Terra Incognita ~ Chapter One: The Descendant

A strange armored man falls from the sky encased in crystal, in the middle of the forest. Unhurt but loses all his memories, which is really spreading around video game main characters nowadays, having no memory of who he is other than his name. His name is Alexis, and with his new companion Leon goes on a journey to find out who he is, and to silence the strange voices in his head that keep telling him what to do. Terra Incognita ~ Chapter One: The Descendant is an Early Access Steam game, developed by Back to Basics gaming, which sets out to emulate the classic JRPGs. The name itself, translated from Latin, means “unknown land”, which is more than likely a reference to the strange, unknown land you've found yourself in.

One of the positive things about being an amnesiac is that you're figuring out the plot at the same time as Alexis is, as well as the controls. This loosely means that the small tutorial hints don't feel forced, because Alexis has no idea about what's going on, so when Leon talks to you about elemental weaknesses and Alexis asks more about. It doesn't make him that silly guy that didn't pay attention in training, he actually doesn't know. It's nicely integrated into the story's overall plot, which is a breath of fresh air considering how certain games can shove the tutorial down your throat.

The story not only focuses on Alexis but on the world around him. The world is under attack by the oldest family in the game world, the Valganis family, and they're making everyone's lives miserable. They've been destroying the lives of the people of North Willow (the first big place you stop in the game), with public executions, robberies and even massacres of supply caravans. There are characters in the story has been affected by them in some way and they seem very interested in Alexis as the story goes on. It leaves you wondering just who Alexis was before he fell from the crystal in the sky, and just what he was doing in that crystal in the first place.

The first thing that's going to come to mind when anyone sees this game on early access is likely “What's a Suikoden game doing on steam?”, which isn't too far off from how the game plays. It's a turn based battle system with magic, special abilities like attack boosts and shields, or just straight up murderous attacks of death that leaves your enemies motionless in a somewhat comical way. When a creature dies in battle, a token of them is left behind. Nothing useful for players to pick up, it's just there as their “corpse”. It's a nice touch to see a random little hat from the wizard raccoon you just fought on the ground after you destroyed him. Despite this game trying to emulate its predecessors with the villagers that stay in one place the entire time saying the same thing, it's little touches like that that show the promise that this game very well has.

Graphics-wise, each important character has a portrait with artwork drawn in a way that mixes anime with a more western style of art, which gives each character a different unique look. Nothing looks too outlandish, and it shows itself as a fantasy storyline with the mysterious overarching plot of Alexis figuring out who he is while helping out his friend, Leon, and others around the world. It's a fantasy setting, so there's plenty of fantastical creatures that are common in fantasy as well as races of the creators own mixed in with the knights, archers and the man who fell from the sky which takes a fantasy approach to its storytelling while keeping the characters a lot more realistic. The problems and flaws of each character are explained and they never once come off as unlikable. The main cast overall is a very positive one and even the important NPCs will make you get attached to them, despite the fact they may or may not come with you. Music dictates every scene and comes off as very old school, the more dramatic music tends to outshine the general exploring music since it comes off as far less repetitive.

The game has been improved since its release, but there are a few technical problems that need be addressed by the developer. The biggest one is getting stuck on environmental objects while sprinting, which is getting fixed/patched and will hopefully be gone before the final release of the game.

Terra Incognita ~ Chapter One: The Descendant is a nice throwback to a classic, under-appreciated RPG series, and it should be interesting to see what Back to Basics does with it in future patches.

Angelina Bonilla, NoobFeed (@Twitter)