Overview:

A god game where you direct people to live happy lives all the while ridding the lands of monsters who infest said land.  You can do this in a few ways: direct your peoples to destroy nests/lairs, have your Cherub shoot arrows into the flying ones, cause miracles to destroy areas, or command a humanoid statue to complete stages and a boss.  This will get rid of the enemies for good.  Most of the game is done from a top down view with you selecting what to do, where to build, and what miracles to conduct.  The statue levels are the traditional side scrolling action levels and are, arguably, the most fun levels.  The main goal is to eradicate all monsters and let the people live, so good luck!

Visuals:

What a fun looking little game.  The Cherub looks how you think a little fat angel baby should look like.  The overworld view is kind of sparse but populates more and more as you build the world out.  The meat and potatoes is the side scrolling view which showcases all the artwork of the game.  The main statue character looks like a tough Norse Thor looking dude except he swings a giant sword, cutting down enemies left and right.  The stages at least have different visuals and the monsters are different between each stage.  The end bosses of the stage are also quite different from one another which is nice for being such an early game in the SNES life cycle.  The coolest effect is when going from the overworld to the action stages you get some nice Mode 7 effect preparing you for battle.

Audio:

Speaking of the Mode 7 effect, it is accompanied by a nice sting to pump you up even more.  What I’m saying is this game has some pretty cool audio going for it.  The music is pretty rad and moody while the sound effects are very appropriate for the game.  Every time our hero swings his sword he makes a “HAH!” noise and it doesn’t get tired.  The overworld theme is jaunty and not annoying.  The boss battle theme equally makes you realize that some shit is going to go down.  The Sky Palace theme sets the appropriate tone of the game by making it sound serene and godlike.  

Completion:

I wish I could play this game more but, with my cheating, I guess I made the game crash after I beat the second action zone boss.  The game wouldn’t get past the victory pose and I hard locked.  It was a fun game but a little bit bothersome to control because I was constantly being bombarded by bats and dragons, it got annoying.  It was fun while it lasted, at least.