Terra Memoria from La Moutarde and Dear Villagers is billed as “a little RPG with exploration, fighting, construction and puzzles”. Honestly, it doesn’t sound wildly different from every other RPG to have been created, but is there anything that allows it to stand out from the crowd? Well, come with me to a world of crystals and machines going haywire!
The story of an RPG is the most important part, at least to me. See, you need to have a narrative to follow to keep you plugging away through the game, and fortunately Terra Memoria comes up trumps in this regard.
We live in a world where crystals do everything – make trains run, power all machines and so on. So when the supply of crystals starts to run out, obviously people are very concerned. Coincidentally (or is it?), there are also reports of ancient machines called Carcasses starting to reactivate and attack people – we are tasked with finding out what is going on with both strands of the story, exploring the world, looking for new things to do too. All in all, the story of Terra Memoria is very nice indeed, as well as being fun to follow.
Presentation is a bit of an odd one though, mostly as Terra Memoria attempts to blend pixel art and 3D graphics in a way that I haven’t seen very often. The backgrounds are all fully 3D and appear to be hand-drawn, with a pleasing look to all the different biomes and landscapes we find. In front of these backdrops, our characters and all the NPCs we interact with are drawn in a pixel art style, but this only really becomes apparent when the game zooms in for whatever reason – other times the characters and monsters just look very good, and move nicely.
The design of the characters, enemies and backdrops are well worked, and you soon become attached to the characters in play. It helps that each have distinct personalities and you’ll soon develop your favourites – mine’s Syl, in case you were wondering) The game does look a little like a furries convention mind!
Now, the actual gameplay itself is made up of a few different facets – there is exploration to do, quests to fulfil, combat to engage in, and then a whole construction side of the game as well as a strange levelling up mechanic.
We’ll kick off with the exploration side of the game, and this will naturally feed into the combat. It’s in here where the various locations we visit are usually quite large, and there are a lot of places to go and find. Each path forks multiple times, and there is always something to look for – be that a sacred tree for one character, a spirit world for another and so on and so forth. Hidden chests and various things to pick up abound, and time spent running around is never wasted.
Of course, as you do, you’ll inevitably come across enemies – these are depicted on the screen as little wisps that start to chase you around. You can avoid them, if you are quick enough, but like any good RPG, grinding and killing enemies is a good way to level up. You’ll want to fight as much as you can.
Combat takes place in teams of two characters – each of the main characters is supported by another character, up to a maximum of six. Those support characters can change the main character’s attacks in some way – by switching their elements, say, or turning healing spells into attack spells. This introduces a great deal of flexibility to the combat, which is just as well!
Every enemy we fight has a certain elemental weakness, and also has a number next to their name. Hitting an enemy, focusing on their elemental weakness will reduce said number by two, while a regular attack (i.e. one they aren’t weak to) will reduce it by one. Reducing this number to zero basically makes the enemy weak to every element, and moves it down the timeline a good long way, allowing you to pile on and attack as much as you can. Obviously, the enemies will attack as much as they are able, so making them weak will stand you in good stead. The combat sounds complicated but it is actually really intuitive when you get into it, and this is a big plus point.
Of course, fighting leads to EXP points, as you would expect, but here Terra Memoria goes its own way as well. In order to level up, you have to rest the team, either at an inn or at a campfire. When you do, the day’s EXP is awarded all in one go, letting you level up multiple times. While resting, you can also do some cooking, which is a great way to add extra HP to the party, and also do some forging, allowing you to craft pins that will increase the skills of the characters they are attached to. Syl, for instance, can have a pin that increases the efficacy of her wind magic; matching the pin to the character is quite involving.
The last main part of Terra Memoria that is worth worrying about is the construction mechanic, and while it can only happen in certain places (when you find a construction stone), later in the game it begins to play a much bigger part in proceedings. Building a town, rerouting a railway, rebuilding barricades – there are a few things to do with this part of the game. Making sure you have the right bits needed for each blueprint, or have the money to buy it, leads straight back to the exploration again, in a pleasingly circular way.
You should certainly enjoy your time with Terra Memoria. The combat is satisfying, but if I did have a complaint, it is that it is a little bit easy; quite often you will find yourself steamrolling the foes, which is a bit of a shame. Other than that, everything in the garden is rosy, and so if you want an RPG to get your teeth into, you could do a lot worse than pick this one up.
