Terranigma

An Action Adventure slash RPG for the Super Nintendo, and also a Spiritual Successor to Illusion of Gaia, which in turn was a Spiritual Successor to Soul Blazer which was a Spiritual Successor to ActRaiser. Still with us?

Anyway, the game centers around Ark, a mischievous little scamp who, bored with life in the quiet underground village of Crysta decides to ignore the orders of his village elder and Open That Which Should Not be Opened, which results in the entire population of his Doomed Hometown (except one chicken) turning into crystal. From there, Ark is then tasked with not only restoring his hometown, but also Saving the World that is above him.

So similar in play style to its predecessor, Terranigma has often been confused as, and even referred to (in-game, no less) as Illusion of Gaia 2. A fantastically enjoyable game, but was generally crippled in sales due to being released very close to the end of the Super Nintendo's life, as well as being released practically everywhere in the world except America for some reason. Chances are it probably couldn't find an American publisher due to the Nintendo 64 literally being right around the corner (it was already released in North America when Terranigma was released in Europe), coupled with the multiple themes of religion and death present in the title.

Known as Tenchisouzou, the original Japanese name of the game, it also got a short Manga adaptation by the same name.

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Tropes used in Terranigma include:

• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: The sewers in Neotokio.
• After the End: Sort of.
• All Just a Dream: The spirit journey, Or Was It a Dream? It's possible that it shows how a past lifecycle ended.
• Alternate History: A bit hard to avoid because of the Decade Dissonance. Also, in the town expansion sidequests, the player can change history. For example, if you lie to Bell about his girlfriend dumping him, he won't invent the telephone.
• An Interior Designer Is You: Ark can design his own house in Loire, but it doesn't serve much purpose. You can save your game and rest for free in it, though it costs so much compared to inns that it's unlikely you'll ever make a profit.
  • Possibly parodied, as Ark remarks that he doesn't have any use for much of the furniture when he buys it.
• Artistic License: Biology: Continuing on Illusion of Gaia's theme of trying to show their work, but not knowing quite enough:
  • It's explained late in the game that Beruga created a vaccine to cure people of a deadly virus. However, vaccines are useless once you're infected. All they can do is train your immune system to kill the virus faster in case you're infected. A scenario that would have made more sense would be for most people to have already been infected by the time the vaccine was completed, making it nigh-useless.
  • In the ending, it's revealed that Yomi is LUCA, the last universal common ancestor for all lifeforms. Except that he's multicellular, so that can't possibly be true. Even if we assume he's supposed to be the LUCA for Kingdom Animalia, he has bilateral symmetry, which only appeared midway through animal evolution.
  • During Chapter 2, you revive birds, then all animals, then humans. While the last one can be excused due to Humans Are Special, birds are animals too. They're not even in a different phylum than the animals in the Safaritorium! You also never revive fungi or microorganisms despite them being just as (if not more) important to the ecosystem than plants. The order of revival is patterned after the order of creation in the Genesis narrative. First Land, then plants, then birds (and sea creatures), then the rest of the animals, then man. Fungi show up near the Ra Tree after it's revived. Its possible that fungi and microorganisms are lumped in with plants.
• Awesome but Impractical: Topping out your character isn't worth it that much, as the final 6 levels require double the EXP gained over the previous 44, and the reward for persevering is only 46 life points, 9 strength, 11 defense and 6 luck.
• Background Boss: Subverted with Gossie. The enormous, fire-breathing two-headed dragon looks quite menacing, but it's actually a friendly creature. The real boss are the Hitoderons, the smaller starfish monsters in the foreground.
• Badass Cape: Ark has a really nice-looking traveling cloak that he sadly doesn't wear except for when he's traveling the overworld.
• Batman Gambit: The Elder manipulated Ark into resurrecting life and leading mankind's evolution for one purpose - to release one of the antagonists.
• Because Destiny Says So: Or rather, Because Destiny Says You Can Screw Destiny. Err... That Came Out Wrong, but Ark is basically Destiny's special friend. Half of Ark (presumably, the dark half) technically exists beyond the scope of fate.
• Beneath the Earth: The Underworld.
• Big Boo's Haunt: Louran and Sylvain Castle.
• Big Eater: Ark, who will eat any food you have him interact with.
• Bittersweet Ending/Downer Ending: Take your pick, it's harsh either way.
• Blind Idiot Translation: The aforementioned Illusion of Gaia 2 reference should've said Illusion of Time 2 because the English version of Terranigma only came out in Europe, and not America.
  • Oh, so many examples in this game. This troper's favorite occurs here: four evil dolls circle Ark singing a Japanese children's nursery rhyme, the last line of which is a clue to which doll is the "real" one that Ark should attack. The dolls' circling is timed so that they stop as soon as the nursery rhyme is finished. Now, to be fair, this is a very tricky thing to translate. There are a few ways one could go about this:
    • 1. Try to make an English nursery rhyme that uses the same number of characters as the original Japanese, so that the nursery rhyme would still end in the right place. This would be almost impossible due to the extreme verbosity of the English language as compared to Japanese.
    • 2. Write an English nursery rhyme that's as short as you can get it, and collaborate with the coders to lengthen the dolls' spin time to match the length of the new nursery rhyme.
    • 3. Write an English nursery rhyme that's as short as you can get it, and collaborate with the coders to speed up the rate at which the text appears so that it matches the length of time that the dolls spin.
    • 4. Be unfathomably lazy and just do a literal word-for-word translation of the nursery rhyme, leave the dolls' spin length alone so they stop spinning right in the middle of the song, before the last line that gives the hint to the identity of the "real" doll has shown, and call it a day.
    • Guess which one the localization team chose (it didn't help that the "literal word-for-word translation" ended up as near-doggerel anyway)?
  • The game consistently uses the word 'arouse' and its' various forms instead of the more commonly used 'wake/awake'. Technically, the word is being used correctly, but the translators were unaware that 'arouse' is also a word that can have a sexual meaning. This leads to a good bit of inadvertently innuendo-laden dialogue, most infamously Beruga's line "I thank you for arousing me."
• Boss Remix: If you listen carefully, you can hear traces of Setting Off on a Journey and Light and Darkness in the final battle theme, Overcoming Everything.
• But Thou Must!: Among the most Tear Jerker use ever, when Ark tries to search in himself whether he love the darkside or lightside Elle more... right after darkside Elle sacrifices herself for him. He decides he can't decide.
• Chekhov's Skill: There exist only two critical uses for guarding: one is the boss fight at the end of the Escort Mission, and the other is the final battle where it limits the power output of the Wave Motion Gun attack to Scratch Damage.
• Collision Damage: Can be confusing at times, as many enemies have weirdly-sized hitboxes.
• Compressed Adaptation: The two volume Japan-only manga, which is currently being translated by Glacial Rebellion on Blogspot.
• Continuity Nod: One of the places Ark can (optionally) resurrect is Mu, the location of the Vampire Twins from Illusion of Gaia.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Beruga gets carved up by a propeller.
• Cute Mute: Lightside Elle, before she regains her memory.
• Darker and Edgier: Compared to Illusion of Gaia and certainly Soul Blazer.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Ark is the dark counterpart to the light world hero, but it's more complicated than that. While Ark and everyone from Crysta are nice and kind people, they were also created specifically to fulfill evil goals. For instance, Ark is a well intentioned kid in good spirits, but he's also destined to revive Beruga, which he does.
• Decade Dissonance: Justified because most of the development is created during the game, and the ones that weren't are either from before the plane (thus making it hard to share the technology) or from before the end of the previous world, being property of Beruga.
  • There is also Decade Dissonance within a city itself: one of the characters, Perel, is a stereotypical black 90's skateboarder kid. You first meet him in a village that's around the seventeenth or eighteenth century in terms of technological progression.
• Developer's Room/Easter Egg: You can visit Quintet's offices in Neotokio. One of the developers refers to the game as Illusion of Gaia 2.
• Doomed Hometown: Kind of, though the first chapter centers on fixing it again.
  • However, this trope actually happens twice, the second time destroying Crysta for real.
• Doppleganger Spin: Used by Bloody Mary's dolls - an inadequate translation meant people not familiar with the Japanese children's' game it was based on would have no idea which target to attack.
• Downer Ending/Bittersweet Ending: Could be either one of them, depending on how you interpret The Stinger. It's incredibly touching though.
• Eat the Dog: Ark is offended when snowed in with a mountain goat whose avalanche survival plan involves eating her dead husband.
• Engagement Challenge: There is one in Loire, although it's Subverted; King Henry doesn't care about his "daughter", he just wanted her to regain her memory so that she could tell him where Storkolm's treasure is.
• Escort Mission: At one point in Chapter 2, you have to help Leim do a test that all lions have to do. It's quite frustrating.
• Eternal Recurrence: An important plot device. Not everything would be exactly the same each time though. It's heavily implied that this is the first instance that Dark Ark got as far as he did (by merging with Light Ark later on, and not just simply being killed once his purpose to restore the world was done), and destroyed his own creator for a time. Despite being a part of Dark Gaia himself, Dark Ark is not able to be fully controlled by him.
• Evil Genius: Dr. Beruga.
• Exposition Fairy: Yomi. ...Who tries to kill Ark the moment his duty is complete.
• Fission Mailed: When Dark Ark meets the spirit of his lightside counterpart, he falls over dead. A cutscene later, it's shown that they were both reincarnated together as the same child. This also happens when Beruga kills Ark after being released.
• Flashback Nightmare: Fyda has one in Yunkou.
• Forced Level Grinding: Mostly because gaining levels increases your power exponentially, and when you're even slightly under-leveled, you won't be able to deal more than a scratch with each hit. Even against common Mooks.
• For Doom the Bell Tolls: In two tracks, Setting Off On A Journey (the Underworld theme) and Wandering Spirits (the "creepy" theme).
• Foreshadowing: In the beginning, talk to the kid near the pond in Crysta. If you are Genre Savvy, you just know it will be important, only not how much...
• Giant Space Flea From Nowhere: In typical Quintet fashion, almost all the bosses are these. The only aversions are the parasite plaguing the Ra Tree, the Final Boss and, arguably, Bloody Mary.
• A God Am I: Spirit journey Elle, arguably Beruga as well. Ark himself is a heroic example.
• A God I Am Not
• A God Is You: According to Yomi, Ark is what humans would call a god.
• Good Bad Translation: The somewhat good translation begins to fall apart near the end of the game, and it's debatable whether it completely shatters or magically redeems itself with Beruga's infamous "I thank you for arousing me" line.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Every time someone dies, the screen just turns black and, at most, flashes red. Which is surprising, considering how often this trope was averted in Illusion of Gaia.
• Guide Dang It:
  • In Yunkou, a sidequest requires you to cross all the way back through the Taklama desert and give a flower to the mute girl in the nomads' camp. In fairness, the game does tell you that flowers will cheer up a mute girl. Unfortunately, there are also red herrings clouding the issue. The mute girl in the nomads' camp? Not the only mute girl in the game. Earlier in the plot, there is a mute princess in the castle that you were told to fix. The flower doesn't work on her.
  • Due to Forced Level Grinding mentioned above, most people seem to think that you're meant to gain a good 5-10 levels before fighting That One Boss Bloody Mary to be able to do more than single-digit damage to her. However, what you're meant to do is to use your various spell-casting rings to deplete most of her HP. The only problem is that you're only allowed to use them against specific bosses, the game never tells you which ones, and it's easy to forget that it's even an option.
  • The Final Boss only becomes vulnerable if you turn your back to it. The game does not give you any hints to this.
• Happy Ending Override: Ark wonders what he was fighting for after he gets "killed" by the man he was told to resurrect, and in the ending upon realizing that he has been fighting for a world he was never a part of.
• Heel Face Turn: Royd, following Meilin's temporary Face Heel Turn, in Dragoon Castle.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Elle. Possibly Royd, Fyda and Ark, as well.
• Hide Your Children: Averted with the zombie children in Louran.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Beruga gets sucked into a propeller of his ship, in his Karmic Death.
• Holding Out for a Hero: The entire world does this, requiring a hero to restore the continents and further human evolution.
• Hollow World: The game starts out in one before you head to the world.
• Human Popsicle: Beruga, and the humans who he has granted immortality.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: If you return to Evergreen after resurrecting humanity, you will notice that it has taken a change for the worse. Also, if you expand Suncoast (Australia), the animals you helped earlier will be captured and put in a zoo.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: "What happened to my carefree days in Crysta? Someone give me those days back!"
• I'm a Humanitarian: One goat in Chapter 2 doesn't think anything of eating her dead husband.
• Immortal Hero: Ark seems to die three times in the game, only to be brought back, generically. This only makes his "death" after the defeat of the final boss all the more moving.
• Improvised Weapon: A lot of things Ark gets his hands on could be used as spears or rods. Even spiky plant branches.
• Inn Security: Every time you get a free night at the inn, expect something relevant to the plot to happen.
• Insurmountable Waist High Fence: A few particularly infuriating cases.
• Interface Screw: The Confused status ailment that randomly rotates your directional controls either 90 or 180 degrees. Taken further, in that every time the game reminds you that you're confused, the controls are re-randomized.
• Invulnerable Civilians: About all you can do is bean folks with thrown pots.
• Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: A lot of famous people appear in the game with different names. Sven Hedin and Christopher Columbus are two examples.
• Leitmotif: Characters with their own theme songs include Yomi, Elle, Leim, Royd, Fyda, Perel and Beruga.
• Lost Forever: A bunch of the civilization growth bonuses should you elect Louis as mayor of Loire or lie to Bell about his girlfriend dumping him. Or even if you screw up the construction of the Big Mick.
  • You can also miss raising Polynesia and Mu from the ocean in the first chapter.
  • There are also numerous magirocks that can be permanently missed if the areas where they are located in get changed.
• The Lost Woods: Norfest Forest. Particularly aggravating in that trial and error is a necessity because your pathfinding item only indicates whether you take a correct turn, and there's also a section that's quite dark.
• Love Makes You Evil: The reason Meilin helped Wong was because she had a crush on Ark, who liked Elle instead of her.
• Mad Scientist: Dr. Beruga.
• The Man Behind the Man: So many of them. Dark Gaia behind Beruga behind Wong behind King Henry.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Yomi, which means "the Underworld" in Shinto mythology.
  • Ark, likely referring to his journey akin to Noah's Arc.
• Mercy Invincibility: Barely. Like, half a second. Don't rely on it.
• National Stereotypes: Yunkou depicts a highly unflattering portrayal of China. The townsfolk there do not speak properly unlike the other people around the world, and the town itself is polluted and unclean, with a brownish coloration outside and ugly pipes and vents on the insides.
• Never Got to Say Goodbye: Meilin, Meihou and Perel. Even though Ark never even thinks about them after leaving them in the switch rooms.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The plot practically revolves around this trope. Hell, the game starts off with you opening Pandora's Box. But near the end, it turns out to be a subversion. In fact, not only have you not broken it, you actually... well, look at the next entry.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Apparently, by opening Pandora's Box, you killed Beruga, stopped his evil plan and saved the world, but you learn this right after being tricked into resurrecting Beruga.
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: Meilin ends up being this several times even in-story with her Psychic Powers to create the illusion of dead people.
• Nintendo Hard: A few of the bosses are made exponentially more difficult by having Collision Damage coupled with weird hit detection, an Instant Death Radius that forces you to use an attack that gives you a few frames of invulnerability with a possibility of getting caught up on the boss and taking massive damage, or has absurd attacks that deal damage faster than you can heal.
  • Yet, at the time of its launching, the game was heavily criticised for being far too easy. Go figure.
  • Even by today's standards, this game is pretty easy. The "few frames of invulnerability" are pretty much the whole attack that you're using almost exclusively because it does the most damage in almost every case. The game just gets difficult if you miss one or two levels and so cause minimal damage. When you come back after 15 minutes of Forced Level Grinding most fights are trivial.
• No Sneak Attacks:
  • Averted when The Elder orders Elle to kill the recently reincarnated hero while he's still a newborn.
  • In a letter, lightside Elle admits to having killed King Henri while he was sleeping upon seeing what he did to her parents and their home. He deserved it.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Dr. Beruga's robot-filled labs and airship are fairly mundane technology once you think about it, though obviously really expensive equipment. But he is one hell of a Morally-Ambiguous Doctorate slash Evilutionary Biologist - he's cracked immortality, resurrection of the dead, and biological weapons so powerful, they can kill off the entire human race.
• One-Winged Angel:
  • The Final Boss. It's a Quintet game, this is a given.
  • The Elder, who transforms into Dark Gaia. Although, in a way, this is actually a devolution for Dark Gaia, whose normal form is pure lifeforce.
• Physical God: Ark.
• Pimped-Out Dress: The sprite for Bloody Mary.
• Pixel Hunt: The secret areas on the world map.
• Playable Epilogue: The saddest one ever.
• Playing Tennis With the Boss: The second form of the Dark Morph, which is probably an intentional Shout-Out to The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Also, the first form of the Final Boss, though it's reflected at an angle rather than straight back.
• Plot-Relevant Age-Up: Ark.
• Prodigal Hero: Ark lived happily in Crysta, though he was known to be a troublemaker. Then he opens up Pandora's Box and turns everyone in his village, except for himself and The Elder, into crystal. The Elder tells Ark to go out into the world and fix things.
• Prophecies Are Always Right: If one believes that Ark doesn't return from his last battle, the prophecy heard from Columbus is true.
• Rare Candy: There are potions which increase max health, strength, defense or luck.
• Reincarnation: Another important plot device.
• Scary Shiny Glasses: Beruga's glasses.
• Scenery Porn: Just look at some of the images of Earth during the resurrections during the first part of the game.
• Schizo-Tech: Since the game covers some 2,000 years of human and technological evolution over the space of a few (in-game) years, it's hard to avoid this in places. Also leads to Decade Dissonance when some cities advance before others.
• Science Is Bad: ...Maybe. On the one hand, technological and scientific progress helps the people in the game grow and prosper, but on the other hand, one of the primary antagonists is a Mad Scientist... Perhaps the moral is "some science is good, but too much is bad"?
  • It's more like a Positivist view on science, meaning that science is more like a neutral... thing, and that depending on the use people give to it, it can be good (most of those who invented something) or bad (Beruga, hands down).
• Sealed Good in a Can: Ark.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: It turns out that Ark is one of two chosen ones and his quest has merely been to perform his role in turning the cycle of the dual world, by resurrecting one and destroying the other...the exact same role role he fulfilled in his past life, and the one before that, and for an unknown number of cycles. And he'll keep on doing it until the end of time, or until the day the cycle is broken by the defeat of one of the two chosen. And every single time he will die once his duty is done because the last step of it is to destroy his own world, himself included.
  • Subverted: it may be a Shaggy Dog Story to Ark, but it literally means the world to everyone else.
  • In some ways, the ending itself is one. Sure, it's more of a Bittersweet Ending when you take The Stinger into account, but even then despite everything that he's been fighting for, the world that Ark saved is one he'll never be allowed to be a part of, and his precious hometown is nothing more than a gentle illusion that's fated to disappear after one more day allowed to him by the gods as a "reward" for his sacrifice. That's harsh, no matter how you cut it.
• Social Darwinist: Dr. Beruga, who only wants those who he deems necessary to exist, as hideous undead.
• Spam Attack: Rapidly tapping the attack button will cause Ark to go into a flurry of jabs with his spear.
• Speaks Fluent Animal: Ark begins his journey with the ability to talk to animals. Animals and plants, actually. He loses this power when he resurrects humanity.
• Spiritual Successor: Of another Spiritual Successor that was a successor to a Spiritual Successor.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Ark and Elle.
• The Stinger: Following Ark's dream of becoming a bird and presumably dying, lightside Elle appears in Storkholm when someone (or something) knocks on the door; it is widely assumed to be Ark. Throughout the years, some theories have evolved concerning how this is possible (not counting "it just happened"). They include:
  • The one who knocked the door is the hero from the light world who was separated from Ark and sent back to the light world after defeating Dark Gaia. In the light world, Ark lives through him and is reunited with his eternal love. This theory is a bit problematic because unless you believe Ark and the light world hero are two parts of a single person, it means that the love between Ark and darkside Elle was not genuine but a simple copy of the destined love between their duplicates, and a guy you know nothing about gets to be happy.
  • The dream was real and the bird from it knocked on the door, supported by the fact that right before the stinger, the bird is seen stopping above a forest, and Storkholm is inside a forest. Also, during the stinger, you can hear birds squeaking, but that might be because of the early hour. Basically, this means that God reincarnated darkside Ark as a bird so he can live with his loved one...as a bird...
• Strawman Political: The Dirty Communist candidate in the Loire election is literally dirty: a notorious deadbeat drunkard. Not so much in the moral sense, though. However, if you vote for him, the town does not evolve.
  • There's quite some confusion about Louis' political orientation. Most players call him a communist, but he has also been called a conservative. On the other hand, Jean's idea to use taxes to advance production, city infrastructure, technology and cultural life could also be seen as a more refined communist position. One could argue that Louis simply represents populism in general in opposition to Jean's authentic and informed political decision-making.
• Tactical Suicide Boss: The Cadet form of the Dark Morph and the first form of the Final Boss, which both involve Playing Tennis With the Boss.
  • The second form of Dark Gaia could be considered either this or just plain Idiot Ball, as well. It's flying, so you can't hit it unless it comes close to you, which it presumably does to attack you better or... something. You'd think it would wise up to this after the second time you whip around and smack it though.
• "Three Laws"-Compliant: Beruga directly references all three laws, except his interpretation of the Zeroth Law rewrote "Humanity" as "Dr. Beruga", meaning that any threat to his being was to be immediately terminated.
• Thriving Ghost Town: Louran, a prosperous and thriving town in the middle of the desert... that turns out to be a mirage over a destroyed village filled with shambling zombies that are the remains of the people that you were talking to yesterday.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Played to a ridiculous extent in the ending as a compensation for Ark's expected death: darkside Ark gets one more day to live in the ilusion that used to be his life before dying. He then dreams one last happy dream about being a bird wandering in the upperworld, watching it as it evolves.
  • The Stinger.
• Time Skip: There is actually one in between the resurrection of humankind and your awakening in Lhasa, spanning three years. You are casually informed about this by an NPC. It can be easy to miss.
• The Tokyo Fireball: Dr. Beruga destroys Neotokio once he's released.
• Tomato in the Mirror
• Treacherous Advisor: The Elder and darkside Yomi.
• Tsundere: Meilin. Verging on Yandere, but gets better.
• Turbine Blender: How Dr. Beruga meets his end.
• The Unfought: Beruga gets killed before you get the chance to fight him.
• Useless Useful Spell: The only time you'll use spells is when fighting Bloody Mary because every other boss fight flat-out disables your magic for no real reason. A shame because the magic you get is actually pretty darned powerful.
• Video Game Geography: Both the underworld and the overworld maps are in fact toroidal. Although in the case of the underworld map, a lava sea prevents you from travelling all the way around in any direction. But yeah, the overworld is completely toroidal, you can get to the South Pole by travelling north from Greenland.
• Was It Really Worth It?: Ark wonders this after he gets "killed" by the man he was told to resurrect, and in the ending upon realizing that he has been fighting for a world he was never a part of.
• Where It All Began: Ark returns to Crysta to defeat Dark Gaia in the last chapter.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Ark, who the Elder and Yomi try to kill at the beginning of Chapter 4.