Terrarium: Remastered

This game was played and reviewed for the Review Kingdom event. I chose this somewhat lengthy game either because my heart was three times too big, or it the fact it was a battle RPG based off an island with not the best mapping. Like, who had any success with a game like that? (shh)



Terraium is a medium-ish length turn based RPG that is mostly focused on a detailed battle system where you can choose the classes of characters and put points into unlock skills for each class. The game is mostly RTP with rips in graphics here and there and tons of video game music rips. The story is not really the focus, yet at the same time it gets a lot of screen time.

Terraium is a mysterious island that adventurers wish to dare to find a treasure that grants immense power. Sort of like a holy grail type of thing. The story starts you off with three buddies who each have their reasons to venture the island of Terraium. They are blank slates in terms of gameplay, where the player has total control in how they want to build the character's classes.





(Pretty damn cool, eh? Makes me want to do deep character building one day.)

The game stars Kestral, Mari, and Dante. Kestral is sort of the leader of the group and he is searching for a way to revive his dead sister. Mari is a strange woman with strong magical potential and a particular way of speaking (she talks in third person). Dante does not remember much about his past, but he is a good pal to the other two. As you venture into the island of Terrarium, you may or may not learn more about each character.

To proceed, you must venture through dungeons where you have to defeat all the stand still encounters. Each encounter will force you to fight three battles at once. Despite the battles being very well done, that did bother me some. The dungeons themselves were rather dull and in desperate need of better mapping. The developer decided to purely focus on the battle aspect, which I respect and enjoyed, but traversing dungeons felt more like a chore than an daring task to achieve.

The mapping in this game is very inexperienced. I am not personally a fan of VX/Ace RTP, but I also feel like there were many techniques that could have been used to improve the overall aesthetics of this game. A lot of ways, the game's mapping felt like it was done by a beginner. The overall atmosphere of the game would have greatly benefited from better mapping. There was a lot of personality in each area, but you kind of had to find it yourself.



The way the battles were presented, the forced three battles per stand still encounter, was simply too much at times. When I play games, I much prefer it when I forget it is a game and it all feels organic. The way Terrarium did it made it feel like a formula you had to force your way through. Don't get me wrong, it's far from bad. The experience in the dungeons are good overall due to the battles and character building being quite well done.

I think the game would greatly benefit from having most encounters have one fight, instead of three. I know why it chose three. It made everything more tense as you could not stop and heal between the fights. It would have been much more effective if certain spots had that, rather than every single encounter in the game. I also think it would have benefited if the three encounters stayed in the same battle scene. Each time you win a battle, your status boosts/ailments reset. It would have had more impact if those remained each battle in those sections.

All in all, the forced three battles per encounter made the game feel simply too long. It's a trap many game developers make to be honest. It's very easy to make a game too long, rather than too short. I thought I was getting close to the end around dungeon 5, yet there was much more to go. Dungeon 5 was the time I felt my characters stop developing and I just went ahead with my ideal team.

I'd recommend to the developer to make the dungeons more organic in their future projects. I know battles were the focus, but there are many ways to make dungeons be made around the battles and benefit them. I'd also recommend much less battles per dungeon. There were always troop placement variety, but around 40% of each dungeon I felt I fought all the variations of enemies necessary and it just sort of felt dragged on since each time.

I want to stress this though: the battles were very good. I had a blast playing this game and it was because of the battles. There is a ton of variety in building your characters and the classes I went for turned out to be satisfying. The developer had a really keen sense of how to make skills have synergy with one another and a good knowledge of when to have cool downs and warm ups and whatnot for the skills. The bosses were really good and I feel like the game rewarded me for trying to build a team and everything felt like it paid off in the boss fights.



(Babush is better than you. All hail Babush. Who saved my ass on many occasions.)

In the future, I would love to see the concept of this game's character development go even further. Perhaps a character creations, maybe have each skill be eligible for an upgrade rather than unlocking it grants you the final version of it. Yet for this game, I feel like what it did for the character development was quite good and within a good scope.

The story of Terrarium tends to be presented before and after the stand still encounters of three. Usually you learn a fact or two about a character. The game's focus is not on the story, yet there is a lot of screen time for it. Much like dungeons can greatly benefit battles, story can too. It does not have to be much, but a simple yet efficient story can make one want to tough through battles all the more to see what is next.

The story of this game is not great, but it is far from bad. From what I gather, the setting of the world is rather peaceful yet the main characters are mega strong warriors fighting all sorts of crazy monsters on the island like it is nothing. Without spoiling too much, a lot of the plot involves certain characters feeling grave danger about certain aspects of their existence. As the player, I'm not sure what to believe. Is the world dangerous? Is it peaceful?

The three characters are a bit on the sappy side, yet I felt like they had moments where the shone. One of the most jarring things about the characters for me was honestly their art. I don't think the art and their personality remotely matched, though that's just my opinion. Kestral looks way too intense for his character. He had very humble beginnings. In fact, his name doesn't fit either. Something blunter would have been more appropriate. I don't think his character sprite needed to have all that fancy armor. (the same applies for Mari.)

This is going into opinion territory and not something I'm telling you to do or not to do. I think if Kestral looked more like a normal guy, Mari drastically toned down in her warrior look (and a different hair style), with Dante still looking like the buffed up warrior dude... It would have had a better contrast. I also think a simpler art style would have done wonders, as the game is all about simplicity in terms of exploring and story. This is the developer's game, not mine: ultimately they know what is best for their vision.

The game had a lot of rips (I believe?) for battlers and I think the quality of the art should have been more consistent. Often it feels like enemies are from different games. Sometimes the quality drops so far that it looks like a jpeg. I totally understand the challenge and frustration of not being/having an artist for your game. I was so frustrated myself that I ended up learning how to make pixel art myself. I'm not suggesting that (unless you'd be interested), but I do think maybe finding one consistent art pack or something for a future game would benefit the game better in being more consistent.

The music consists of famous game rips mostly, with the fanfare still being the default RTP fanfare. Personally I feel like music rips these days are very outdated and I'd rather have game songs stay within the games themselves as the composer tends to make those songs specifically for situations within said games. That's probably me nitpicking because music in games are an utmost importance.

It's cool to have variety, but I think Terrarium had too much music variety. Each dungeon had a song for the dungeon and the battles. The game took me 7 and a half hours and there's like a bazillion battle songs in it. I personally find it more effective with one normal encounter song with a big shift in the game to lead way to the second encounter song if needed.

The music was placed well though. It always fit and the songs were quite good. I think next time the developer should search for some free to use music out there. They have a good ear for where to place music and whatnot.

Despite Terrarium having plenty of issues, it is definitely worth playing if one enjoys a good ol' fashioned RPG Maker battle experience. Lots of deep character customization and satisfying boss encounters. It was fair, challenging, and rewarding. I had a blast playing this. Definitely one of the deepest battle systems in RPG Maker that I played yet.

Here are some random notes I wrote as I played. Contains poorly written spoilers: