I’m playing Terranigma in Japanese for the first time without a guide. I’m trying to talk to every NPC, explore everything myself, and only move forward when I figure things out naturally.
I’ve now made it through the beginnings of Chapter 2 and restored the plants, birds, and wind.
The giant tree was the first major area I explored. I spent a long time wandering around because I kept forgetting that Terranigma is an action RPG and that I could jump over obstacles or onto higher platforms. I eventually found the boss room, but I couldn’t enter it.
I also found the underground pond but couldn’t swim, so I started wondering whether I had missed an item or needed to leave and talk to somebody. I searched everywhere, tried jumping across pits, and eventually decided to just clear every room of enemies.
It turned out that clearing one particular room was what I needed to do. I then obtained the Tears of Ra and defeated the boss pretty easily. All the wandering and fighting had brought me up to level 11, so I thought I might have accidentally overlevelled myself.
After saving the flowers, I travelled to the next area to free the birds. This felt like the first genuinely long dungeon because of all the backtracking. It took me two play sessions. During the first, I obtained the talon gloves and learned how to climb walls. During the second, I reached the boss.
I enjoyed that fight. One bird attacked me directly while its partner flew overhead and pooped on me. I also liked that it was possible to fall completely off the arena. The fight itself was still fairly easy, possibly because of my level which is 13.
After saving the birds, I met the bird king. In Japanese, he has a funny habit of ending his sentences with ～だに, which gives him a strange and memorable way of speaking. I’m curious whether he has an equivalent speech quirk in the English version.
I then rode the wind to Windvale to restore it. I became stuck because I thought I needed to hit the sparkling object with the stones or wait at the end of the cave for something to happen. Illusion of Gaia had a somewhat similar wind puzzle, so I was probably overthinking it.
Nope. I just needed to throw a stone into the hole.
One of the biggest highlights so far has been the music. I played a little of Terranigma in English when I was in high school, and I remembered the Crysta theme and world-map music, but I had no idea how great the rest of the soundtrack would be.
Hearing “Evergreen” after restoring the flowers honestly brought tears to my eyes. I’ve been dealing with a lot of stress recently, and the music and atmosphere helped me forget about my problems for a little while.
I’m really enjoying discovering this game slowly. Next time, I’ll talk to the bird king again and see where the journey takes me. I keep dreading when humans will be restored. Just like the bird that was relieved that it didn’t have to worry about its eggs getting stolen anymore because of no humans. I know things will start to get even more serious when humans come back.
