Game: Terra Memoria
Genre: Indie, RPG
System: Steam (Windows, macOS) (Also available on Nintendo Switch, Playstation, & Xbox)
Developers | Publishers: La Moutarde | Dear Villagers
Age Rating: US E10+ | EU 3+
Price: US $19.99 | UK £16.75 | EU €19,99
Release Date: March 27th, 2024
A review code was provided, with many thanks to Press Engine,
Terra Memoria is that increasingly rare game that some of us still crave, a fantasy pixel-turn-based RPG. Developed by French developers La Moutarde, it offers a deeply thought-out, unique fantasy world inhabited by a mix of anthropomorphic animal folk and the rare humanoid, all of whom seek ‘constancy’ in their lives. But that constancy is under attack from forces both mundane and deadly, and your haphazard team of cuties must venture out into the world to see if they can knock some sense back into it all. On the way, there’s light collecting, crafting, and building elements to fuss with.
It’s a game I desperately want to like, so let’s see if it succeeds!
The World of Terra Memoria
Constancy isn’t just a word in Terra Memoria, much less a struggle for anyone with ADHD. It’s the core tenet of a secular faith that doesn’t look to gods so much as it does the concept of a world where things behave in a way that you can rely on. It’s not the only faith in the world; the foxes have their own spirit realm, and you’ll get to explore that, too. But mostly, it’s about reliability, and the world has precious little of that going on as the game starts.
Like a certain RPG juggernaut of historical renown, the problems first involve crystals – or, specifically, the dwindling lack thereof. They’re a precious resource that provides power to these eccentric cities and towns. But, between the onslaught of mad robots called carcasses and managerial incompetence, the crystal mines aren’t producing enough to keep the lights on at home. And since the city mayor is the sort of guy to leave census data in a nightclub, it’s up to your team of fuzzies to get the trains running on time.
Well, at the start. Things get complicated fast, but not for long. Terra Memoria is a breezy experience that you’ll have to work to nudge towards the thirty-hour line, but you’re a better fit to roll credits in half that.
Mechanics and More in Terra Memoria
Combat in Terra Memoria has some nifty wrinkles to the turn-based formula that make it intriguing but rarely difficult. It combines a light press-turn style system with elemental weaknesses. Hit an enemy hard enough with the right stuff, and it’ll fall to the back of the combat queue. Picking the right enemies to hit in order is the strongest tactic to keep in mind, and watching out for any unique abilities that an enemy might have, like a haste-style jump to the front or a rage mechanic, will help you mitigate any issues.
Growing your party and completing puzzle side quests while exploring will broaden your range of abilities and elemental enchantments. For example, your third-party member, a sloth bard, is a supporting character who will automatically tag team with one of your fighters and offer an alternate set of abilities. Equipment can help, too, with stats stored in pins (yes, decorative pins) that you’ll collect and eventually be able to forge. Yet it’s not a system that I fussed with much, as combat is often so easy that I only had a mild alarm when I accidentally walked into a boss in the fox spiritual realm. It went down without a fuss.
Terra Memoria also allows cooking – each new recipe provides a one-time boost to your party’s hp – blacksmithing and a very minor settlement building system that, sadly, doesn’t get utilized as much as I’d hoped. Early on, it mostly serves as a couple of puzzles to solve on the way to wherever.
The obligatory RPG fishing minigame offered a mild surprise. Would it be the drifting bar management system? Click when the bobble dips. Well, no, you just… click the sparkly spot and get a fish. You know what? That’s fine, actually.
Graphical Charm Carries the Day in Terra Memoria
The colorful pixel graphics and the spritely world add a liveliness that, honestly, carries the game in a ton of places. The writing style, the in-world brochures, and the game menus recall the cheekiness of Ooblets with less of the sometimes overbearing tweeness that bogged that game down for me. The character design is, frankly, wonderful, with your first two party members being a bulky rhinoceros mage who’s tired of stereotypes and a spiritual fox with family gems woven through her fluffy tail. Your third is that sloth bard and I’m pretty sure his chill vibe is up for playing ‘Freebird’ whenever you want.
By the time you get to the next two party members, both humans, you’ve been buffeted by so many adorable animal people that, personally, I kind of glazed over Not Edward Elric and Grumpy Blacksmith Girl. They’re great! They add to the story! I’m immediately putting Syl the Fox back as my party lead, sorry.
That abundance of charm helps to keep you in Terra Memoria because navigating the game can be funky at times and downright frustrating at others. It’s easy to get hung up on a piece of landscape or wedged behind an object, and the presence of an unstuck button in the menu isn’t just a necessity, it’s an acknowledgement that this is very much an issue and not one the developers did much to avoid.
Terra Memoria Does Make Some Mistakes
There are a couple of issues going on with Terra Memoria I have to address. Offered as a cozy take on the classic RPG, its side quests can occasionally be infuriating and unclear. More than once, I was afraid I would lock myself out of being able to finish a quest by progressing the story. I went looking for an NPC in the area I thought I was supposed to be in, only to find nobody. It’s the hot springs, right? These hot springs?? Are you sure???
To say nothing of the three chickens on that same map. There are, I promise you, three chickens, and they are, in fact, in that village. I eventually found them. It took me a grumbling twenty minutes, and yes, you have to pixel hunt through some foliage.
In addition to what I hoped would be a Suikoden-style settlement development that turned out to be much simpler, the crunchy navigation issues are flaws that are pretty hard to ignore. They will impact your experience with Terra Memoria as much as they did me.
Conclusion
All of that said, I came in wanting to like Terra Memoria, and in the end, I still mostly do. It’s chunky, yes, and the tone is sometimes a little off – maybe it’s the South Park exhaustion, but a subplot about ‘they took our jobs’ didn’t hit quite the right note for me when it was introduced – but its charm really is undeniable. The game is just too bright, breezy, and pretty to stay cranky, and its flaws can be soothed by taking breaks and coming back to it when you’re ready.
The world building is also something that the developers put a lot of care into, and that’s also a delightful surprise. I’d be thrilled to revisit these characters and their quirky, magitek-laden world again in the future. It’s an indie delight, through and through, and I’m happy to say that, yup, it gets the green.
Final Verdict: I Like It
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