In the world of Terra Memoria, everything is powered by crystals, but there is a problem. The supply of crystals is disappearing, bringing with it the potential collapse of civilization. To add to the population’s woes a new breed of monster has started to appear, filling up the countryside and even attacking towns and villages...

Track down and solve the mystery of the missing crystal

You play Moshang, a young mage, who is tasked with the mission of tracking down and solving the mystery of the missing crystal. Along the way your party expands to include Syl, Meta, Alto, Edson and Opal, a fellowship of both human and non-human characters.

Terra Memoria is a little different from an RPG, it is neither ridiculously long nor is it complicated to the point that you revert to looking up things on YouTube. I believe that the makers wanted it to be a little cozier than your average RPG and in this they have succeeded.

Normally you have the option to add to and increase in power your armor and weapons, but here all the characters are magic users, so neither of those elements play a part. You can progress in stamina and in power through a few options. Firstly, you have the normal accumulation of XP through battles and exploration. You can gather and cook various meals which give permanent increases to your stats and lastly you can forge pins which offer up both benefits and deficits to the magic user.

Combat is turn based and each of the three major characters, Moshag, Syl and Meta have up to eight different spells that they can cast. The remaining three characters act as support characters who have battle abilities. There are four flavours of spell: Water, Wind, Fire and Lightening and during battle the enemies are displayed with information on any weakness to an element.

Terra Memoria is a little different from an RPG

In most RPG’s, you would just start throwing your strongest spell at an enemy and in truth at the beginning of the game this works well. However, as you progress the positioning of your character along the bottom turn queue becomes important. If you can get an enemy’s health down to a half, they are pushed all the way back in the queue and become more susceptible to elemental attacks.

Chances are that you may be tempted to just let loose with another big attack, but if the cost of the attack means that you fall behind your enemy in the queue then they gets to attack you on the next turn. The game rewards you for thinking about not just the strength of your attack, but also where this puts you on the attack queue. Done right, a weaker attack, which always places your character in front of the enemy, will give you multiple attack turns before they can get a shot in. This sort of play is important, especially in the boss battles.

The game is not as big as a AAA game, but then it does not cost as much. A quick run through would probably only take several hours, but then you would be sacrificing all the side quests, of which there are many. You would miss out on the town building and collecting the numerous in-games objects.

Visually the characters are presented as pixel art sprites set in a rich 3D environment and unlike some recent retro looking games this still looks good on a 60-inch screen.

Characters are presented as pixel art sprites set in a 3D environment

I liked the world building and the way that the characters were truly individualized. As we follow Moshag, the game continually adds more lore for you to enjoy.

So, did I like it as an experience? I played the game three quarters through before writing the review and now that’s done, I’m going back to finish the story, probably the best recommendation I can give.

9

Charles Packer