#game-review #finishedgame2025 # Terranigma `="![]("+this.imgURL+")"` ## Data: - Console: `=this.Console` - Play Status: `=this.Status` - Start Date: `=this.start-date` - Finish Date: `=this.finish-date` - Clear Time: `=this.clear-time` - Total Play Time: `=this.total-play-time` ## Tiering: `=this.Tiering` Buddy, this was one of the most unique games ive had the opportunity to play relative to my expectations going in. # Playthrough Notes - Playing on my [[Anbernic RG35XXSP]], I'm noticing a lot of lag in the audio. It doesn't ruin the experience, but it's very noticeable. - I need to get some wired head phones and also consider - I almost think this would be better with a controller. - Updated my Anbernic and realized that Iwas playing on the depreciated version, so I had to restart my playthrouhg - Still playing it because I was enjoying it. I think it was fun to experience the early parts of the game while on the farm, so no harm, no foul. - sylvain castle - 286 - blue black red brown - chandeliers - serpent switch changes fountain - taking a break because of the grind. I expect to come back to it when I heed the call. Likely before the end of 2025. - I'm going to do it damn it - play time vs. Clear Time discrepancy reflects amount of time replaying sections and things otherwise not covered by in game timer. - like [[mother!]] In terms of story style - Mythopoetic. # My Thoughts - I feel bad throwing vases, I dont want to be an impetuous youth! I am worried about being a bad boy - living menu is sick as heck - Yomi, who are ya, what are ya - these sprites.... - It's kind of fun to guess which sprites exist because the character designer drew the character in a funny pose. - I think if I'm not careful, I could get *really* into this game, even if I am only playing in at most 20 minute bursts. - these slow moments where the continents on earth are resurrected feel like quiet, special moments. - I happen to love the way that these "dungeons" are built. I like that they go around themselves and are constantly transforming themselves. - Hate burrowing enemies though - "Cmon Big guy!" during the Lion Test - Not my favorite part of the game, but I can't deny it's a creative way to do a dungeon. - guiding but not substituting the work. - the goat scene after the Avalanche is a fascinating one. - for life to flourish, we must also make use of death in some capacity. - or is this about respect for life and how humanity respects death more than an animal? - Wow this got really dark in Chapter 3. - The town in the Gobi desert being a hallucination is fascinating. Kind of a tricky zone too. I imagine this is where the game starts really building in difficulty. - The zombies don't even realize they're zombies - I did not enjoy the notion of finding that one hidden entrance. you have to watch the zombies enter the space and see the marking on the top of the roof. But that's not great IMO. - stumbled my way through the gobi desert by accident? - The path is walk west until you get to three rocks in a tirnagle, then go south until you get to rocks shaped like a dragon, then walk northwest until you find some skulls, then walk north until you find the big skull and crawl inside. - The section in Loire where you just have to bump around and find things is probably the most open-ended the game has been up to this point. it's not quite a fetch quest, but you have to really think about how you go from Step A to Step B to Step C - It's long a drawn out, but I was surprised at just how easy it was to sort of go from Step A to Step B without trying. Invisible guiding hand! - It encourages the player to shift their thinking from bouncing around dungeons and spaces into a more conversational dungeon. - Who is this blue-haired pretty boy, eh? - ROYD - wow terranigma, wear your politics on your sleeve - the conservative candidate is also a heavy drinking war vet... hmmm... - It's interesting that they consider progress of technology, and what that can lead to if left unchecked. - "This world evolves with geniuses"? Is terranigma, the same game that appears to be advocating for progressive politics also insinuating the great man theory? - And you get a boat and can go around the world now! - There's a bunch of food to smaple, and ARk always likes it. Will this be relevant? - It's for the vibe. - Taking photos of towns and showing them to other towns to unite the world. - the problem here is that because the game is so about going all around the world to raise it up, im not sure what I need to do next a lot of the time. Im adrift and its hard to know what to evendo next in chapter 3 sometimes. - Strange case of the cooler it gets the further away I get from it. What as fascinating experience of a game. There's nothing quite like it. Very realk that I got the wrong impression of it at times. - But that owness can only fall onto me so many times before I start to think about how if everywhere you go kind of stinks, maybe it's you. ## The Flow of Time in the Narrative - "how much time has passed?" - who even is Ark? Is ark a stand in for some kind of god? A guiding force of nature? - Chapter 1 with the revivals, so much time must pass in the revival of the continents - Chapter 2, for us it feels like a very short amount of time between reviving plants, birds, beasts and finally humans, but they talk as if weeks and months have passed in what in terms of game time is only a couple minutes - Abstraction of time to tell a story - Chapter 3 - Waking in Tibet and dealing with the nomads of the gobi desert, only to then enter the obviously France area and we have to deal with aristocracy - Loire chooses a mayor to develop the town, and you complete a bit of the story, and the town has grown radically. - It's also really sad that I can't talk with the birds and animals and plants of the spaces that I once could, when I return to them after circumnavigating the world. ## Quintet Cameos in Neotokio - In Neotokio if you check out a garbage can and slay the ghost in the filthy dormitory, you can find the Quintet studio. Here all the staff who worked on the game have little cameos - I think it's really interesting that you can pick out specific NPCs and know that this is a *real person*. The sound room in particular, there were only two people working on sound in this game, and there are two people in the sound room. This means that these people have had their likenesses stored in a digital space, preserved for as long as the game exists. - I like that some of the staff members represent themselves as frogs or as a rabbit - there's one NPC who just straight up uses a fake name - It's fascinating that this kind of cameo focuses so much on the working conditions of the Quintet employees as well. - The filthy room where you fought the ghosts is actually the devs' dormitory for when tey needed to pull overtime. - Multiple employees long for a 2-day weekend again. - Lots of references to Illusion of Gaia 2 ## The Level Scaling Issues With Bosses It is extremely annoying to me when I play a game with progression based around experience points when, despite killing basically every foe on sight with ease, I come up to a boss an am immediately stonewalled. It immediately kills any interest I have in the game, because of the extra grinding that is required. I don't mind grinding, but it's the notion of being under-levelled means I do nothing to the boss, while being over-leveled means I kill it in five hits (a common occurrence with Bosses in Terranigma) This has happened to me twice in Terranigma. The first is Bloody Mary, which is a common roadblock for all players. The walkthrough I was consulting after getting stuck said you should be level TWENTY FIVE (for reference I was at level 21 and doing NOTHING). I had to spend time grinding even though I had naturally met the game's challenges over the course of the game. This block actively stopped my momentum of play for a solid month or two. It happened again at the Final Boss's second phase. For some reason, being level 30 with the strongest gear isn't enough to do more than 9 damage with a regular attack. Sure I can mash and chain together a few hits, but this Dark Gaia fella's got 1000 HP. Quite literally if I hit this guy for 10 damage each time, I would be hitting him 100 times before I won. That's just not a realistic way of having a fun time with a boss. It means that I need to reload my save from before the jump inot hte final area, point of no return and go to a dungeon that I know has foes that give out 100 exp per kill and just romp around in there for a half hour to gain a level or two to even have a shot, when I've otherwise been blasting through every other area in the game. Even the penultimate dungeon boss fight was balammced fine. A little challenging, but it's not like it was too easy, or an immediate blockade. "Good boss battles take over an hour =) i have beaten him at lvl 28. Only boss who is a pain in this game is the witch in portugal anyways." [^1] SILENCE, FREAK ### On Useless Magirocks Why the hell am I bothering collecting Magirocks across the world when I cannot use them against ONLY CERTAIN BOSSES?! I could use them against Bloody Mary, but I can't against the Final Boss? It makes the whole purpose of collecting "spell slots" entirely useless. It makes me feel like I've wasted my time collecting these things, stocking up on money and then loading up on buying them for the major task at hand, when I can't actually use them and won't know for certain until I'm in the fight. I already load up to the max on healing items, but I can't use my healing spells? What the hell is the point of this at all then? It leaves a really sour taste in my mouth when I'm right at the end of the game and can't use half the shit I've been saving for this exact moment. # Favorite Moments / Memories - For as much as it was a difficulty space to navigate at times, I really enjoyed the Sylvain Castle. I loved the way it forced me to explore the entire space, both ascending the tower and then going into the basement and vice versa. Up and down and all around. - Mac makes burgers # What were you doing when not playing this? - [[20250807 Farm Getaway]] # Relevant Links - [^1]: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/588784-terranigma/49013104