Game Reviews

Terra: Eternal Chaos

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Terra: Eternal Chaos

There’s a fine line between homage and shameless pastiche.

If you’re going to slavishly imitate something you need to ensure you do it with a modicum of panache and a smattering of original thinking.

This clearly wasn’t communicated to the team behind iPhone action role-playing game Terra, a lacklustre title that greedily grabs chunks of inspiration from similar games but fails to combine these ideas into a cohesive whole.

Selective amnesia

You assume the role of a stereotypical young warrior killed during the game’s opening sequence, only to be reincarnated as a cyborg-like monster sent out by a cruel overlord to slay innocent people.

It doesn’t take long for the protagonist’s amnesia to fade, and after being teleported to an unknown region by a wounded sage, you’re expected to piece together your memories while performing quests and assisting a rag-tag band of female travellers. Naturally, these wayward wenches boast massive anime-style eyes and impressive chest dimensions.

Using the standard-issue virtual D-pad and buttons, Terra betrays its routes as a humble mobile phone conversion rather than a tailor-made iPhone release. Navigating around menus is done via the D-pad, which feels tremendously outdated.

War of attrition

Aside from being able to quickly toggle between character classes to change your weapon on the fly, combat is tremendously basic. You hammer the 'attack' button to inflict damage on enemies and the automatic lock-on mechanic removes any need for skill.

As you becomes more powerful you unlock special attacks which can be accessed via the shortcut buttons surrounding the 'attack' key. These add a degree of variety to the combat, but require lengthy recharge times and do little to break up the monotonous button-mashing.

The story is driven forward by chores masquerading as quests. Most of your time is spent running errands and meeting the seemingly pointless demands of other characters. Quantity and not quality defines the smattering of quests in the game.

Beauty is only skin deep

Terra exhibits brief moments of polish, but the good work is quickly and catastrophically undone by the sloppy manner in which the game is stitched together.

The 2D visuals are decent enough, but they’re hindered by a muddy, ill-defined filter - a clear by-product of stretching the image to fit the iPhone and iPod touch screen.

The music is similarly inconsistent, with the impact of the admittedly catchy tunes being lessened by the fact that they loop awkwardly.

Speak no English

By far the most embarrassing element of the production is the appallingly bad English translation. It’s littered with spelling errors, abysmal grammar, and botched formatting – words are often clumsily sliced in half in order to fit them into the tiny dialogue window, making the already difficult act of following the story even harder.

Terra is yet another attempt to squeeze a bit of cash out of iPhone owners by porting over a very ordinary mobile phone game. The presence of exploitative in-app purchases - coins needed for resurrection are conveniently offered upon your demise - only serves to make this game even less likeable.

iPhone and iPod touch are already flooded with role-playing games, the majority of which are more refined and playable. There’s really no reason to pick this up unless you suffer from some bizarre addiction to punishing yourself.

Terra: Eternal Chaos

With dull combat, derivative characters and an English translation so poor you’ll believe the tea boy handled it, Terra takes role-playing to a painful new low
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Damien  McFerran
Damien McFerran
Damien's mum hoped he would grow out of playing silly video games and gain respectable employment. Perhaps become a teacher or a scientist, that kind of thing. Needless to say she now weeps openly whenever anyone asks how her son's getting on these days.