Terranigma’s best stories are told without words

destructoid.com:

Terranigma is an SNES Action RPG with a flawed translation. Characters occasionally act in ways that defy logic, and plot threads appear to contradict each other. Terranigma is also, without question, one of the best narratives I’ve experienced in a video game. For this reason, I put it in the Top 3 of the greatest SNES games ever made.

Terranigma is the culmination of what is referred to as developer Quintet’s “Soul Blazer trilogy” on the SNES. Though it’s technically canon to Soul Blazer and Illusion of Gaia, Terranigma‘s connection to these games is mostly on a philosophical level (though you’ll find a couple plot connections). You see, Quintet had the unique objective of using their 16-bit titles to explore the core of human nature. For Terranigma specifically, director Tomoyoshi Miyazaki expressed the desire to show humanity from “the perspective of the Earth, and how it views human activity.”

If you haven’t played the game, this may sound like a strange, abstract concept. However, Terranigma achieves this lofty goal in spades. Not because the game tells you this theme outright, but because it lets you subconsciously feel it with its music, visuals, and gameplay systems. The result is an adventure so unbelievably nuanced that thousands of words could be written to unpack it.

Because of this, telling you that this game must be interpreted in a specific way would do it a disservice. However, I can tell you what struck me deeply during my playthrough of Terranigma in 2023. I hope this context will inform you of not just why this cult classic means a lot to me, but countless others who were lucky enough to play it.

NOTE: The following will allude to key moments of Terranigma’s plot, including the structure of its late