I'll be thinking about the game for a long time to come, and I can say that about very few games these days. Terranigma does a lot of things very well. The battle system is fun, the hit feedback is fantastic and the sound effects when attacking enemies are super characteristic. The music is generally a great strength, there are so many beautiful pieces in this game. I particularly liked the pacing of the game, how quickly dungeons, story sections and exploration alternate is great and it hardly ever gets boring.
The themes that the game raises are sometimes really profound and philosophical. It's about duality in all things, good and evil, light and shadow, freedom and predestination, nature and progress, but also the differences between different social systems. I particularly liked the first half of the game, which is really original and different from other JRPGs of the time: you are still alone in the world, talking to animals and creating new life. When humanity begins, the narrative takes a more traditional trajectory, but that's not a bad thing either.
As good as the pacing is, the second half unfortunately also has lengths and somewhat crude narrative reasons why Ark has to do this or that ("You have to go to China because a trader is buying up all the metal there and I can't build my plane that way" or "The plot is is reaching its climax, the big final battle is imminent, please collect 5 McGuffins that are scattered wildly around the world before we continue"^^).
And there are also elements in the dungeons that deserve criticism. It happened twice that I got stuck there and the solution to the puzzle was that I should have found an item hidden somewhere in the dungeon (dog whistle and later dragon lance). I had to backtrack half the dungeon to do this, which was annoying and I would have killed for a map.
The usability of the menu navigation is also horrific. To place an item in the quick use slot, the following dialogue appears: "Select item? - Yes, No", With a click on "No", it then goes into the quick slot, lol^^ I only realized that after 5 hours or so. But the inventory is beautifully designed, especially the magic chest looks great, even though magic is mostly unnecessary in the game. The difficulty level was almost always appropriate, but sometimes fluctuates extremely (Bloody Mary WTF), for the final boss I had to grind for 14 minutes because I did exactly 1 damage per attack at level 29, but hey, 14 minutes is close to nothing, so it's totally ok.
Overall, just for the melancholic mood, especially in the first half and the very serious themes in general, it's worth a look and is actually fun all the time (except the stealth dungeon, what was that for :D). The ending is absolutely amazing, I'll remember it for a long time.
The themes that the game raises are sometimes really profound and philosophical. It's about duality in all things, good and evil, light and shadow, freedom and predestination, nature and progress, but also the differences between different social systems. I particularly liked the first half of the game, which is really original and different from other JRPGs of the time: you are still alone in the world, talking to animals and creating new life. When humanity begins, the narrative takes a more traditional trajectory, but that's not a bad thing either.
As good as the pacing is, the second half unfortunately also has lengths and somewhat crude narrative reasons why Ark has to do this or that ("You have to go to China because a trader is buying up all the metal there and I can't build my plane that way" or "The plot is is reaching its climax, the big final battle is imminent, please collect 5 McGuffins that are scattered wildly around the world before we continue"^^).
And there are also elements in the dungeons that deserve criticism. It happened twice that I got stuck there and the solution to the puzzle was that I should have found an item hidden somewhere in the dungeon (dog whistle and later dragon lance). I had to backtrack half the dungeon to do this, which was annoying and I would have killed for a map.
The usability of the menu navigation is also horrific. To place an item in the quick use slot, the following dialogue appears: "Select item? - Yes, No", With a click on "No", it then goes into the quick slot, lol^^ I only realized that after 5 hours or so. But the inventory is beautifully designed, especially the magic chest looks great, even though magic is mostly unnecessary in the game. The difficulty level was almost always appropriate, but sometimes fluctuates extremely (Bloody Mary WTF), for the final boss I had to grind for 14 minutes because I did exactly 1 damage per attack at level 29, but hey, 14 minutes is close to nothing, so it's totally ok.
Overall, just for the melancholic mood, especially in the first half and the very serious themes in general, it's worth a look and is actually fun all the time (except the stealth dungeon, what was that for :D). The ending is absolutely amazing, I'll remember it for a long time.