Elementallis

Before I get into the spiel........this game is good for what it costs, and I enjoyed playing it. However, this game is very flawed and, while all the flaws are minor, they will drive certain people crazy. If you are extremely picky about quality, aren't a very patient person, or just want some low-effort mindless fun, you will hate this game. Now on to the spiel..... Lets get three things out of the way quick. One, I actually played this game all the way through. Two, the enemies and bosses are NOT unkillable bullet sponges, not even close. Three, this game is very rough and unpolished, but not so much that it completely ruins the experience, especially for how little it costs. That about covers the broad strokes of what you're going to see in most of the other reviews. There's a lot of people whining about this game that just plain suck at video games. The kind of people where, if you sat with them while they played something, you'd spend half the time wondering why they keep running in circles around the same room and aren't flipping that lever over in the corner. I'm not very good at video games myself, to the point that I won't even touch an online shooter or a "Souls" game, and the only real challenge I ran into was the very last boss of the game, who I still beat the first time. The people whining about enemies being bullet sponges aren't paying attention to any of the game mechanics at all. They aren't using the elemental abilities and they definitely aren't upgrading their gear. The enemies get more resilient as you progress through the game, so if you don't bother doing the minimum, you WILL get slapped around for it. On the other hand, if you actually use the tools provided to you, the game stays at about a medium-low level of difficulty pretty much throughout. As an example, there's a mini-boss at the beginning of the game that you can take on before you have any reason to and it absolutely brutalized me at first. By the time I finished that region, I could run literal circles around him. By the time I got to the end of the game, the UPGRADED version of this creature was a mob enemy and I could absolutely humiliate it. That said, there are A LOT of very valid complaints about this game. It was very clearly released in an unfinished state, but not a broken one. There's a lot about this game that could have benefitted from some additional attention. The part that really annoyed me was that the time between sword swings is just slightly too long and the hitbox is just slightly too short. For most of the game, especially once your sword is fully upgraded, it's not the end of the world, but when it bites you, it gets annoying really fast. Some other big ones are the fairly overboard amount of backtracking/replaying you have to do, because there are very few paths in and around various areas, and a VERY anemic fast travel system that you can't even fully use until the very last section of the game, and even then you have to put in some farming time for it. Additionally, there are a lot of mechanics and interactions that were started on, but never amounted to anything. There's a lot of conversations that would normally be the beginning of a sidequest that never go anywhere past the initial speech box. There's also very little indication that the elements have combination abilities, aside from two random room puzzles, one of which is skippable. Most people will play this game never seeing more than two or three of those combos. Finally, there's one ability, in particular, that is basically a minor cheat code. The overall impression I got from this, as well as how things went after the initial demo came out is that the developer started on this game and put a lot of serious work into it, then life got in the way to the point that, once they had time to finish it, they just put out the best product they could with the material they had, and didn't bother with any bells and whistles. Definitely a bit of a disappointment, but for less than 20 bucks, I still think I got my money's worth. If you're a stickler for the quality of the games you're playing, the number of issues with this game will definitely turn you off. If you're just looking for something easy and casual to numb your brain with, the twistiness of the terrain and the backtracking you'll have to do in order to find the right path from one area to another one that was walled off from it will probably keep this game from being what you're looking for. If you don't have a lot of patience for having to repeat the same tasks again and again, the amount of backtracking and redoing puzzles this game requires will drive you out of your everloving mind. If any of this sounds like you, don't bother playing this game. You won't enjoy it. On a final note, this game has a little bit of political messaging in it. Not enough to feel TOO preachy or be a serious turnoff unless you're just completely fed up with being lectured by your video games, but it is there. It never gets insulting or combative, and it never reaches the scale of what's been driving a lot of controversy in the industry over the past decade or so, but there are points that will definitely leave some people thinking "Ok, we get it. We know who you voted for." Again, there's not much of it and almost all of it is isolated to a single part of the game, but if you have absolutely had it with that practice, then this might be one for you to skip, as well. So yes, definitely a game with its problems, but not near enough to ruin it. I think it is JUST enough game for the money and a pretty solid first draft for a "studio" that seems like it was mostly one person's passion project, with 4 or 5 people helping out. I'd definitely be inclined to give this studio another shot at my money, especially for something with a little more time and support behind it.

I've been missing proper zelda dungeons so much. You know the ones where you get a dungeon item, and then you defeat the boss with that? It's a lost art. But Elementalis delivers on these dungeons. That and a proper overworld to explore to.

It's good. It's really good. If you like 2D top down Zelda you will adore this game, but there's more. It isn't just a Zelda clone. There is an actual story that is interesting. A world that has consequences made from the choices of the people that live within it. Every eco-system, every village has its own unique culture. And even if they are cut off from the outside world, they are still connected to it. A lot of "zelda" clones have puzzles and gimmicks, but this is the best dungeon design I have ever seen in an Indie game. Never frustrated, only challenged. Curiosity always rewarded.

A massive disappointed game. Played this on the Steam Deck and was ready to re-live playing any top down Zelda game on my Gameboy Color, like the old days and was disappointed greatly by this game. They tried to make it feel like an old Zelda game with the graphics, play style, dungeons, etc. and for the most part, it does feel like an old Zelda game. But the game just isn't finished and feels like an early access demo. The game is pretty bland with a somewhat dumb story line where your parents are the reason the world goes to crap and you are forced to fix your parents issue. What I mean is, you don't get a choice. Golden Sun had a choice where you can say no to wanting to get the elements back and and it shows what happens when you said no. You don't have choices and your character is essetinally saying yes, without even giving you a chance to reply. Your character is hard to know what they look like and are given a choice for pronouns. It does NOTHING except for choices in how they reply to you and thats it. Can't even tell if I'm a male or a female and they fact that they give you the pronoun choice, while not changing how you look. Should've either been a male character or a female character instead of whatever they gave us to play. The enemies are horribly un-balanced where they can spawn right on your square and do tons of damage. Some enemies do a quarter of a heart while others will do 3 hearts from one swing. Impossible to figure out where they spawn as they are pixel perfect when an underground enemy decides to attack you out of the blue. The game doesn't have a direction meaning you are given your first elemental and you get to guess where you go next. First dungeon is in the volcano area, for the fire element, and you get no direction that is the first way to go. That dungeon is badly broken as you are on a pillar and need to be pixel accurate on a moving platform in order to shoot fire into a torch in order to unlock a door to get into the next room. The leaf dungeon has an impossible puzzle where you need to push a statue onto a button in order to progress to the next room. The problem, you need to move square blocks out of the way and they can only move one time. The bigger issue, it's impossible to complete. Spent about an hour last night try each and every way to move the blocks that will allow me to push the statue on the button and it's impossible. The dungeons are very linear and you can just go to another part of the dungeon and come back to that puzzle at a later time. You have to complete that puzzle before accessing the rest of the dungeon. Got to the ice dungeon and it's just IMPOSSIBLE to beat. Also, you just spend you money on potions from the fire nation and there NO OTHER STORE OWNER IN THE ENTIRE GAME TO SPEND MONEY ON. This game has made me hate these types of games as it's just such a disappointing game with broken dungeons, powerful enemies, and horrible mini boss and main boss designs. Just such a disappointing game and the fact that only 302 people have bought this game says it's just not worth it. Even on sale, it's just not worth it. Thank you dev for making me hate these types of games and I just won't play these type of games again.

What I loved: The style and art, the music, the charming but not over the top story, the different bioms Annoying parts - some of the bosses were pretty tough and annoying but with in the end nothing that can't be handled. Also some of the temples got confusing after a while, especially towards the end. Overall, great game. I recommend playing the DEMO because if you enjoy that, you will enjoy the game. If you don't, it didn't cost you anything.

As of the time of writing this I have 100% the game and gameplay is really solid the temples start out real basic and the get harder towards endgame, I will mention there is a lot of BACKTRACKING so if you plan on getting everything your first playthrough I would highly suggest looking up a map and keep track of your progress. I would also like to touch on bosses, some of the bosses are a little janky (wind temple boss and water temple boss) sometimes you would be hurting yourself more than actually doing damage to the boss or I had a boss at one point just go through the entrance door and stay there, also feel like the final boss could of been something more crazy rather than a boss rush. all in all I enjoyed my time with elementallis, if the game goes on sale I would say pick it up.

Very fun game, felt like I was reliving classic Zelda games! Especially in the drought nintendo has brought upon us for actual puzzles. Some of the dungeons/puzzles were fairly easy but started becoming "Aha!" moments in the third dungeon. Overall highly recommend to people wanting a new classic top-down Zelda experience!