#quintetspotlight

Unfortunately, since it was a very late release on Nintendo's 16-bit hardware, that localized release only made it to PAL regions. Enix had already closed their overseas branch due to poor sales results, so Nintendo ended up publishing it themselves in Europe and Australia on December 19th, 1996. I can think of a number of reasons that Nintendo would have passed on a North American release. The simplest explanation is that the Nintendo 64 had already released in the United States and Canada, so they wanted to focus their marketing efforts on it. Indeed, Nintendo of America would only release a handful of titles after the Nintendo 64 came out, and all of them were from major brands. No matter how well Illusion of Gaia had performed, Terranigma was not going to be of a similar market value to games like Donkey Kong Country 3, Street Fighter Alpha 2, or Kirby's Dream Land 3. Understandable, to be sure, but also entirely aggravating. Terranigma is one of the finest RPGs on the Super NES, and the only real way for North American players to experience it is on an emulator. A sad fate.

That's the business, though. Let's talk about the game itself. To put it simply, Terranigma carries forward all of the strengths of Quintet's earlier action-RPGs while shoring up the biggest common weak point. You can count on once again going through some interesting side-stories, hearing some excellent music, and experiencing some creative mechanics. This time, however, the action combat that makes up the bulk of the gameplay is actually really good. The main character, Ark, is the most agile and capable Quintet protagonist we've seen yet. He can run, jump, dive, and jab with his spear in a few different ways. He's got a bit of weight to him, which takes some getting used to, but once you've done that, it's an awful lot of fun just zooming around and taking out enemies. Ark's spread of moves reminds me of Adol's capabilities in later Ys games like Oath in Felghana.

The enemies also step their game up. The game throws a good variety of enemies at you, and does a nice job of mixing up the groups so that you're always having to adjust. You can't just use the same attacks again and again. Some enemies need to be hit with a diving attack, others with Ark's Stinger-like dash, while some are most effectively dealt with by simple thrusts of the spear. Enemies also have elemental strengths and weaknesses that you'll want to account for. In short, the game isn't nearly as much about exploiting a stupid AI routine and hammering the attack button repeatedly as previous Quintet action-RPGs were. Even the bosses are better than they were in previous games from this team.

It makes a huge difference for the overall quality of the game. The dull, stupid enemies of Soul Blazer and the somewhat stiff combat in Illusion of Gaia were both things that you tolerated in order to get at the good parts of the games. In Terranigma, entering a new action area holds just as much excitement as heading into a new story segment. That lends the game a much stronger pace than previous games, making it incredibly hard to put down. The action areas themselves make use of a greater variety of puzzles and gimmicks, with some designs that wouldn't be that far out of place in a Legend of Zelda game. Of course, for every Zelda-like dungeon you come across, there is another that is completely off the wall in a very Quintet sort of way. Importantly, the game isn't afraid to make you wait if it suits the story.

Terranigma is a somewhat bigger game than its predecessors, but thanks to its scope, it feels considerably larger. The game is broken into four different chapters, and apart from the brevity of the first, each of them feels like they could have been a stand-alone game from earlier in the system's life. The story starts off generically enough with our hero, Ark, being awoken by his friend, Elle. Ark and Elle live in a small village with a number of other people. They rarely venture outside of the town, and it's indeed said to be dangerous for some to be outside of their own houses. Ark is something of a local trouble-maker, so your first job is to march yourself over to a neighbor's house to apologize for something he did before we started the game. When that's done, Ark returns home to find that his father figure, the Elder, has gone out on an errand. The others at the Elder's house have taken this opportunity to try to open a door that the Elder has forbade opening.

By hook or by crook, that door comes open, and Ark finds himself descending into the depths. At the bottom lays a box, and when Ark opens it, a monster named Yomi is released. At the same time, all of the people in the town, including Elle, are frozen. Only Ark and the Elder remain in their normal states. The Elder admonishes Ark but tells him he must visit five towers to wake the townspeople up again. He sends you out of the safe borders of the town towards the first tower. When you leave the town, you'll be struck by the appearance of the sky, which looks heavily distorted. This is because the village is located in the underworld of the planet. The surface has been barren for a long time, we're told. As you go through each tower, Ark not only awakens some villagers but also continents on the surface world.  After you've saved everyone, the Elder advises you to travel through a hole in the ground to the surface world and try to awaken life there once more. Ark has one last meeting with Elle before diving into the unknown, ending the chapter.

The first chapter of Terranigma contrasts the familiar and the alien to great effect. The opening and the village itself could not be more plain as RPGs go, but the minute you set foot outside, it's clear that you're in a whole other world. You enter a tower, and things feel quite safe again, but you're always have to trudge back through that bizarre world map to get to your next goal. The game doesn't beat around the bush concerning which world you're meant to be in, as the continents you raise are all named after the real Earth continents. At the end of the chapter, Ark faces the tough challenge of diving into the unknown with no way back. He leaves his familiar home to save a world he's never even seen. For the player, though, this is an opportunity to leave the alien for something altogether more typical. It's easy for us to jump into that hole. But just to give us some unease, the Elder tells Ark that we will lose one gameplay crutch in the new world. Up until now, our weapon would restore lost life at a steady rate. That no longer works on the other side, so you'll have to find another means. Uncertainty. We jump anyway, because what else are we going to do? Leave a hole unexplored? Right.

We begin the second chapter in a dead, lifeless world. Everything around is barren and dry. A little stroll around the part of the map accessible to us tells us that we are in South America. A faint voice calls out to Ark, asking for his help. We make our way into a huge tree that hides a fairly large action area. Poison and monsters are all over the place, but there isn't anything here you wouldn't be prepared for if you made it through the first chapter. After finding and defeating the root of the problem, the plants and vegetation of the world suddenly spring back to life. But even as it happens, Ark is given a caution: it's still too early for everything to be waking up. That doesn't give Ark much of a pause, as he spends the rest of the chapter reviving the rest of the world. First the birds, then the winds, then the animals, and finally, human beings. Every step of the way, the mantra is repeated: it's too early.

The second chapter feels like a souped-up Soul Blazer more than anything else. There's plenty of action, and since humanity doesn't get awakened until the end of the chapter, most of the story is centered around Ark's communications with nature itself. There are some pretty powerful moments in this part of the game. In one section, you're having to act as a bodyguard for a young lion cub who is taking a test to prove his worthiness as a potential king. He's fairly confident, but for much of the climb, you're having to watch over him very carefully. When you reach the summit of the mountain, a monster confronts Ark and the lion cub, taking pot-shots from a ledge that is out of your reach.

The cub will provide rocks for you to throw at the monster, but just when you think it's beaten, the nasty villain pulls a trick. It knocks the ground out from under Ark, sending him falling down to a ledge below. You're unable to get back up, so all you can do is listen to what happens next. The cub, thinking you dead, attacks the monster to avenge you. This whole process takes an uncomfortably long time, and since you can't see how the fight is going, you feel tension. Is the cub Leim going to be okay? You want to take care of him, but all you can do is trust that he is strong enough to do it on his own. He overcomes the creature, finds you safely below, and heads home with his head held high.

It's an uplifting moment, but Terranigma has plenty of kidney punches, too. When you're on your way up a snowy mountain to restore humanity, you accidentally slide down a slope and crash into a wall, setting off an avalanche. Ark is swallowed up, and when he wakes up, he's inside a cave. A goat, who was also trapped, is tending to him. When you stand up and explore the cave that you're trapped in, you see another goat's dead body. The first goat matter-of-factly informs you that the body belongs to her husband, who was killed when the avalanche hit. One minute they were happy and having fun, she says, and the next, he was gone. Both Ark and the player know that they were the cause of this misery, and the goat likely suspects it as well. But it hangs in the air, unspoken.

With no obvious way out of the cave, the goat and Ark hunker down for the night. The goat sleeps close to Ark to keep him warm. In the morning, she asks if you would like breakfast. As Ark, and perhaps the player, wonders where the goat found food, she gestures to the body of her husband. Ark wants no part of it and wonders how she can eat the meat of her husband's corpse. She tells Ark that it is because it is her husband's corpse that she must eat it, for if she dies, that is simply one less goat in the world. Ark passes anyway. The goat then gestures towards the back wall. She's found a spot that is weak and she believes she can ram through. This noble goat, whose full misfortunes are your fault, has done everything to save you. It's exciting when she finally breaks through that wall, knowing that you'll both soon be free.

Upon heading into the room she has opened up, the worst happens. The only way out is up a sheer wall that Ark can climb, but the goat cannot. She tells Ark to go on, that she will find another way out, but the goat, Ark, and the player all know that she will not. You are left to deal with the feeling of having destroyed two innocent lives all because you were romping around like a fool. Some might call it a cheap narrative trick, but this kind of thing is incredibly effective at drawing emotions from the player. Quintet's scenario writers were really good at this, perhaps too good. Virtually every victory in a Quintet game is a bittersweet one. In the scope of the game, the goat scenario happened relatively early on, but it stuck with me for the rest of the game.

In the third chapter, humankind has returned to the world. Ark has been out of it for a while, long enough that whole civilizations have sprung up. The feel of this chapter is completely different from the last one. You'll still be delving into dungeons and beating up monsters, but your aim is less about creation and more about proliferation. The Elder has asked you to help human civilization, currently in its nascent stages, advance and grow. You need to help towns grow by promoting them to other places. Photos, local goods, and so on can help you do that. Eventually, you'll awaken a scientist named Beruga, who survived the destruction of the previous world by going into a cryogenic sleep. He turns out to be mad, and wants to wipe out all life on the planet, replacing humans with the undead. Yes, another Quintet game, another story of science gone wrong.

The game's big twist happens here, revealing that Ark was accidentally aiding the Devil by bringing the world to life so soon. With Ark's part played, the Devil means to kill him, but Ark escapes. The rest of this chapter has you hunting for five Starstones that, when placed in the right location, will call a Golden Child who has the means to defeat the Devil. Upon completing that task, the Golden Child turns out to be Ark's overworld counterpart, the seed from which the underworld Ark was created by the Devil. He informs you that you are meant to be the legendary hero, and then kills you. What? That's the end of the third chapter.

After a somewhat mellow, if occasionally somber, second chapter, the third chapter is back to jerking you around. Sure, there are lots of signs that the proliferation of humanity might not be the best thing for the world, but it's easy to get swept up in the process of helping civilization along. Then the cards are laid on the table and all you want to do is stuff the proverbial genie back into the bottle. The end of the chapter is almost a bigger mind-screw than the twist. You've worked hard to get some help in fixing your mistake, only to be told that you are the only one who can set things right. While you're processing that, Ark is killed, leaving you wondering which end is up.

I don't want to spoil everything about the game, so I'll leave the fourth chapter as a mystery. It's more linear than the previous few chapters, and also quite short, but it packs a strong emotional punch. The ending is slightly more positive than normal for a Quintet game, but it's not exactly a happy ending, either. At the very least, it leaves you feeling somewhat reassured that your efforts were not in vain, which is more than some other Quintet games end with. All told, I think the main story in Terranigma isn't as organized as the one in Illusion of Gaia, which would be a much bigger problem if the game itself weren't so much fun to play. The side-stories are excellent, and as with my previous write-ups, I've chosen to leave most of them for you to discover. But the main plot starts and stops frequently, and the character work outside of Ark and perhaps Elle isn't quite as strong as it could be.

Still, there are enough dynamite storytelling moments of emotional punch and introspection to feed your brain over the course of the game's 20 or so hours. While the game isn't as pretty as some other late-generation 16-bit games, there's an awful lot of candy for the senses, too. The game forces quiet, reflective pauses on you now and then, soothing you with imagery of nature and some of the lovely music from the game's soundtrack. If there's one thing that Quintet proved to be good at above all else, it was in using a variety of moods, speeds, and emotion-tugging to keep the player transfixed. Terranigma is perhaps their ultimate accomplishment in that regard. You will feel like you've been through the wringer by the time you finish this game.  

This write-up is already hideously long, but I think I could write twice as much if I thought anyone would read it. Maybe one day I will. Let's wrap this one up for now, though. If you only make room in your schedule to play one Quintet game, make sure it's Terranigma. Their whole library is weird and worth experiencing, but this game is a pure classic. It's an utter shame that it is not canonized on the level of games like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 6, and Earthbound, because it is very much punching in the same league. This playthrough was my first experience with the game, and not only do I consider it one of the better games I've played in recent memory, I'm finding myself mulling exactly where in my top 10 Super NES games I'm going to fit it in. It's that good.

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