Part of the charm of Breath of Fire that so many other fantasy stories still haven't captured is this very simple thing: Its world is populated with a LOT of non-human sentients. Breath of Fire has talking fishes, talking raccoons, talking dogs, talking foxes, talking frogs, etc... And they are all treated as peer sentients seriously, with good and bad members of their species both populating the world. It's such a small and simple detail of the worldbuilding and yet so many fantasy stories don't capture. Terra Memoria probably didn't even try to imitate Breath of Fire and was just trying to diversify the species census of its world. It captured Breath of Fire by accident because fantasy settings where human is just another species among many are just too rare to come by.
@SuperDerek Sadly, only the fox and the Rhino are playable, with the Sloth being a support character. The last playable is a human shapeshifter, with two more humans as the other two support characters.
@AvalancheReviews I've been a sucker for awesome scaling since seeing how smoothly some Sega CD games could do it back in the day and later on the Sega Saturn. It has stuck with me to this day, and 2D scaling still impresses me.
While I can't say the writing and gameplay is top quality stuff, the fact that there's actual races in this game and you get to play as some of them is a breath of fresh air from all the JRPGs with "human-with-blank" races in them, and despite not being amazing, the simplistic gameplay can still be fun, though it takes a bit to get going.
I can’t believe that almost no one covered this game. I somehow stumbled over it and it reminded me actually a little bit of Grandia at least in the beginning. I’m loving the game and really hope this gets a lot of sales and more coverage. Completely hidden gem under the radar this year.
@@bio1804 I’m sorry but I couldn’t say anything more than Derek already said in this video and the one about rpgs under 20 hours. If you like jrpgs, something like Grandia and Breath of Fire I think you’ll be happy with this game. It’s also very cheap imo. Played it on Steam Deck Oled and enjoyed every minute of it. It isn’t perfect but to be it’s definitely around the 80% mark.
This game is beautiful, and I love the lighting/particle effects. I will definitely be looking into this game more, especially if they will end up having a physical copy.
Wowie wow, this one is gorgeous! Even if it doesn't play like Breath of Fire, I respect anything trying to capture the vibe and especially the stylishness! Another one to add to the wishlist xD
Wow ok so I feel lucky - I went to buy this within about 2 minutes of listening to you talk about it - the standard edition is £15.99 here in the UK - but for PS Plus Premium subscribers the deluxe bundle including the digital art book and soundtrack is only £13.99!! Thanks Derek for telling me about this game - I hadn’t heard a thing about it until now, I know I’m going to enjoy it!! I have a tattoo of a magic crystal on my right arm so I already feel at home in their world 🥰💖✨
I purchased this weekend, PSN store Summer Sale. Finished the game and all trophies within 10 hours, enjoyed it a lot. There is a Final Fantasy black mage cameo and an NPC named Garr!
Random thought but I recently played Dark cloud. Wow.... I haven't been hooked to a game like that in awhile. The game loop is perfect and now I'm trying to find similar games but there doesn't seem to be any
Closest I could recommend is Dark Cloud 2 / Dark Chronicle, the sequel. Or maybe Rogue Galaxy. They're not quite as roguelike, but feature somewhat similar gameplay. :)
is there an option to disable Bloom? it's too much bright with many light bleed everywhere, so ugly. using an effect extensively doesn't automatically turn things more beautiful.
This. Its almost like they went on the extreme overuse here. Trying to blind players everything glowing. There's this thing called restraint, i get that its going for that fantasy ethereal look but come on. Looks alright as a game but thats a big turnoff as it seems the designers had zero creativity and pumped that setting up to 110%. The rocks and environment don't need to shimmer. Heck even the characters shine.
@@SuperDerek Appreciate the review of the game but the overkill bloom watching the video is a huge turnoff and looks more like overcompensation from an indie developer.
On PC you can probably do it. You can usually change most of the common effects through something like Nvidia Control Panel through the 3D settings. There's usually also an option if you don't have an Nvidia GPU. Or you could try to do it manually by finding the config.ini and opening it with notepad to change it (usually by changing the value from true to false).
Definitely has a Breath of Fire 4 aesthetic to it. Which I love. With all the crazy remakes that have been happening, I wouldn't be surprised to see a Breath of Life breathed into Breath of Fire.
Terra memoria is a great game, I first purchased terra memoria because I was told it like breath of fire. It’s has good combat, amazing sprite work, and a fun story. I enjoyed it.
Glad you liked it, my son and I played it and found it pretty boring and disappointing. Loved the art style, some of the combat ideas were great. But the story was predictable and it just never hooked us. For the price though i do think it's a game more people should take a look at. There's some promise in this small dev crew.
I don't see BoF outside of the anthropomorphic character, but it has brought up a question I've been mulling over. With all the "spiritual successors" and games inspired by "nostalgic game" coming, where is thet line between buzzword, truth, or copy? I can look at a game like Another Eden and tell that's Chrono Trigger, but what would a game actually have to have to get that BoF feel?
For me, personally, what I saw that reminded me of BoF was purely aesthetic: Pixel sprites on a 3D field, isometric presentation, anthropomorphic characters, that kind of thing. I think to get that BoF feel though, I'd look primarily for character transformations, being able to switch characters in and out from the back row on-the-fly. At least in combat. From a storyline perspective, I'd honestly expect something with a somber tone, something that explores morality, or some other heavier themes. I think that "spiritual successor" is too nuanced to nail down in a comment, but could make for an interesting video. :)
I played a bit of this game and enjoyed it, but in the end it didn't sink its claws in me enough for me to want to finish it. I feel like they had some great ideas, but the stakes of the game were all over the place and didn't really strike up any real emotion in me. I really liked some of the innovative gameplay features though, and if they ever made another game I wish they would make the plot a bit more entertaining. It's hard to explain, but I don't need some action packed story, but it also didn't really scratch my itch for a wacky and fun story either.
Yeah, maybe that was some of the friction I ran into in the beginning? The reasons for setting out on an adventure didn't feel personal for anyone but Syl who was looking for her folks, and everyone else is just kinda cleaning up the Mayor's negligence. 😂
lol, I'm so used to saying "localized to the West" because of talking about Japanese-made games, slip of the tongue. Definitely would have been better saying "translated into English" or something, but old habits and all that. :)
Hehe, so you accidentally didn't follow your own advice! Oops!😂 Not going to lie, I was worried when you said no MP, but when you said it just takes recovery points, I was like whew! I admit I am a bit of a weirdo but not so great localization doesn't bother me too much. I love to fill in the blanks in my head! But I also feel that I personally don't have the right to complain about such things. This is because on the visual novel side of things, I played through Kitty Love and enjoyed it despite so many typos it can make your head spin! With a smile on my face, I was correcting the mistakes in my head and just having fun so... Yeah, no right for me to complain I feel! I'm still new to this indie title! Is it on Switch or plans to be on Switch? I ask because the Switch is kinda all I have.
Better settle in for the years long wait for news of a physical copy, and then even longer for it to actually appear for preorder, and then even longer for it to actually arrive, by which point I'll have lost all my enthusiasm for it. Yay modern gaming.
Switch version is pretty rough too. I bought it and asked on the devs discord if any fixes possible and they said likely not. He then gave me a steam key as an apology. So that was very cool of them. And the game is definitely good. But it's just too easy for me to enjoy.
Sounds like it's one of those things where we should hope the devs are successful enough for a sequel where they can really start cooking. I always try to support those types of games because I want to see their real potential in the follow-up
You don't see it? The isometric perspective, the anthropomorphic characters, the large, well-animated character sprites? Looks a lot like Breath of Fire III or IV to me, just without a blue-haired dragon that transforms. Ah well. :)
If this caught your interest, be sure to wishlist the game on Steam! store.steampowered.com/app/1912750/Terra_Memoria/
Part of the charm of Breath of Fire that so many other fantasy stories still haven't captured is this very simple thing: Its world is populated with a LOT of non-human sentients. Breath of Fire has talking fishes, talking raccoons, talking dogs, talking foxes, talking frogs, etc... And they are all treated as peer sentients seriously, with good and bad members of their species both populating the world. It's such a small and simple detail of the worldbuilding and yet so many fantasy stories don't capture. Terra Memoria probably didn't even try to imitate Breath of Fire and was just trying to diversify the species census of its world. It captured Breath of Fire by accident because fantasy settings where human is just another species among many are just too rare to come by.
Entirely possible! There are 3 non-human races I recall encountering so far, including Rhino, Fox and Sloth, but I wonder if I'll find more?
nahh that's a stretch
Exactly. I cannot stand a lot of modern "fantasy" universes where the "races" are just humans with random arbitrary changes.
@SuperDerek Sadly, only the fox and the Rhino are playable, with the Sloth being a support character. The last playable is a human shapeshifter, with two more humans as the other two support characters.
The scaling and zooming in battle looks so damn good!
@AvalancheReviews I've been a sucker for awesome scaling since seeing how smoothly some Sega CD games could do it back in the day and later on the Sega Saturn. It has stuck with me to this day, and 2D scaling still impresses me.
I've actually be playing this on my Steam Deck lately and it's super cool! Glad to see that you're giving it some love.
This a golden channel with golden tips narrated by a golden person
While I can't say the writing and gameplay is top quality stuff, the fact that there's actual races in this game and you get to play as some of them is a breath of fresh air from all the JRPGs with "human-with-blank" races in them, and despite not being amazing, the simplistic gameplay can still be fun, though it takes a bit to get going.
I can’t believe that almost no one covered this game.
I somehow stumbled over it and it reminded me actually a little bit of Grandia at least in the beginning.
I’m loving the game and really hope this gets a lot of sales and more coverage.
Completely hidden gem under the radar this year.
Hi, Can you Say Something about it? What do you Like and dis like? It seems AMAZING, i WANT TO PLAY IT!!!
@@bio1804
I’m sorry but I couldn’t say anything more than Derek already said in this video and the one about rpgs under 20 hours.
If you like jrpgs, something like Grandia and Breath of Fire I think you’ll be happy with this game. It’s also very cheap imo. Played it on Steam Deck Oled and enjoyed every minute of it. It isn’t perfect but to be it’s definitely around the 80% mark.
this kind of reminds me of what Aethermancer is shaping up to look like too
I feel ashamed I forgot about your channel.
I'm glad to have rediscovered it again ^_^.
Welcome back, it's good to have you here. :)
Wishlisted. Gotta respect the SuperDerek bump!
Awesome! I really hope this game is successful, because I'd definitely love to see what the team does next!
Derek! Thank you so much for posting about this, this game looks RIGHT up my alley :)
i posted on twitter asking if anyone had played this and today i spotted you talking about it! defo gotta get this now!
DavidVinc recently featured this game in a video a few weeks ago. I downloaded and am excited to get to it!
This game looks so sick! Thanks for covering it. Also love the hair haha.
This game is beautiful, and I love the lighting/particle effects. I will definitely be looking into this game more, especially if they will end up having a physical copy.
Wowie wow, this one is gorgeous!
Even if it doesn't play like Breath of Fire, I respect anything trying to capture the vibe and especially the stylishness! Another one to add to the wishlist xD
I like the new look man, reminds me of Leo from titanic
Wow ok so I feel lucky - I went to buy this within about 2 minutes of listening to you talk about it - the standard edition is £15.99 here in the UK - but for PS Plus Premium subscribers the deluxe bundle including the digital art book and soundtrack is only £13.99!! Thanks Derek for telling me about this game - I hadn’t heard a thing about it until now, I know I’m going to enjoy it!! I have a tattoo of a magic crystal on my right arm so I already feel at home in their world 🥰💖✨
Derek with that earring is slowly transitioning into a pirate... and I'm all for it.
UP ↑
This game looks absolutely fabulous! I'm adding this to my wishlist to play when my backlog is a bit smaller.
I LOVE this artstyle. Game added to my steam wishlist. Thanks for the solid recommendation!
I purchased this weekend, PSN store Summer Sale. Finished the game and all trophies within 10 hours, enjoyed it a lot. There is a Final Fantasy black mage cameo and an NPC named Garr!
I'll add this to my wishlist. Thx bro.
I just finished this game last week, and I was really surprised with how good it was! Well worth the price
Random thought but I recently played Dark cloud. Wow.... I haven't been hooked to a game like that in awhile. The game loop is perfect and now I'm trying to find similar games but there doesn't seem to be any
Closest I could recommend is Dark Cloud 2 / Dark Chronicle, the sequel. Or maybe Rogue Galaxy. They're not quite as roguelike, but feature somewhat similar gameplay. :)
This game looks really cool. Have to check it out in the future
New hair is cool man!
Thanks dude! Felt like growing it out from the faux hawk and embrace my inner bard! 😆
WHOA, look at that hair!
Anything recommended by David, Alex and Derek will absolutely be tried by this nutty professor. 😅 Thank you, as always.
is there an option to disable Bloom? it's too much bright with many light bleed everywhere, so ugly. using an effect extensively doesn't automatically turn things more beautiful.
This. Its almost like they went on the extreme overuse here. Trying to blind players everything glowing. There's this thing called restraint, i get that its going for that fantasy ethereal look but come on. Looks alright as a game but thats a big turnoff as it seems the designers had zero creativity and pumped that setting up to 110%. The rocks and environment don't need to shimmer. Heck even the characters shine.
I'm not sure, I left everything at stock settings, but I'll take a look when I get back to my steam deck after work.
@@SuperDerek Appreciate the review of the game but the overkill bloom watching the video is a huge turnoff and looks more like overcompensation from an indie developer.
On PC you can probably do it. You can usually change most of the common effects through something like Nvidia Control Panel through the 3D settings. There's usually also an option if you don't have an Nvidia GPU. Or you could try to do it manually by finding the config.ini and opening it with notepad to change it (usually by changing the value from true to false).
Definitely has a Breath of Fire 4 aesthetic to it. Which I love. With all the crazy remakes that have been happening, I wouldn't be surprised to see a Breath of Life breathed into Breath of Fire.
I sure hope you're right! I'm really hoping Tears of Magic turns out well, that's the other indie that's on my radar as a BoF inspired title. :)
Terra memoria is a great game, I first purchased terra memoria because I was told it like breath of fire. It’s has good combat, amazing sprite work, and a fun story. I enjoyed it.
Glad you liked it, my son and I played it and found it pretty boring and disappointing. Loved the art style, some of the combat ideas were great. But the story was predictable and it just never hooked us.
For the price though i do think it's a game more people should take a look at. There's some promise in this small dev crew.
bof3 is goated. we still need a new bof
Is the story good? Is the game hard? How long did it take you to beat it?
😂Habent seen your channel in a while. I come back and you’re a friggin hipster😂😂
Seems interesting. Any news if there will be physical copies?
No news just yet afaik, but I'll be sure to let people know if that changes in a JRPG Weekly Update :)
Respect for the Reisalin profile pic, hope you have a great day fellow alchemist 😎
This soo needs physical edition :-O
My Heart is broken. Its not Breath of fire. My Heart explode. Cause its SO Breath of fire !!!! This game seems AMAZING!!!!!!
I don't see BoF outside of the anthropomorphic character, but it has brought up a question I've been mulling over. With all the "spiritual successors" and games inspired by "nostalgic game" coming, where is thet line between buzzword, truth, or copy?
I can look at a game like Another Eden and tell that's Chrono Trigger, but what would a game actually have to have to get that BoF feel?
For me, personally, what I saw that reminded me of BoF was purely aesthetic: Pixel sprites on a 3D field, isometric presentation, anthropomorphic characters, that kind of thing.
I think to get that BoF feel though, I'd look primarily for character transformations, being able to switch characters in and out from the back row on-the-fly. At least in combat.
From a storyline perspective, I'd honestly expect something with a somber tone, something that explores morality, or some other heavier themes.
I think that "spiritual successor" is too nuanced to nail down in a comment, but could make for an interesting video. :)
Looks good. What about that other game that is supposed to be like Breath of fire. Tears of Magic? Wonder how thats coming along.
SuperDerek sir I need your assistance!
I played a bit of this game and enjoyed it, but in the end it didn't sink its claws in me enough for me to want to finish it. I feel like they had some great ideas, but the stakes of the game were all over the place and didn't really strike up any real emotion in me. I really liked some of the innovative gameplay features though, and if they ever made another game I wish they would make the plot a bit more entertaining. It's hard to explain, but I don't need some action packed story, but it also didn't really scratch my itch for a wacky and fun story either.
Yeah, maybe that was some of the friction I ran into in the beginning? The reasons for setting out on an adventure didn't feel personal for anyone but Syl who was looking for her folks, and everyone else is just kinda cleaning up the Mayor's negligence. 😂
I need to get back to that. FFXIV expansion distracted me.
Well different way to play turn base. XD
battle system sounds great
What’s the name of the game, and is it physical
Terra Memoria, it does not yet have a physical copy unfortunately.
@@SuperDerek damn
6:45 France no longer part of the West!
I presume he's American or Canadian, so technically that's West of France lol
lol, I'm so used to saying "localized to the West" because of talking about Japanese-made games, slip of the tongue. Definitely would have been better saying "translated into English" or something, but old habits and all that. :)
this doesn't look like bof
sound interesting, whishlisting it
Hehe, so you accidentally didn't follow your own advice! Oops!😂
Not going to lie, I was worried when you said no MP, but when you said it just takes recovery points, I was like whew! I admit I am a bit of a weirdo but not so great localization doesn't bother me too much. I love to fill in the blanks in my head! But I also feel that I personally don't have the right to complain about such things. This is because on the visual novel side of things, I played through Kitty Love and enjoyed it despite so many typos it can make your head spin! With a smile on my face, I was correcting the mistakes in my head and just having fun so... Yeah, no right for me to complain I feel!
I'm still new to this indie title! Is it on Switch or plans to be on Switch? I ask because the Switch is kinda all I have.
"Hype Responsibly" is absolutely an aspirational goal, but sometimes I _cannot_ help myself. And yes! It's on PlayStation, Switch and Xbox too! :)
@@SuperDerek Hehe, I think that's true for everyone! Also awesome, thank you for letting me know!
Not the best localization… so it is breath of fire. Haha
I hate how accurate this is! 😂
I notice a lot of indie get looked over on consoles if they don’t release physical copies. I don’t know why developers think it’s a good idea not to.
Money...
Better settle in for the years long wait for news of a physical copy, and then even longer for it to actually appear for preorder, and then even longer for it to actually arrive, by which point I'll have lost all my enthusiasm for it. Yay modern gaming.
Reminds me a little more of Suikoden than Breath of Fire. But whatever, fine-looking RPG all the same.
It's nice. But it's game killing easy.
Switch version is pretty rough too. I bought it and asked on the devs discord if any fixes possible and they said likely not. He then gave me a steam key as an apology. So that was very cool of them. And the game is definitely good. But it's just too easy for me to enjoy.
Sounds like it's one of those things where we should hope the devs are successful enough for a sequel where they can really start cooking. I always try to support those types of games because I want to see their real potential in the follow-up
To me, it looks nothing like Breath Of Fire. But it does look really good! 👍
You don't see it? The isometric perspective, the anthropomorphic characters, the large, well-animated character sprites? Looks a lot like Breath of Fire III or IV to me, just without a blue-haired dragon that transforms. Ah well. :)
I lub bof ❤
It's _so_ good!
@@SuperDerek I’ll grab this too I’ll keep eye out cheers 🥂
Not out on PS4 so I cannot buy this and I am really pissed at the game dev for not releasing it on old gen.
Lost me at 20 hours. That's just not enough time for me to invest into a new rpg. Has to be 60 hours minimum.
No Chrono Trigger for you~
Played it and it was too boring to finish.
this doesn't interest me