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Terranigma
Super Nintendo (SNES)
And On This Day, “Terranigma” Was Resurrected
4/5 stars
Way back in the 16-bit era – the 4th Generation, better known as The Golden Age – Enix, the developer/publisher best known for ‘Dragon Quest’ and later for its merger with Squaresoft to form Square-Enix, did some very stupid things. Instead of localizing “Dragon Quest 5” and “Dragon Quest 6” for Western release, the company pushed absolutely terrible games, such as “Brain Lord” and a ruined localization of “Elnard” (which we know as the hideously unbalanced and nearly unplayable “The 7th Saga”). During this time, Enix served as the exclusive publisher for what amounted to a Japanese Indie development group known as Quintet. Quintet was responsible for two of the SNES’s most unique and memorable titles, “ActRaiser” and “Soul Blazer,” which both went on to receive abysmal sequels. Despite a remarkable Western performance for the sub-par “Illusion of Gaia/Time” (a.k.a., “Soul Blazer 2”), Enix decided that Western sales weren’t worth the localization effort and closed-down their North American offices, denying the United States any further Enix-published games. One game, which was nearly ready for North American release, was “Terranigma,” (a.k.a., “Soul Blazer 3”) which would have finalized the trilogy and concluded the ongoing story of the destruction and rebirth of the world. Fortunately, “Terranigma” did receive a European release, and thanks to the ready availability of quick and easy emulation, anyone with a device capable of running a Super Nintendo emulator can experience this lost finale in the ‘Soul Blazer’ trilogy for themselves.
Presentation
“Terranigma” looks and sounds very much like the pinnacle of SNES game development. Discreet areas and characters are made of beautiful, detailed, well-animated sprites, while the overworld makes use of the SNES’s signature Mode-7 (which always suffered from some jaggies and distortion).
Audio-wise, “Terranigma” re-uses a lot of sound effects from “ActRaiser” and “Soul Blazer,” which ties the final Quintet game back to its early roots. “Terranigma” also features a fantastic soundtrack of ear-pleasing tunes that run the gamut from cheery to eerily haunting. It doesn’t quite reach the heights of “Soul Blazer,” but it is easily a more pleasant and memorable soundtrack than the one found in “Illusion of Gaia.”
The only real flaws in “Terranigma’s” presentation are some really simple technical restrictions that didn’t play well with the Latin alphabet. Many of the game’s placard screens, like the Nintendo and Enix logos at the beginning and the introductions for each chapter, are off-center, which looks unpolished and weird. Furthermore, the character limit for in-game location names is a meager 8. This forced the localization team to use tortured abbreviations in many cases, such as a bird sanctuary that is simply known as ‘Sanctuar,’ a word which forcibly fills my brain with the image of a ‘Final Fantasy’ Cactuar wearing the Pope’s Mitre.
Story
“Terranigma” revisits the rather creative theme of placing the resurrection of a destroyed world in the player’s hands. This theme was first visited in “Soul Blazer,” where it made a significant impact on my teenage mind. It is a concept that I find incredibly intriguing, yet “Terranigma” doesn’t handle it quite as well as I would have hoped.
The tale of “Terranigma” begins by introducing the player to their character, an obnoxious teenage troublemaker named Ark, who lives in the isolated and idyllic village of Crysta, where no one ever comes or goes. In screwing around with some of the other local hooligans, Ark accidentally finds his way into a sealed room in the Elder’s home, where he discovers Pandora’s Box, which is occupied by a small, annoying demon named Yomi (this box becomes the game’s menu/inventory system, with Yomi acting as the cursor). As a result of opening Pandora’s Box, everyone in Crysta turns to ice, and the Elder sends Ark on a journey outside of the town for the first time ever, as he must conquer 5 towers in order to restore the villager’s souls.
Upon leaving Crysta, the player discovers that Ark’s world is actually rather strange. The game’s localization doesn’t do a good job of explaining it, but it turns out that Ark actually lives inside the world, in an underworld cavern lit by an internal sun, much like Edgar Rice Burrough’s ‘Pellucidar.’
Afraid of spoilers for a game released in 1995? No worries! It turns out that this Pellucidar-like underworld and its 5 towers are just the game’s tutorial! As Ark completes each tower, he unseals one of the submerged continents on the surface world, which turns out to be our very own Earth. Upon returning to Crysta and its revived inhabitants, the Elder explains that Ark’s journey is only beginning, as he must now travel to the surface world (a journey from which he may never return) and restore life to the desolate wasteland that he has just raised from the watery depths.
Ark journeys across the surface of the resurrected Earth, reviving plants and animals (with whom he can communicate, much like the hero of “Soul Blazer”) before ultimately reviving Humanity. With the resurrection of Humanity, the scope of Ark’s activities changes from resurrecting sealed aspects of the Earth to rebuilding civilization, bringing human culture up to speed to where it was before the world was destroyed.
While “Terranigma’s” narrative does revolve around a rather unique theme that has only been handled by Quintet in any meaningful way, the game’s story and plot do have a few problems. The game’s world view is actually a semi-incoherent mish-mash of a number of different, conflicting philosophies, built around a core of Dualism, which are only discussed at an incredibly simplistic and basic level. Likewise, the rapid-fire re-living of significant historical events feels confused and generally a bit off.
This brings me to the main problem I have with “Terranigma’s” writing (besides the questionable localization), which is the pacing. In the early game, “Terranigma” feels incredibly rushed. Ark barely spends any time in the process of resurrecting plants, animals, and the winds. On the other hand, the late game, in which Ark spends most of his time running (or sailing) between a handful of towns scattered across the continents, endeavoring to spread new ideas and advance human civilization tends to really drag. It doesn’t help that almost every plot thread in the late game takes the form of an annoying, tedious fetch quest, nor does it help that the exact triggers for side-quest advancement are something of a mystery even to those dedicated gamers who have written strategy guides for “Terranigma.”
Experiencing “Terranigma” for the first time took me a little over 30 hours. I was thoroughly enjoying everything about the game for the first 12 hours, but my enthusiasm began to wane after that. Fortunately, things picked up again right before the ending, leaving a good final impression.
Gameplay
“Terranigma” is one of those uncomfortable Action/RPGs that sits right on the cusp of being a straight-up Action/Adventure with no significant RPG elements at all. Unfortunately, “Terranigma” is still an Action/RPG, a subgenre I generally dislike, as Ark’s character level and accompanying stats are actually far more important for success than the player’s ability to twitchily control Ark in battle. Unfortunately, the player isn’t completely off the hook. Though most bosses do have relatively easy-to-find safe spaces (not the SJW kind), the onus is still on the player to learn enemy patterns and directly control Ark’s actions in battle, which consist of dashing, slashing, jumping, blocking and various combinations thereof.
The most annoying thing, I find, in this type of Actiony/Adventury Action/RPG is the fact that I can never tell if I just suck or if my character sucks and is under-leveled. This problem is incredibly pronounced in “Terranigma” after about the halfway point. In the first half of “Terranigma,” Ark gains a level or two in each area where he must combat enemies and ultimately face-down a boss. At the half-way point, though, it becomes incredibly easy for Ark to become under-leveled, and the number of trash enemies to kill for experience kind of drops off a cliff.
Perhaps the worst thing about the mid-point of “Terranigma” is that it pivots on a TVtropes-style ‘That One Boss,’ who represents a massive difficulty spike that only compounds the effects of being under-leveled. When I encountered That One Boss, I was 3 levels below the ‘recommended’ level that guide authors suggest, which made for a very befouling experience. Ultimately, the problem with “Terranigma’s” late-game difficulty spike comes from an inconsistent experience curve that mandates a lot of grinding at a couple of key points. In both cases, the dungeons where the spikes occur seem to have built-in ‘grind rooms,’ where Ark can rapidly enter, one-shot a couple of enemies, rapidly leave, rapidly re-enter, one-shot the enemies again, ad infinitum, ad nauseam until the player feels like Ark’s damage output and amount of damage received is reasonable (at the final grind point, I literally spent an hour and a half killing the same two enemies over and over… it was… not fun). I must point out, though, that That One Boss will always take minimal damage and deal enough damage to kill Ark in 4 hits or so, as that’s just the way the boss is designed… apparently, the player is supposed to intuit that Ark should use magic instead of physical attacks on this boss… despite the fact that most spells don’t work on any bosses (including That One Boss).
The magic system in “Terranigma” is generally an undeveloped, poorly-explained disaster. Ark can find items scattered throughout the game called ‘Magirocks.’ Wizards at Magishops can craft Magirocks into single-use pieces of jewelry that cast one of a wide variety of rarely-useful effects. The poorly-explained aspect of the magic system is that Magirocks are actually recyclable, as any magic jewelry that is used to cast a spell reverts to the same amount of raw Magirocks used to craft it. I would have never figured this out without a guide…
Which brings me to “Terranigma’s” final flaw: It’s full of TVtropes-style ‘Guide, Dang It!’ moments, in which the player is expected to do something, but that something is so poorly hinted at or explained in-game that consulting an outside FAQ is nearly essential.
In general, though, the lion’s share of “Terranigma’s” dungeons and combat environments are well designed. Bosses and puzzles are generally clever and require the player to out-think them rather than out-twitch them, which I like. The general vibe I get from “Terranigma’s” gameplay is that it sits uncomfortably between the streamlined simplicity of “Soul Blazer” and the obnoxiousness of “Illusion of Gaia,” with a delightful blending of ‘Zelda’-style dungeons.
Overall
As the final game in the trilogy containing “Soul Blazer” and “Illusion of Gaia,” “Terranigma” left me feeling a bit ambivalent. It didn’t move me as much as “Soul Blazer” did, nor did it piss me off as much as “Illusion of Gaia” did. Ultimately, “Terranigma” is a lost classic from the Golden Age that manages to do right by itself, despite a significant number of flaws.
Presentation: 4.5/5
Story: 4/5
Gameplay: 3/5
Overall (not an average): 4/5
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