve long after loved ones and friends died, and it would show on how they would talk and interact with you. The graveyard would also have more headstones as people passed away. There was a somewhat substantial religious aspect in the game as well. Some people were overzealous by their beliefs and alienated the people around them to a degree, or were losing there faith because of all the tragedies in their lives.

    Although it borrowed some attributes from Zelda and others, Alundra is a game all its own. It was an influential gaming memory in my life and made me look at Japanese action rpgs in a new way. They don't all have to have the somber or kiddie like tone to them. This story has teeth and its better for it.