It's fine. I'd say the story peaks in Loire, at least that was the part that actually grabbed my attention plotwise. I thought that this was gonna end up being a "good not great" game for me but the last stretch kind of killed it for me. A fair amount of moments where the game doesn't progress until you do some seemingly unimportant sidequest which got pretty annoying during the final leg of the game. Gameplay is whatever. It's not horrible it's just kind of there. I don't think any of the bosses are anything noteworthy about other than the last few bosses which I thoroughly disliked (dumbass robot/final boss). The soundtrack is great though so I'll hand it to them for that one.

We are all individuals. We should live naturally.
Don't live for some duty, for some God. Live for yourself. Live for the individual.
Sadly, it appears that this message of Terranigma is commonly misunderstood, and people believe the game promotes self-sacrifice and bowing down to nature, when it's in fact about the beauty of humanity that allows us to conceptualize reality on a grand scale and create.

The gardener caring for his pretty pumpkins is happy and prideful because of his own accomplishments, because he lives for himself.
The butcher is happy because he can create a new meal.
The inventor is happy because he himself invented airplanes that will allow all of humanity, including himself, to improve.

And finally, Ark, the protagonist, is happy and filled with pride, because he helped the world grow. He learned, he improved, which is the greatest joy there is.
In the end, he's not rewarded with death. The game does NOT contradict its own message by hypocritically having the protagonist die for his duty, for a God, for someone other than himself. Rather, he is gifted with a dream, flying through the world in pride, knowing he was what led to this beautiful earth. And afterwards, although his journey as a hero is over, he will continue to live on. For himself. In happiness, together with his beloved.

Mesmo com tanta coisa pra jogar, cedi a tentação de voltar para Terranigma novamente, é como reassistir alguma cena da sua série favorita pra relembrar os bons momentos e ficar com vontade de ver tudo de novo.

Impressionante como a história fala sobre tantas coisas sem se perder ou ficar bagunçado. As nuances da natureza, terra e humanidade recontadas de forma fantasiosa, mas madura, não sendo leve quando assuntos mais angustiantes são postos na narrativa. Uma grande mensagem anti-niilista sobre aproveitar a vida e ficar próximo com quem te faz bem, mesmo que o mundo pareça ser um caos de individualismo. Tudo isso é acompanhado de cenas muito bem construídas e o balanço entre gameplay e a história faz o jogo ter um ritmo perfeito, não se surpreenda ao ver pessoas dizendo que parece um filme ás vezes.

As representações geográficas e históricas são ótimas de um ponto de vista que são recriações mais excêntricas de pessoas e lugares reais, pequenas gafes envolvendo estereótipos existem, mas não chegam a ser problemáticas.

Infelizmente, a tradução para inglês é... medíocre? Não que seja impossível de jogar em inglês, muito pelo contrário, as piadas eu até entendo, pois é algo realmente complicado de traduzir, o problema mesmo é mudar o significado, simplificar desnecessariamente e até errar os nomes. Provavelmente o despreparo da equipe de tradução juntamente com a falta de contexto do jogo que eles tinham deve ter resultado isso, exemplos:

• "Kurisutaruhorumu" e "Sutōkuhorumu" dois lugares com conexão na lore, que numa tradução mais fiel seria "Kristalholm" e "Stockholm" (vindo do Sueco), mas ficou "Crysta" e "Storkolm".

• "Roido" que seria "Lloyd" só que erraram e botaram "Royd"

• "Riotto" (o "Rio" vem de Rio de Janeiro) virou "Liotto"

• "Shiren no tō" que seria algo como Torre de teste/treino/provação, etc, mas deixaram só "Tower", e é daí pra pior.

Então jogue em japonês caso você saiba, vai ser melhor apesar disso tudo acima parecer um grande nitpicking da minha parte (e talvez seja mesmo).

Entrando na gameplay, eu dificilmente gosto de RPGs de ação antigos, a maioria deles são obviamente arcaicos, um esmaga botão monótono é esperado e não segura um jogo de longa duração, algo que eu não vi em Terranigma. A lista de 6 movimentos de ataque (1 deles sendo um combo de dois ataques) consegue trazer um grau de treino e aperfeiçoamento interessante para um jogo de SNES, ainda mais quando se aprende a usar frames de invencibilidade dos ataques ao seu favor, mistura isso com o fato do jogo não te prender em sessões desnecessariamente extensas de combate pra focar em algum puzzle ou qualquer outra coisa e dificilmente fiquei enjoado.

Uma pena que não posso dizer o mesmo das magias, elas não tão inúteis quanto falam, mas o uso delas é realmente raro, eu basicamente fiquei me forçando a usar elas em momentos que eu achava que poderiam ser úteis, mas meh... Apenas em dois bosses as magias conseguem ser aproveitadas, magias de cura e sair da dungeon são as que você vai mesmo utilizar. Magias de invencibilidade são quase inúteis já que perdem o efeito ao sair de uma tela a outra, e os bosses em que elas seriam mais favoráveis NÃO DEIXAM VC USAR MAGIA. Creio eu que se o luck (stats que aumenta a força das magias) também aumentasse o tempo de duração delas, deixariam mais úteis.

Mesmo que as dungeons e áreas do jogo sejam bem construídas e tudo flui naturalmente, é visível uma reciclagem de assets que parece estar envolvida com o orçamento do jogo ou alguma limitação da equipe (tentei pesquisar sobre isso e não encontrei nada, fica como palpite) escolheram muito bem em o que iriam gastar recursos. As cidades, vilas, cavernas... são consideravelmente grandes até, tudo te dá a impressão que você está em um mundo vivo que realmente esta em constante progresso.

No geral, Terranigma é um show visual, técnico e criativo da Quintet, obrigatório principalmente se você já tiver jogado os outros jogos da trilogia Gaia ou ActRaiser.

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 more 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?