Game Bites: Elementallis

 Elementallis

Developer: AnKae Games
Publisher: Top Hat Studios, Inc.

Rating 2 out of 5 stars

Elementallis should really be called 'A Wink to the Past.' The game wears its retro gaming bona fides on every screen. The player sprite and map layout and combat feel like they're ripped from Link's Awakening. The elemental magic system (complete with ring menus!) screams Secret of Mana.

The problem in comparing your game to Secret of Mana or A Link to the Past is that very few games are as good as Secret of Mana or A Link to the Past.

Elementallis suffers loose controls. The world is built on a grid; bushes and lakes and mountains all fit in neat, pixelly squares. Our hero and monsters, though, move without regard to the grid. Controls often feel imprecise and floaty, especially when trying to complete block-sliding puzzles. Combat is awkward and mostly dissatisfying, a repeating game of runaway and strike, runaway and strike. Boss battles, which often include gimmicks that require the player interact with the map to trigger events, magnify both these issues.

And just like its big sibling Secret of Mana, the ring menu can get unwieldy. The cursor doesn't snap in place, meaning you often choose the wrong magic. There are hotkeys to solve this problem, but, on a Swtich controller, anyway, it's too easy to accidentally trigger a hotkey.

There's also an issue with collision detection; if a player is too close to an object, say an unlit candle, pressing the magic button does nothing. You need to back away and reposition the hero to cast fire. This can be especially frustrating in abovementioned boss battles, which demand precise movement and timing that the controls cannot provide.

Elementallis' mistake is the gaming cardinal sin: if the player is not fun to control, no amount of story or graphics or music (all of which are pretty good here) can save you. It's also a sin of comparison. When games like Shovel Knight and Sea of Stars so deflty remix and add to old 8-bit formulae, its becomes easier to see where games like Elementallis fail.