Game:

Elfaria (1993)

Duration: 20:01

7,879 views

76

Elfaria...where to begin? Well, there is a bit of information for this game floating around the Internet, but let me give you a bit of a rundown. Being a product of various groups such as Light & Shadows and RED Company (and with box art and character designs from the talented Susumu Matsushita who has done designs for Adventure Island and much more) and being published by Hudson (known for a long time for Bomberman and Adventure Island, among other works), Elfaria deals with...elves, actually, but more specifically, it deals with a young prince named Pyne (the Japanese for his name comes out to "Pain") who is reading a tablet and according to it, he (or those reading the tablet) must keep the power of "Ra" from going out of control, or monsters will take over and the land will get consumed by darkness and chaos...or so the legend in Elfaria goes. Due to recent events and dark forces, he sees that the words on the tablet may be true and he wants to act to prevent calamity. He soon meets the mysterious and beautiful Ell (Eruru) who tells him about the 4 elements (water, fire, wind, earth) and that they need to be kept in check. She also hands Pyne the "Blue Gem", one of the major gems he needs. Pyne is the "water team leader", but you soon will meet others who work with the forces of fire, wind, and earth. Together with the aid of those other people, balance must be restored as you eventually go up against the wicked Zora. As I cannot type much with YouTube's text limitations, to learn a bit more about the game, I suggest visiting the links below:

http://randomencountersjp.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/cartridge-5-elfaria.html

http://www.boxedpixels.co.uk/2014/08/game-057-elfaria.html

^ One thing to note about those links is that some of the character names are not correct...they aren't INCORRECT (they are literal translations), but owning the physical game and manual and such, they actually tell you the names of most of the "important" characters in English, such as Pyne and Ell and such.

At any rate, here's what I think; Elfaria is definitely...atypical. The visuals aren't bad for the year and the introduction of the game is actually quite well done and nicely animated (the things that do animate). The music isn't so bad either...it's quite theatrical, in a way...however, the game was actually aiming for theatrical, so to a certain degree, they nailed things down. The problem with the game isn't the pretty ordinary "save the world" story, but the gameplay...you see, the game wanted players to focus more on the story than the gameplay, so the game is generally all auto-battle. Having a lack of direct control quickly becomes an apparent issue when you would rather want to heal earlier, but the AI doesn't agree. Next thing you know, your allies start getting whacked in even standard encounters. There are also no shops or money and you gain no experience from battles, though you do gain items that can be used on your equipment (you "meld" them onto a person's weapon and can boost stats like attack and defense; you can meld up to five items per character). Later on, you get different teams of different elements that have slightly different spells and abilities too...but the end result is actually a pretty shallow experience, with limited character control and customization and limited spells/skills. That lack of customization and development, leads to a pretty dull experience, where you only level up when certain important "map enemies" are defeated and the difficulty is actually quite high throughout the entire game on a pretty consistent basis due to the lack of user input. It's a novel game to play, but I suppose the less-talked-about sequel is better in different ways, although that isn't immediately obvious at first. It isn't as engaging as some other RPGs out there.

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