RPGs are one of my favorite genres, but they are often very long undertakings. While I often love a longer RPG to really sink my teeth into, I am also a working adult who sometimes wants to just take it easy and kick back with a shorter game that is a bit cozier, which seems to be what Terra Memoria is going for.

Terra Memoria is an RPG that is set in a world of magic, where the magic crystals that operate the day to day life of inhabitants of this world are running scarce. Your party, a group that ends up growing to six people, is tasked with investigating what is happening to cause these crystal shortages, as well as figure out their own personal quests. Of course, being an RPG, there are a number of side quests as well.

The core gameplay is turn based battling, but really emphasizes the turn based nature of the system. All of the characters who battle use some form of magic, but rather than any sort of consumable MP system each spell is cast with knowing how long they can move again. For example, a weaker spell might allow the character to cast another spell in five turns, whereas a more powerful spell might take up to ten turns. This allows for a fun strategy, as the weaker spell might allow your character to cast another one before an enemy even gets a turn, but the stronger spell might be enough to finish off the enemy. This is also complicated by an element based weakness system, where chipping away at an enemy’s weaknesses can push them to the back of the queue. Three characters are battling, but three characters are support and can modify existing skills as well, so that adds a sense of randomness to the system as well. While it can be frustrating that you don’t choose which support character works with which battling character (though you can veto certain combinations you don’t like) it adds a new dimension to planning out fights. This is a fun, unique system that really rewards strategy and was fun to dig into. My biggest issue with this system was, by the end of the game, it did feel very repetitive. Throughout you can unlock new spells and improve your stats, but all attacks basically do the same thing and the strategy is largely the same battle to battle. It’s a system I’d love to see expanded upon further, though!

As another aspect of the game is that it’s a cozy RPG (the developers have stated they want to bridge the gap between cozy games and JRPGs) there are other systems at play, namely a cooking mini game, crafting, and town building elements. You can find and buy ingredients all over the game map, as well as find recipes, and any time you find an inn or campfire you can cook through these recipes. These add a cumulative bonus to the HP stat for all of your party, so this is something to seek out, and you cook with a mini rhythm game. I wish there was a bit more to this system, as it’s a fun idea (and the food art looks incredible), such as getting a small bonus for acing the cooking minigame or having different recipes give different effects, but it’s a nice distraction. Partway through you find a new town that you can help build up, which is a system I wish had a bit more to it as well, though I didn’t spend as much time with that system due to focusing my money on buying food for cooking, which felt more relevant to the combat system.

Speaking of the food art, the visual design for Terra Memoria is wonderful. The characters are shown as pixel art sprites on a 3D background, but everything pops and looks great. The character designs look fantastic, and the enemy sprites are very well designed. I also enjoyed the music, though it felt more like background music than being a focus in the forefront, and considering there are multiple music based story beats I wish it’d had been given a bit more focus.

The story and characters in Terra Memoria were solid, but the worldbuilding was what really shone. I was constantly interested in learning more about the history of the world, the systems of magic, and going from city to city to learn more. I didn’t find myself as drawn to the overarching story moments as I wish I had been, but it was these worldbuilding elements that kept me coming back for more. I could see this setting being the start of other new games, and I would be happy to have that. A big focus on this game is new beginnings, and I hope to see Terra Memoria as a new beginning in its own right. While some of the aspects didn’t feel fully baked, such as some of the quests being pretty basic fetch quests, it feels like Terra Memoria is the start of something good.

Overall, while there were some flaws to my time in Terra Memoria, I’m glad I was able to experience this captivating world which was full of great ideas, beautiful art, and an entertaining combat system. Some aspects felt not fully realized, but hopefully this means the developer is just getting started.