Terranigma

...'s efforts have always been overlooked, but never because their quality was lacking. Okay, maybe Robotrek wasn't so great and ActRaiser 2 [アクトレイザー2 沈黙への聖戦] was a disappointment, but every other game this company put out in the 16-bit age was a masterpiece. There was ActRaiser [アクトレイザー], the first great non-Nintendo developed title for the SNES, but the company's Soul Blazer [ソウルブレイダー] trilogy was its true masterpiece (and the only other games they made for the system). None of the three games were tied beyond obscure connections, themes, and presentation -- with Illusion of Gaia [ガイア幻想紀] and Terranigma often being called "spiritual" sequels to Soul Blazer. The most important thing these games had in common, however, was quality and innovation. After two of the best games of their respective generation, Quintet put out the perfect swansong of the SNES and the classic era of the action-RPG genre.

Where Final Fantasy VI [ファイナルファンタジーVI] pushed the SNES hardware to its max potential and felt perfect on the platform, Terranigma aims for the same ambitions but fails to deliver on its promise due to the limits of its generation. This is not a complaint of the game, as much as it is a testament to its massive scale and aspirations. The game begins as an underwhelming take on Soul Blazer, as you essentially revive a dead world by battling your way through 5 unimaginative dungeons. After the first act of four, the game becomes the true successor to Illusion of Gaia as you travel a world filled with color and variety. By the third act, Terranigma becomes a adventure beyond compare. The blessing and curse of the game is that it perfects many elements of Quintets previous games, but ultimately fails to mold them into a cohesive whole like its predecessors.

Terranigma is unique in many ways but what stands out is the game's overarching world which is, literally, our own. Once you break free of the underworld within the game's opening hours, you find yourself on a dead Earth. The planet we know and love except with all its life sucked out. Without giving away too much, you find yourself on a journey through Earth's history as you travel from ancient tribes to a future vision of Tokyo. The game has a subtle layer of education, as you familiarize yourself with the map of our planet and travel through our history. It's a shame then that the game suffers from lackluster localization and losses some of its realism as it ventures into a purely fictional future (Columbus is alive till the end of the world -- I mean, really, guys?) Just as interesting is Quintet's signature themes of duality, man's plight against himself, and the presence or non-presence of a God. They are themes that, while not dealt with as delicately as a great novel, we hardly ever see in video games and are used to much effect in this imaginative adventure.

The first part of the game is aesthetically dull when compared to the rest or previous Quintet games. There are two things that redeem it and make the rest of the game an enjoyable experience: the gameplay and the music. Where I thought Illusions of Gaia was on an equal level of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past [ゼルダの伝説 神々のトライフォース]'s fighting, Terrangima completely surpasses both. The game has, easily, the most fluid and fun fighting of any RPG-adventure. The controls are pitch perfect and the game rewards you for your progression. In many ways, I feel Terrangima is to A Link to the Past as Castlevania: Symphony of the Night [悪魔城ドラキュラX 月下の夜想曲] was to Super Metroid [スーパーメトロイド]: it's a game that loses some of Nintendo's level design charm, but perfects everything else wrong with it. Where Zelda gives you no incentive to fight or search for secrets, Quintet observed this problem and implemented a very satisfying experience system so you can level up. Furthermore, the game offers you stores where you can buy items that actually matter. Even better is the game's social economy, which, while primitive, lets you interact and affect the game world in a way that was ahead of its time.

The soundtrack is the perfect metaphor for the overall game, when I think about it. It contains some of the most haunting and beautiful themes to ever grace an SNES title, but it often implements them poorly -- replaying the same dungeon theme over and over, rather than making a new one. Its not that the game is ever bad, but it just doesn't know how to make the adventure as fluid as its gameplay. The Diablo meets Secret of Mana [聖剣伝説2] dungeon crawling is amazing, the themes of the game are amazing, the world is amazing, and the inventiveness is amazing. The game simply fails to make all these things matter and work to their full potential. I fault the system more than the developer as they chose to make a game far too big for its respective hardware. Where Quintet's previous titles feel sealed to their system and year, Terrangima begs for Quintet to come out of its silence and re-imagine this grandiose adventure in the way that it originally thought it could. The game ends with a credits sequence that pulls the heart strings, except they were never attached properly. You might cry at the end sequence, not because of how well it ends the game but because how damn amazing Quintet are at any exact moment.

Quintet's search for elegant and varied battling culminated with Terranigma, the final (and by far the best) part of their trilogy that struck the right balance of brawler, RPG and adventure ingredients. Moreover, it consolidated and polished ideas they established in the past: The platforming of ActRaiser, Soul Blazer's multifunctional equips, the Zelda influence and special attacks of Illusion of Gaia, and the premise of 'world restoration' (that connects these 3 games together) are expanded dramatically and set to slick production. But theirs is - above all, an action-RPG that's repetitive without feeling monotonous. New and versatile options (jump attacks, rapid strikes) complement the better ideas of IoG (KOF-style running, dash attacks with i-frames), and the result is an ever-fresh moveset whose execution seems closer to fighting games than to contemporaries (Seiken Densetsu 3, Secret of Evermore, etc.). Equally fortified - if not as complex, are its dungeons, where stronger elements of LoZ fuse with Metroid elements (unlockable auto-equipped skills, hard-to-reach treasure), while retaining their gift for original designs, scenarios and aesthetics. They also mark a return to form for their RPG side (EXP & item-based upgrades in place of its predecessor's collect-a-thon-esque approach), and - for once, their bosses are fun to challenge, although one wonders if that's more so due to their designs or combat's merits.

It's not only gameplay that excels: Early-game dungeons are followed closely by vibrant, warped, almost psychedelic cutscenes played in slow-motion, that achieve disorienting effects via creative use of Mode 7. When the trip subsides, these scenes begin to depict more traditional but no less poignant stories whose ecological, historical and humanitarian themes reveal the true soul of the Gaia series. Whereas Soul Blazer was more preoccupied with gameplay, and IoG with personal subplots, here their storycrafting skills advanced to a whole new level of maturity. More than a meticulous update, this is one of those rare SNES games that are as much a visual treat as a functional & narrative one.

how should one feel about a game like terranigma? certainly originality is an important hallmark of nearly any masterpiece, and there is certainly no work quite like terranigma. and certainly many great works of art, and certainly many video games, cause a great emotional upheaval, which terranigma, at its best, is quite guilty of. ambition, beauty, a tension between studied technical formalism and wild experimentation: all of these are things that terranigma contain in spades. so—why not five stars?

well, close enough to five stars. as stated above, terranigma is one of the most unique games not only of its time period, but in all gaming history. the only games cut from a similar cloth are, fittingly enough, those made previously by its developer quintet. Most of them tread similar thematic ground via different approaches; the arguably even further sui generis actraiser with its curious mixture of platforming and civ development (the only one of these I haven’t finished, due to my allergies to old-school 2d platforming difficulty), the austere soul blazer, elegant in its simplicity (a game I also ought to write a review for in the future), and illusion of gaia, a game that begins to reach for the heights of terranigma, yet feels constrained by occasional unintentional, albeit enjoyably hilarious bathos (oh, hamlet….). yet in terranigma, there lies something grander, yet also subtler and more considered than in any of these previous works.

all of these games revolve around some being, god-like or not, re-awakening some broken version of earth overtaken by evil. and terranigma is no different; we start with Ark, your average spunky jrpg protagonist, causing through his own recklessness the crystallization of all of the citizens of his hometown. and at the bequest of the village elder (surprisingly uncrystallized), ark leaves his hometown for the first time; upon entering the overworld map, we quickly realize that this is no earth that we are familiar with. gray volcanic rock, menacing lakes of lava, and five mysterious towers which contain not only the power to release the townsfolk, but which also apparently hold the souls of the continents of the surface world. of course, once all that’s been taken care of, somebody needs to make sure the surface world, which had been sitting in stasis for so long, shake itself out of its stupor and evolve the way it’s supposed to; who better than ark for the job? and so ark leaves his hometown, and over the course of many millennia (or not; the timeline is somewhat accordianed up in the rebirthing process) and many twists and turns, ark looks over and guides the growth of our world, our world’s flora and fauna, and eventually even humanity itself.

part of what makes terranigma feel so unique is its incredibly unconventional plot structure. starting as a series of unlock-the-macguffins in the underworld, before morphing into a creation myth, before morphing through several entirely different guises in a row, terranigma’s plot feels nearly as ambling and mutable as the history of our own planet. and yet, within its superficially improvisatory progression lie several connecting themes that ensure that the work coheres as a whole; one almost needs to play to the end of the game to recognize how precisely arranged the totality of it is. a seemingly throwaway line foreshadows later major developments, recurring plot motifs enrich the growing thematic tapestry, building up to an at-first indiscernible, yet ultimately almost overwhelming degree of emotional turbulence.

as already hinted before, the idea of change and metamorphosis is one such recurring idea. ark guides the creation of earth, not simply by awakening the plants and animals, but also by guiding the intellectual path of humanity. he helps birth technological advancements, helps to support the arts, and even indirectly causes some degree of political upheaval. and of course, by effecting such changes, he leaves behind the old, which brings up another of terranigma’s major thematic concerns, that of sacrifice and renewal. ark leaves his old world to support the new one; ark then guides the evolution of the natural world, before leaving it behind to guide humanity’s development. the world surrounding ark changes, sometimes by his hand, sometimes not. but as the new world forms and begins to reach its final enlightened state, ark feels increasingly lost on a planet that increasingly no longer needs him, as friends and helpers come and go, some permanently. But even still, there is a promise beyond said permanence, and that is the idea of eternal recurrence. as stated in the opening crawl of terranigma, the world exists within a cycle oscillating between light and dark, and the torture of darkness will soon be overcome by light, and even light will eventually be snuffed out by darkness. ark eventually comes to realize that this is not the first time his quest has been taken, that his journey is just another part of the alternation between light and dark. even in the end, once the earth has been fully taken care of, there is some worry that it will all fall apart once again; yet, even still, there is peace in the knowledge that the world will simply be rebuilt once again when this happens.

all of these heady themes are supported by some of quintet’s most technically accomplished work. while they could never quite reach the heights of their contemporary squaresoft in that regard, terranigma still contains some of the most varied and beautiful artwork of any game from the 16-bit era. one can feel the warmth of new life spring up, while also feeling the cold of areas where darkness still reigns supreme. this is supported by one of the most underrated soundtracks of the era, containing some of the loveliest melodies as well as some of the most unnerving tracks to appear on the snes.

as for the gameplay, it is one of the smoother playing action rpgs of its time. of course, the focus in this game is more on the plot and the world-building (hmm!); the gameplay, while certainly not an afterthought, is not the main draw. while there are several different sword moves one can pull off, one eventually gets drawn into a series of nothing but running jump attacks, with the exception of some enemies which are dispatched with a stationary jump attack instead. the magic system, while fairly useful against groups of mooks, can mostly be ignored without much trouble. the game also contains an abnormally steep level curve, in which a difference in just a few levels can turn your attacks from being as effective as attacking enemies with a damp sponge to instantly annihilating anything that comes your way. this all sounds like i disapprove of the gameplay more than i actually do; while someone expecting some devil may cry action would be disappointed (an absurd expectation, to be sure), this still plays significantly better than many a number of truly clunky 2d action rpgs of its time period (including terranigma’s own predecessors).

if there is a true complaint that i could lodge against this game however, it’s that a certain streak of immaturity occasionally blights the game’s own ambitions. and i don’t simply mean the occasional crude joke (which, yes, includes a boss battle involving a bird that poops on you, which is perfectly acceptable in my book), but rather a certain lack of forethought in how certain story elements hold up. among many great minds you encounter over the course of history include important modernist painter Henri Matisse, and inventor of the telephone Alexander Graham Bell; you also meet a man named Mick who you help invent the hamburger and who creates his own food chain, along with some unnamed fellow who invents packing sardines in tin, and it’s difficult to say whether or not these moments (all optional) are meant to hold the same weight. one complaint one often sees about this game (one that i agree with) is that, despite its frequent talk of crossing barriers to increase communication between different peoples, most nations in this game get hit with the usual National Stereotype Beam; while bizarrely Europe seems mostly immune to it, just about everyone else is not, including Brazil, Japan itself, and, to an almost offensive degree, China. one could also say that some of the philosophizing in this game (of which there is a lot) is somewhat simplistic and leaden, clumsy and not signifying as much as it clearly wants to; however, i would assume much of this issue is due to a rather abysmal, grammar-mistake-laden translation. it is the sort of translation, nevertheless, that despite its obvious shortcomings, still evokes a clear, artistic purpose and is often moving at the best of times; one would still probably be better served by either finding a retranslation or perhaps playing in the original japanese if one is familiar with it (i wouldn’t know how much of this clumsiness is due to the original script, but i would assume most of the sentences are at least structured properly).

yet, despite this game’s often surprisingly blatant shortcomings, the game still manages to stumble its way out of the muck for the majority of its runtime, and in its finest moments, even approaches something resembling transcendence. in fact, much of the final stretch of the game, from a certain game-changing reveal late in act 3 to all of the final act, is among the most devastating, yet uplifting sequences in gaming history, in which all of the game’s major thematic threads, from sacrifice to metempsychosis, all coalesce into one tear-jerking package. as one is left sitting in awe in front of the final THE END screen after a hauntingly enigmatic post-credits stinger, for a brief moment, one thinks that terranigma could possibly be one of the greatest games ever made. is it? arguably not. but plenty of games that arguably never sink to the lows that terranigma does never reach its heights either. even a game as imperfect as this one could affect you immeasurably, and isn’t that really all anyone could ever ask for from a video game?

This is such an overlooked RPG of the classic era. So this game was completely lost in the US, it was only released in Japan and Europe and really didn't see much popularity until emulators and many years after its release. It sucks that now the only way to really play this is through emulators or buying an expensive European SNES and cartridge for this game. I remember playing this back a while ago and go to the first part, I think I got to the part after you have to escort the lion cub, and really I felt this game wasn't pulling me in and I had other games to play, so I put this on hold for a few months until December and decided to just play this through. The first 1/4 of this game are actually kind of slow and feel like a typical RPG, you go to various dungeons, most of them are nature themed and outdoors or in caves, and you help various animals out, which you can talk to. It sort of feels like a Dr. Dolittle RPG for the first segment. Instead of combat being turn based, you have movement during combat and it plays somewhat like an action game where you can swing your weapon at enemies and go wherever you want, it plays similar to the Mana games. This is both a blessing and curse, because it gives you more freedom, but it also makes combat incredible difficult because you often will accidentally bump into an enemy and its very easy to progress and find yourself underleveled in this. The bosses in this game are also brutal and absolutely need to be grinded to beat.

Now if I were to describe the first 1/4 of this RPG, it'd get an average rating because its literally go to a map, talk to some random animal group, solve that animals problem, then rinse and repeat for the first few dungeons. But then maybe a little over 1/4 of a way you go to a village that ends up being deserted except its overrun by zombies, and this is when the game picks up. The whole talking to animal segments go away and in fact you lose your ability to talk to animals. During this part of the game you travel across the World going to different villages, meeting kings, helping people out, and pretty much are saving the World. What's cool is that this is pretty much the map of Earth, you can go to real life places like Australia, England, France, The US, Africa, South America, and each town in this game is themed like the real world counterpart.

What really makes this game great though is the story. It starts of slow but really picks up fast. There is actually a really dark moment in the first 1/4 of the game relating to mountain goats and after that scene is when I realized this game was a lot darker and deeper than I was giving it credit for. The game is constantly making parallels to real life and goes into some serious topics like pollution, over population, the impact of humans on nature's ecosystems, the purpose of life, friendship and this is just at the surface. Terranigma surprisingly has some very deep themes for giving a friendly outward appearance. Its a game about the beauty of our planet and shows how humans have an impact on the planet and how they can be both positive and negative to the growth of our planet. I mean this is pretty damn unique, and hell Final Fantasy VII tried a similar theme but they came nowhere close to as deep as this game when it dealt with that theme.

The final 1/4 or so of this game does get a little repetitive because if you're doing the side quests, you'll have to keep backtracking back to the same places, and even with a boat it still is a little tedious to travel. In the final 1/3 you get an airplane, but this is so worthless because unlike Final Fantasy games, you can't land wherever you want and need to land on specific air strips. Actually that's one of the downsides besides the somewhat difficult combat, is the traveling in this game is pretty damn slow and often times backtracking places is more of a chore than anything else. The dungeon design is pretty solid for the most part with most dungeons not dragging out or being too complex in design, with a few exceptions, I mean this isn't a 90s RPG if this game doesn't have an overly convoluted and difficult dungeon or two. But the combat just feels kind of frustrating, you can upgrade weapons and you find better weapons as you progress and armor too, and I found the inventory system in this game to be pretty cool, you sort of go inside your inventory and go into different rooms, its really unique, even if it makes inventory management a bit more complicated than it needs to be. Often you'll need to get super close and in an enemies face to hit them, but then you are very vulnerable and likely to get hit back. And often its so easy to accidentally run into an enemy, and early on, especially if you're not grinding, one hit can easily take around 1/5 or 1/4 of your life bar. Bosses are even worse and can kill you in a matter of seconds. The bosses in this game are decent, but not really the most interesting, many are overly difficult and have giant health bars. And the final boss in this game is kind of poor due to how much HP he has and how long he takes to defeat. Still, combat in this game is passable, but I was often having more fun just exploring the dungeons and going to the different towns.

So really Terranigma is a great RPG that was forgotten due to not being released in the US, yet has the same high quality as the other RPGs released at the time like Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, and Earthbound. Sure it had some frustrating mechanics and design choices, it was a bit on the short side for an RPG at least, and it does have a slow start, but once the game progresses enough, it gets good and stays good to the very end. It has a pretty solid ending too and it can be beaten in around 15 hours so it doesn't really overstay its welcome, even if I wish this were a little longer. Nintendo or someone really needs to get on their game and release this on Switch or at the very least do a classic console release.