Terra Alia Spell-finitive Edition VR Meta Quest 2 Review

Learning a language can be tricky. As someone who decades ago learnt a bit of Japanese, Mandarin and French in high school and went on to try and learn Latin at University… I can say I don’t retain a lot and I certainly couldn’t hold a conversation with any of those languages. There are of course many different ways to learn a language, flash cards, immersion etc. Terra Alia gives you a chance to learn while gaming… it sounds great, but is it effective?

The game begins with a nice little backstory as to how the world you are about to explore came to be. You are then taken through a quick path that essentially shows you the controls but is also one of the first points at which some cracks may show. As you walk along the floating path, various objects can be found and you can grab them (in fact you are shown to do so as part of the learning of the controls)… but there aren’t any words spoken or written to tell you what the items are. Once you have completed the “tutorial” you find yourself in a room and (for me at least)… you are notified that you have learnt some words and seem to have earnt some rewards. I’m not sure if there were perhaps meant to be words with the items or if something else has been triggered here… but either way it’s a bit odd.

Within this first room is your first (proper) chance to start learning some new words. You find out that you can point to different objects and the word for them will be presented to you… with the press of a button you can hear the word being spoken. Once you have heard the word, you can press another button and have a go at pronouncing it yourself. This seems like an excellent way to get you started and to some extent works… but… I found there were at least a few items that not only could I be granted a successful reward for not pronouncing correctly… for some I flat out said a completely different word. I tried in both French and Spanish and both instances saw me able to achieve a complete notification for pronouncing a word… despite me saying, in English Elephant or Woof. I wasn’t always able to do this and walking into the next room is when I first found I couldn’t get away with my cheeky “pronunciations” so I suspect it might just be a bit of oversight… but I’m also not sure how much allowance is provided for the pronunciation… I mean there has to be some allowance for variation… but how much would still be acceptable if trying to actually talk to someone in that language?

But language (non)barriers aside… we then start to experience the puzzle aspect. Words are presented on a lock and you have to select the correct word, so for example if you have told the game you speak English but want to learn French then the lock will have some words in English on it and you have to match them with their correct French words. Now… you can brute force it without much trouble… but you’d be defeating the purpose of the game then. It’s actually quite good because you can look around the room to find the items you have to find the words for… so it encourages a bit of memorizing.

Just when it seems you are going to be trapped inside a building for the whole game… you make your way into a bright courtyard and the world opens up. This is where you will first encounter combat (which is a little under explained… but not super hard to figure out). You can talk to the people you find and some may give you little quests or important information. From here on you build upon what you have learnt (you can access your journal and other details via a quick access button) and you can start to explore the wider world and really dig into the story.

As a concept I give the game full marks… the idea of learning a language via something as fun as gaming is brilliant. Unfortunately it’s a little rough around the edges and that might put some people off… but if you are keen to learn a new language (and there are a number on offer here)… this just might be good for helping supplement other forms of learning. I’m not sure it would be enough on its own… but it would certainly be a nice break from book after book after book.

Worth a look if you want to get into learning other languages… but don’t expect it to be a total solution.