Terra Randoma Reviews

Really fun for the first few hours, gameplay loop is really addicting on iron man mode but once you solve the early game the late game is an absolute slog. Still worth supporting.

Some nice ideas, but ultimately gets crushed by tedium and a shocking lack of basic QoL. The Tedious: [list] [*]Quest objectives almost always spawn on the far side of the map, and require a return trip to the quest giver to complete. [*]Random encounters are numerous, and despite a supposed variety, seem to mostly be the same five or six scenarios. [*]Difficult terrain, inclement weather, and status effects all slow the real-time movement of your character between squares. It's a turn-based game, there's no reason for this. [*]The dungeons are all the same, and you have to explore every randomly generated room to spawn the boss. [*]Special abilities all use stamina, which regenerates incredibly slowly. But guess what, your basic attacks also use stamina! Health doesn't regen at all. So for every minor battle you end up chugging 2 or 3 potions, and then have to spend your non-questing time just searching vendors to restock. [*]Equipment has durability. But repair kits are so plentiful that there's no real risk of your gear breaking at inopportune times. So it's just another tedious thing to keep an eye on. [*]Crafting skills are borderline useless because one of the two materials for every recipe is inexplicably rare. [/list] The Unquality of Life [list] [*]Remember when I said you have chug potions like a frat boy on Friday night? You can't assign potions to the hotbar, so you're constantly opening your (likely overcrowded) inventory to keep yourself alive. [*]You can't rebind keys. Movement uses the numpad, but 'wait' uses the spacebar; num-5 isn't even an alternate. For chugging potions, you're going be opening your (B)ackpack instead of (I)nventory. [*]Mouse movement is one square at a time. [*]The graphics settings are just 1 through 5, without any explanation or apparent effect beyond making the screen darker. The edges of the playing field have an incredibly distracting blur effect that can't be turned off. [*]Ambient sound effects in town are also terribly annoying and can't be turned off. [*]The game allows you to open just about any screen from any other screen, but then gets confused as to which screen to close when you hit the escape key. (Pro Tip: It should always be the last screen opened.) [/list] The dev appears to be finished with working on the game with the latest 'codex' update, so I wouldn't expect any improvements. All of the "features" I listed have been in the game for years at this point, anyway.