It goes without saying that language is a key to our everyday life, it’s the basis for how we communicate. Words themselves have power, but what if the power they held was real? What if magic was real, and all we needed was a new language? Well with my Terra Alia review, you’ll learn just that.
In a surprising new twist on learning Terra Alia gives players a fun unique magic story while teaching a new language. This is the only way to break the seals. However, is Tella Aria worth your time, read on to find out.
Story:
In Terra Alia, you start out learning about the evolution of power, life, and words. All on the twin world of Earth called Terra Alia. That through evolution, magic, and its course changed. But eventually, we came to be where we are. That through the power of words magic was possible.
The story starts in the library of our teacher Esperanto, who teaches us about the language wards. Special seals allow us to use magic after we learn new words in another language to break them using artifacts. Esperanto is hiding and has left clues to their disappearance in memory shards. Along with their robot companion, Falco, as their brightest student, we must learn to wield this new power and find their memory shards to know what’s happening.
Personally, while the story isn’t mind-blowing, I like it. It is a unique and simple fun way to approach language. Teaching how everyone studying a different language is key to learning magic is fun. As someone who has been studying Japanese for a few years, this was a wonderful way to retouch a lot that I’ve learned in an interactive way.
Sound:
The sound of Terra Alia is upbeat. It has this fun orchestral sound constantly playing with a lot of energy. It sounds fun but it sounds like the background of a movie with everyone all smiles in the morning. But it just makes Terra Alia feel vibrant and happy.
That’s not to mention the well-done voice acting. Mainly this is in regards to the fact, that since the game is teaching you language it needs to sound good. Again as someone who has been learning Japanese, pronunciation, and stress on words is key. As many words can be the same, but how you stress it changes the words.
Terra Alia, does this nicely with plenty of words for simple items, to help with longer words and sentences. Even providing you with a visual clue and allowing you to listen to the word multiple times to know its pronunciation.
This very key in a game all about language is what helps to make it really good for what the game attempts to do.
Visuals:
The visuals in Terra Alia are bright and colorful to match the sound of the game. I said before that the game was vibrant and the visuals match that sound. Everything is bright colors and pretty and even the magic spells have a really cool look to them.
While they may not be super impressive in terms of other games. It still had a nice vibe to it, and what mattered the most was the language. With a focus on learning another language, it helps to SEE that language. Not just being told what an item is and how to pronounce it, but to physically see it written down.
And in Japanese especially that’s a major point, as its written appearance can be very confusing for those not familiar with hiragana or katakana, two types of libraries for writing. One focused around specifically Japanese words, and another on words that were taken from other cultures.
This major detail was super fascinating and a major point for me in the game.
Gameplay:
The gameplay of Terra Alia is an enjoyable time, if not too deep. The game is a major mix of Sci-fi & fantasy and an RPG. Throughout the game with its focus on magic using language, you have to break the language wards by learning a new language.
The way to do this is by exploring and finding objects in the world and learning how to say them in the new language. It was nice to refresh on many standard daily life items that I don’t think about. This helped me to remember many simple words for things like books, trees, statues, and even benches. But, it also helps with teaching the specifics of each language’s unique way of making sentences.
In Japanese, they are unique as they will always follow SOV, or Subject, object verb. While many other languages do not follow this style, Japanese or Nihongo does. And the game does many times to practice these by offering you ways to review the words you’ve learned. As well as trying challenges for dialogue.
These puzzles are a key point to progressing in the game. As well as they can also be used to help you get new equipment to make your magic stronger when you gotta fight. This is also seen throughout the game as there are many types of puzzles. On lock boxes, it shows you the words in English and you have to translate it to the correct word. Early on using romanji, or the visual of how words are supposed to look like, for many puzzles. This is before attempting harder challenges by reading it only in katakana, but the game still translates for you to help.
The magic is also fun as you level up you learn more unique fun spells to use in fights. Against robots that are trying to stop you from learning the truth. Or the odd school bully who breaks another student’s wand. It’s a very interactive way to approach learning.
As I said before it’s nothing amazing, but it is fun in all the right ways. Whether you are new to a language, or like me, have been studying for a while, Terra Alia is a great place to start your new journey. The game offers ten languages to learn from, the first being which you speak and read fluently, to the new one you want to learn. The languages available to learn are English, Chinese, Portuguese, French, Italian, German, Russian, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish.
Closing thoughts:
Terra Alia is a unique game in many ways, with its fun mix of genres, to its approach to teaching. For someone who’s been studying for years, it was fun to see everything I learned put to the test in a fun way. It also helped me to reinforce a lot of what I hadn’t remembered. If you want to start your new language journey, this game is definitely for you.
I want to thank the team at 30 Parallel Game for providing the key for our Terra Alia review. The game launches on October 11th for Nintendo Switch and Steam. Make sure to check our other reviews. And make sure to follow our YouTube channel for video reviews and more.
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Terra Alia
