Terra Memoria (Xbox Series) Review

As the world becomes more turbulent and the demands on our time climb higher, it’s difficult not to see the appeal in the “cozy gaming” genre. Games that don’t place a premium on your time and are meant to be played in a relaxed atmosphere at your own pace, all the while bringing a smile to your face, are more appealing now than they’ve ever been. Cozy games are usually defined by their laid-back playstyle and pacing, replete with colourful characters, interesting developments. and a sense of joy that everything’s going to turn out well. Terra Memoria, from developers La Moutarde, captures all of these elements perfectly.

Set in Terra, a world where humans and anthropomorphic animals live in harmony, a sudden crystal shortage throws the balance of life into disarray. You see, crystals power everything in Terra – from the trains to the telephones – and without them, the promise of Constancy is in jeopardy. This event is coupled with the sudden reappearances of “carcasses” – decrepit, ancient machines coming back to hostile life. Now the fate of the world, and not just how you cook dinner tonight, is in jeopardy!

Terra Memoria throws you into the shoes of a group of newly minted friends who, thanks to the ineptness of a mayor and the desire of the citizens to not change, are tasked with finding out the reason behind the crystal shortages. Of course, it isn’t that simple and, before you know it, you’re going to have find out how it’s all linked up while uncovering Terra’s forgotten history.

Despite the timely ecological message about overusing natural resources and staying dogmatic to the past, Terra Memoria’s story and setup isn’t something you haven’t seen before. But where it may lack originality, it more than makes up for it in how the story is told. There’s a relaxed pace to the gameplay and storytelling that makes delving into Terra’s world an easy and enticing one.

You have the requisite cast of colourful characters, both heroes and NPC, dastardly villains messing everything up, and a fun fantasy world to traipse through. That said, Terra Memoria is not a particularly big game. While the world map presents a decently large playscape, you can travel between each location quickly. In fact, within the game’s first couple of hours, you’ll recruit your entire party before your journey begins in earnest. Alongside the main story, there are plenty of side quests to do. They’re designed to encourage you to explore the world, dole out cash, be completed quickly, and primarily push you to engage with the quirky cast of characters.

Crafting and building also make an appearance along with some light puzzle solving. While you can craft pins that give your characters stat boosts, the bulk of the crafting mechanics are focussed on building your own little town. There’s a simple but robust set of tools to let you build new structures, place them, and even modify the landscape textures. This feature and the combat are the game’s biggest time sinks – more because you want to do them rather than because you’re forced to.

Combat uses a simple turn-based battle system with a clear timeline that determines your attack order. Instead of rotating party members in and out, each member of your party is brought into battle, randomly teaming up with each other to create different parings for each battle. You have what amounts to your three main characters, while the other three act in a support role. Most notably, they act as alternate modes for each of your spells and attacks. For instance, if you have a group attack like lightning, it’s alt mode can be either dropping it as a high-damage single-target attack or even turning it into a party healing spell.

Enemies come with two elemental weaknesses a piece and exploiting them with your attacks is the key to combat. Victory in battle is about reading the room, so to speak, and using the right spells on the right enemies. If you can exploit a weakness and do enough damage, you can stagger and knock an enemy back down the timeline, giving you room for more attacks before retaliation.

Delaying foes is often important as each attack has its own specific delay, determining where on the timeline you can attack again. Battles aren’t complicated or overly difficult so long as you pay attention to the basics, such as knowing that group attacks do less damage than single ones unless an enemy is weak to that element, and so forth. Levelling up characters does play an important role the further into the game you get, but Terra Memoria is rather generous with its XP and it never feels like you need to grind.

Instead of gaining XP right after a fight, you need to camp at a fire to receive all the experience earned during that day to level your characters. There’s also a cooking element that prompts you to engage in an easy mini-game to cook your dish. The major benefit of cooking is that each dish eaten permanently raises your HP by a dish specific amount, which makes buying ingredients and cooking a must. Another nice aspect to combat is that you start each fight off with full health, so there’s none of the panicking that you might find in other RPG’s that just put you through a grinder where your only hope of survival is reaching a save or camping point.

Wrapping up, Terra Memoria may be a little too easy for seasoned RPG or JRPG players, but I’d say that worrying about the difficulty is missing the point given what this game sets out to do. Terra Memoria wants you to have a fun, relaxing, and engaging time. With its colourful cast of characters, dry wit, and tactical-but-accessible combat, Terra Memoria will keep a smile on your face all the way to the end.

Terra Memoria was reviewed on Xbox Series S|X using a code provided to gameblur by the publisher. It is also available on PC, PS5, and Nintendo Switch.