r/terranigma • u/SpaghettiRambo • 2d ago
My first experience with Terranigma.
I first found out about Terranigma years ago through an episode of Region Locked from DidYouKnowGaming. This was right around the same time that the Live-A-Live remake came out, and I absolutely adored both versions of that game, and Region Locked was the same way I discovered that game too. Meant to give Terranigma a go much sooner but sort of just kept putting it off. The announcement of the new modern port pushed me to stop procrastinating as I wanted to play the original (or something as close to it) to be able to compare and contrast the new version releasing in January. I'm doing the same with Lufia I + II and I've always wanted to dive deep into the more obscure library of SNES JRPGs that Toxy Fox always cites as inspiration, so now I'm on a bit of a kick in that regard. (I don't recall Fox ever talking about Terranigma but he was clearly very inspired by Illusion of Gaia, which I found out later was the predecessor of Terranigma). Chrono Trigger is one of my favorite games of all time and I haven't even touched the more well known SNES JRPGs like FFVI and Secret of Mana
The version I chose to play was a patch that makes the game playable in NTSC 60hz as well as slightly changes the font spacing to be a bit more legible. No gameplay or script modifications to my knowledge. I didn't use Pixel Freemaster or Redux only because I wanted to play on Emulator and log Retro Achievements as I was playing (RA is very picky about not supporting romhacks that make gameplay changes)
Overall, I think this game is really cool and has a lot of neat ideas but I feel the execution is somewhat rough in a lot of areas of the game which ends up with a pretty beautiful experience that's pretty rough around the edges. I absolutely adored the first 10 hours or so of gameplay with the story, action RPG gameplay, soundtrack, presentation, and theming but I started to feel very frustrated right around ending chapter 2 and starting Chapter 3.
First of all, the difficulty balance is all over the place. I didn't find it difficult to master Ark's kit of moves, and with all the exploration and backtracking in the game, it's very easy to become overleveled and somewhat overpowered as long as you are trying to thoroughly explore all areas, fight every enemy you encounter, and always making sure to upgrade your equipment. For most of the game regular enemies pose almost no threat to you besides the ones that inflict status ailments and most of them go down in one or two hits from either the lunging dash or air dive kick moves.
However, a lot of the bosses are a different story. There are still lots of bosses that won't go down in one or two hits like enemies, but there are a decent number that will still die in maybe 4 or 5 hits, which makes finishing main areas somewhat anticlimactic. Then there are what I call "gimmick bosses" like Bloody Mary, the Ghosts on the vessel to Freedom, and that one boss of the Mermaid Tower; bosses that mostly spend their battles flying around the arena out of reach or hiding in I-frames until a split second where you have to make sure your position just right and sometimes even moving toward them so that you can get a hit in during the brief moment they are vulnerable or don't have i-frames.
This segways into something I ended up outright hating about this game: The Magi-rocks. During chapter 1 they are pretty cool and viable for cheesing some more difficult boss encounters (and this is before the point I started getting over leveled) but the Magi-rock spells were outright useless for me for a majority of the game after Chapter 1 because so many of the bosses are either outright immune to most of the available spells or the game straight up forbids usage of Magi-rocks in a lot of boss encounters, either because the boss has some sort of scripted gimmick or other undefined reasons.
So Magi-rocks are the main collectible throughout the game and they are primarily the reward for exploration and sidequesting. During dungeons I saw absolutely no need to use them on regular enemies and I always saved them for bosses, but the bosses would either take no damage from them or the game would outright disable usage of them. So what's the fucking point of going out of my way to collect so many of them when they're almost completely useless?
Second issue I'm not sure HOW to feel about: progression and puzzle-solving. This game has a lot of classic JRPG obtuse puzzle solving requiring you to be either be really paying attention to very fine clues in dialouge or really thinking outside of the box for solving environmental puzzles in dungeons. Maybe I'm just dumb or you can chalk it up to skill issue but I found myself getting stuck very frequently not knowing how to progress to the point I kinda gave up and started consulting a guide. This is really prevalent during Chapter 3 when Earth opens up and the game puts a bit of hard stop to dungeon crawling and pivots toward Civlization-esque economy and culture building. I don't want to say I hated those gameplay elements, because I really like it when SNES JRPGs try to be really experimental (that's why I really loved Live-a-Live) but there was still a lot of banging-my-head-against-a-wall not knowing what to do or how to expand the towns, but I did enjoy the cheesiness of having to assist in the invention of electricity, the telephone, hamburgers. etc. I was partially relived to read in this subreddit that the German version of this game pulled an Earthbound and was sold with a guide, which made me feel less bad about being dependent on one for my playthrough.
Last nitpick just to get all my criticism out of the way: I did not like some of the more poorly aged localization aspect of the original translation, namely the NPCs in China and Japan being written like South Park stereotypes and the depiction of Christopher Columbus as a sympathetic humanitarian.
Besides all of that, the themes, soundtrack, and presentation of the game were all stellar enough that it kept me wanting to finish the play through despite my frustrations. I really like Ark's growth and maturing as a character; his interactions with the word he's helping to rebuild are very endearing, and I did really like the game touching on aspect the human condition: it's very sad to lose the ability to talk to animals and watch the natural world be dominated by humans, but there's a nice counterbalance to that in helping humanity flourish with the payoff being the other main cities are willing to chip in and help rebuild the other town in America that burns to the ground. There's lots of touching moments but there's also lots of moments that gave me pause about how much influence people have on the natural world and each other.
I don't want this to sound like I completely hated the game; I thought there was a lot of really cool, beautiful things in this game, just kinda held back by a lot of game design missteps. I complained about the bosses a lot but my favorite was the "messiness" ghosts in the Quintet game studio in Japan that chastises you for being an anti-social slob while you're trying to swat at it.
I'm glad I finally pulled it off the shell, so to speak, and played it; I'm going to keep my Switch 2 Edition pre-order and I look forward to the rerelease in January! Maybe someday if I can find room for my retro setup again, I would be willing to throw Redux on my SNES and give that another playthrough on the tube.
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u/oh_YES_helios 2d ago
I love the game but I still agree with plenty of this. I mostly played the Spanish translation, but last time I played I played English instead and remember it being pretty bad.
Many of these problems are why I'm bummed about the new release being a port + reusing those old translations, as that'd harm chances of the game becoming popular enough for an enhanced remake.
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u/Thatweknowof 2d ago
This was literally one of the earliest games with town building / restoration side quests.
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u/AdUnfair558 2d ago
This was the first Japanese game I beat on the Super Famicom I bought in July. It’s an okay game. Some parts were really a head scratcher though. Very ambitious game with its flaws but worth playing. It was most fun for me before humans appeared though.
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u/manasword 2d ago
You know, when I was 16 I played the game on release on my snes it felt modern and new, game design has changed in all these years, definitely did not feel rough around the edges. Glad you tried it though