Soul Blazer

Box for the american version

Soul Blazer is an action role playing game developed by Quintet and published by Enix for the Super Nintendo in 1992 in Japan and the U.S. and in 1993 in Europe.
It became the first game in a trilogy for the snes and was Quintets second game following Actraiser (1990).

Although the gameplay is quite different from Actraiser, the theme is quite similar.
Revive life to a dead world and defeat the dark forces responsible.

To summaries the story here's the intro to the game:

The big different is of course that Actraiser was essentially a God-sim, whereas in Soul Blazer you play as the Masters follower working in His name.

The game-play itself is nothing unique and quite straightforward; slash your sword and use magic to defeat monsters, each area ends with a boss-fight.

Dungeon

By defeating monsters you get gems, which are used to cast magic.
If you die you are sent back to the heavenly shrine and loose all your gems, so there's not really any game over. And since you gradually get stronger by leveling up, it is not really a very difficult game.
Of course you need to figure out the pattern of the bosses to know how to easily beat them, which is of course standard for this type of game.
The puzzles aren't very challenging either.
It isn't so easy as to just get boring though, but if you are looking for a real challenge you need to look elsewhere.

First Boss fight

The unique part is that you gradually restore life to the empty world and has the ability to speak with all living things, humans as well as mermaids, fish, goats, tulips, trees, etc.
As you save creatures from the curse of Deathtoll they in turn help you progress in your quest with advice, clues and new equipment.
In this way you gradually get to understand exactly what has happened (as if the intro wasn't clear enough) and get to know the creatures of the world.

All in all it is a good solid game, but to be honest it isn't great. But the trilogy it started off is with the second game being "Illusion of Time" (titled "Illusion of Gaia" in the U.S.), and the last game being "Terranigma".