Seraph

First impressions:
OK, so like many of us someone at Sega wanted more Actraiser and got sick of waiting on Square Enix. To that end we have Sol Seraph, and it makes no secret of its inspiration (why would you bother, really?)
From the jump it will seem familiar to anyone who has played Actraiser. Don't let that trip you up because it's doing a lot of things differently. In a way it's mirror image, because now the action sequences feel like an afterthought and the strategy sequences are much more involved.
The action sequences are, frankly, a little disappointing. The controls are noticeably sluggish. Not unplayable by any means, but there is a definite delay between press and action. There is a lot of afterswing animation that cannot be interrupted as well. Combine this with enemies that attack right at the edge of the screen (ranged are the worst about this) and you get a number of cheap hits that are pretty frustrating. It's hard to find a flow. There are an array of attack and defense moves but a lot of time the best option is to just jump and attack.
The use of foreground and background is neat but it's hard to tell if the enemy is on your plane. Leads to a lot of waiting or just running headlong into them. All in all the action bits have left me a little flat so far.
The world building is considerably better. I don't play tower defense games so it took a minute for me to shake the mindset I had around Actraiser's simple building and shooting. Careful resource management is a must because you can paint yourself into a corner quickly. The hints are helpful but don't hold your hand so you at least *feel* like you're figuring it out. You have to stay on top of things because multiple waves of demons will start streaming in ruining everything before you know it! I've died a few times this way but it doesn't feel as unfair as the action sequences. All in all it feels like the bulk of the attention was paid to this part of the game.
Visuals and sound are both just serviceable. Graphics are pretty plain but nice enough. Music is a little repetitive but fine. It's a budget title so I'm not about to go in hard on the assets. They get the job done.
All things considered it's worth the asking price. If someone tweaks the controls for the action sequences in a patch my feelings will definitely not be hurt though.

Patricio Meneses' music is REALLY GOOD in this game.
Yuzo Koshiro did ONE track and it's the blandest thing on the whole soundtrack. They've really been hyping up his involvement, but it's nothing. Meneses, however, killed it.
Anyway. I was really excited for this. ActRaiser is one of my favorite games and ACE are a developer who don't always make great or even good games, but always make interesting games full of ideas. Sadly, they've really missed what made ActRaiser greater than the sum of its parts.
-You can't speak to your villagers
-You can't use your miracles to help your villagers
-You don't receive offerings and give gifts to your villagers
-You do not facilitate trade between your villages to unify the world
-Aiding your villagers does not grant you extra MP and spells
-Growing your villages does not increase your HP
-There is no reason to go back and forth between multiple villages or revisit a village you have cleared
-There is no reason to care about your villagers.
All of this has been removed. Villagers speak during the game, and they have problems and their dialogue is well written, but you play no part in it, there is no way to interact with them at all. Your villagers were the glue that held ActRaiser's two parts together and made them feel like a whole. You cared for them and they strengthened you in return. They were the heart of the game.
SolSeraph is instead a tower defense game and a platformer game which you take turns playing in almost complete isolation, and they are both overly simple and mechanically archaic.
This was originally a Do Not Recommend review, but honestly I was just having a bad day yesterday. I really am rooting for Ace Team, always, and for a $15 price tag I can adjust my expectations. I can only hope they've had a good long think about what made ActRaiser special before starting SolSeraph 2.
Oh and get rid of the tower defense stuff too, we're all sick to death of TDs.

Yes, this is the ActRaiser spiritual successor in the same spirit of Bloodstained, Yooka-Laylee and Mighty Number 9 were to their series. Right down to the near-identical SNES controls.
Instead of Christian lore, we have Greek mythology this time. You are Helios, personification of the Sun, and you are worshiped by tribes who need your guidance to build and defend their lands.
The side-scrolling stages are almost a 1:1 gameplay match to ActRaiser. You have a sword, spells, and double-jump thanks to your wings (the only feature inspired by the less popular ActRaiser 2). There are even some Sim-mode power upgrades hidden in some stages, so explore. Yes, there are "checkpoints" in most stages, despite what some other reviews said.
"Sim" mode is similar to ActRaiser, complete with weather effect spells. New is the fact that you have to build barracks and archery towers to defend your town base. There are Monster Lairs too, but this time YOU go into them and clear out the monsters rather than the townspeople (but you still need to to guide their roads to the Lair like in ActRaiser).
If you were worried that the game is described as "tower defense" rest assured the sim mode is primarily about building huts, fields and roads to Monster Lairs just like ActRaiser. The tower defense aspect is an additional feature.
The graphics are adequate. The music is regrettably less epic than ActRaiser and especially ActRaiser 2 (the only aspect of ActRaiser 2 that was better than the original game). The main thing is that the gameplay is accurately inspired and expanded upon, and thankfully not too inspired from ActRaiser 2.
Difficulty is closer to ActRaiser than ActRaiser 2, thankfully.
Worth the price if you were a fan of ActRaiser. This is obviously a labor of love for the genre.
Thank you, Sega and ACE Team. If only Square Enix would someday give us an official ActRaiser 3.

Not sure why this game gets so much hate, it's actually very good. Does it measure up to Actraiser? Realistically no, but that is a high bar to cross because it is legitimately one of the best games on the Super Nintendo. That said, it is an excellent take on the genre and I can recommend it to fans of that type of game.
The "building" mode is essentially a Tower Defense game, the ultimate objective is to build out your town enough to where you can seal the enemy lairs by building temples near them. You do the building yourself rather than the town auto developing based on where you place roads, but you can place roads so you can spread out the village a bit, and this is key to being able to seal the lairs, as there is finite building resources that you have to manage, as well as managing food and population and arming your towers.
After you get the temple built and manned, then you can enter the lair as long as it's not in the middle of an enemy wave. Once you defeat all of the lairs in an area, the final one will open up so that you can beat the area permanently. And the 1st and last stage follow the same basic formula as Actraiser, where you go through a linear stage and eventually face up against a boss. The regular lairs act as mini stages rather than the people sealing them, you usually get a minor upgrade such as to magic or health when you clear these.
My main complaints about the game is that the difficulty is kind of all over the place, not to a ridiculous degree but the mini stages are super easy compared to the regular stages, you'd have to really try to die on those. I still haven't beat the 2nd area boss yet as it's very tough, but I was able to kill the 3rd area boss with a lot of ease comparatively. Also there are definitely some cheap hits that have that old trial and error feel of the old school games, perhaps that's intentional, but still pretty annoying.
If you want a game LIKE Actraiser, I think you'll really enjoy this. Gameplay is solid, tower defense is basic but fun and fast paced, and it has very good graphics and music for a cheaper indie title. However, don't expect it to be exactly imitating Actraiser, it is definitely inspired but if you're looking for a game that plays exactly like it, this isn't it.

Heavily influenced by ActRaiser, but it stands on its own as a really solid, if kind of short, game. Nice combo of Tower Defense and Platformer. It makes for a really nice speedrun, and it is frequently on sale for just $5. It is absolutely worth a try.
My biggest complaint...there is no hard mode.

As someone who has finished ActRaiser 1 and 2 on the SNES, I understand the disappointment some reviewers felt that this wasn't an exact replica of ActRaiser. I don't understand why they wouldn't recommend it, though.
If you enjoyed ActRaiser, you will enjoy this. It shares the same concepts from the first game in the ActRaiser series, but adds tower defense to the city simulation portions. As a fan of tower defense games, it was a welcome addition. (A concept copied by Square Enix for the recent remake.)
No, the platforming isn't as good as ActRaiser 2, and no, the city simulation isn't as good as ActRaiser 1, but it does a better job recreating the feel of ActRaiser 1 than ActRaiser 2 did. I highly recommend it.

If you told me this was a port of a lost PS1 Actraiser 3, I would believe you. That can be both good and bad, the Actraiser series was very much unique and could be very clunky at places. The graphics are very... generic. Many of the enemies look like they came out of a unity asset, but the animations flow well and the game is fast paced. The gimmick of enemies hopping out of the foreground or background can be neat, but oftentimes it just means you wait to hack green orc #758 in half (Shout out to green orc #758 though, he's the best one.)
The strategy segment is an odd mix of simcity, civilization, and a tower defense game, and can be a pretty fun little game all its own. It doesn't seem to have a TON of depth, but not everything needs to be a ludicrously in depth thing. I do wish the monster lairs stopped producing monsters when you defeat them, and I would have liked the humans to have some part in shutting them down rather than just being short vignettes into the side scroller part, but those are minor nitpicks.
Overall, a fun retro style game that brings me back to my childhood, before everything sucked, if only just a bit. Worth the $15 as long as you aren't expecting a world changing game, but do want something sort-of-kind-of-maybe like Actraiser.