Elminage: Original is an old school dungeon RPG. You know the old school DRPGs with overly complicated menus, the chance of permanently losing a character when reviving them, crippling status effects, terribly vague info, mistranslated text & enemies that can behead your characters with every attack they make, etc… yeah those ones.
Elminage starts you off in the town of Trangelda, in which you either use a few pre-made characters or create a band of adventures from 9 different races with 17 classes to choose from & customize the right down to their gender, age & nature all of which play a role in gameplay in some minor way. An example being a quest giver won’t deal with you unless you have a female party & another one doesn’t care for humans, other things involve being unable to be a certain class of male, female or good or evil, the Devilish race being unaffected by cursed items & the Werebeasts unable to use Silver items, etc. All in all a myriad of party members can be created & if that doesn’t do it for ya, you can class change them & even their race & gender using some items. Certainly a lot of choices to be made & that’s not counting character portraits both the in-game ones & the ones you can use by load by using the ‘Face Load’ feature involving the 3DS’ camera to take screenshots of whatever & use them as portraits. Admittedly not a feature I used but the option is there & an ok replacement for the PSP’s original way of doing it by simply having one copy/paste them to the memory card.
Once set with your initial party, go visit the king & he will tell you your goal. This being finding 7 rings created by gods scattered through the 10 or so dungeons all in the effort to stop a sorceress from tearing down the barrier holding back a demon god & wrecking havoc. Overall not an deep minded plot as DRPGs often lack but engaging enough to keep you going, especially when the occasional NPC or story bit helps stoke your motivation every so often. The rings are indeed randomly placed in the dungeon & you can even have a ceremony to randomized them yet again for the low price of 100,000 Gs. Thankfully you won’t be blindly humping every tile mashing the ‘X’ button in search off them as you’ve got a Compass with you. Of course this handy tool doesn’t work for free & you need ‘Fame’ to make it work, this ‘Fame’ is gained by doing the various NPC quests so you can then power the Compass. A vicious circle.
The dungeons you will traverse through are pretty varied, ranging from towers, swamps, volcanoes, an airship & even a bird’s insides. Don’t ask where you exit out from. All of these have their own hazards for you to deal with though I didn’t find hazards all that too common as well. Lava damage tiles were certainly dangerous & ones that leave you unable to use magic were annoying but nothing but a minor obstacle in the grand scheme. A myriad of monsters out for blood inhabit these but they had little coherence to them in regards to the places they inhabited or their roles. They are just there to kick your ass or be nuisance, little rhyme or reason. Nonetheless, due to its age, I find it a forgivable flaw & clearly did not turn me off getting hooked into the game.
Combat is turn-based with enemies & your party separated into rows. This means having your best hitters with with short ranged weapons in the back is a bad idea & your magic casters in the front equally so. The same applies to enemies as well but they are oftentimes prepared so the advantage mostly falls to them. Enemies have 3 rows, but the third one is “removed” from play & as such won’t take any actions until you clear out the 1st or 2nd row & reveal the 3rd row. As mentioned attacks are based on range, something denoted on the weapon’s & item’s stat screen. Of course magic & ranged weapons can deal with back row enemies as well as a certain buff spell that will give you unlimited range to hit all rows. If all fails, the handy dandy Alchemist class can with, its special skill, instill traits into weapons, armors & items ranging from the aforementioned ‘unlimited range’ to removing curses from them (something that will come in handy as most stolen items are cursed by default) to increasing damage. All around a top-tier class that is good to have around. An important aspect to combat is knowing that the game takes cues from DnD as most RPGs do & as such magic runs on a daily allotment system instead of MP & the lack of a now traditional defense stats instead using THAC0. Of course, don’t ask me how THAC0 works, just know that the lower you AC the better “armor” you have.
On the art & sound front; music & sounds are serviceable, nothing particularly memorable to me but works for what it is. Art much like the music it also works; its sprites’ artstyle being more of the “western” dark variety making the games’ various dark fantasy creature look pretty good & fearsome, from the lowly cockroach to the hydras & dragon to everything in between. Its 3D art, used for the dungeons range from drab to ok, depending on the dungeon.
All in all, Elminage: Original is an enjoyable game but not groundbreaking in the least & nothing particularly stands out that hasn’t been done before. Difficulty is just right, it can be hard at the beginning but with some work it mellows out but can still can kick your ass. Being able to save your game at any time can be a hit or miss for some but ultimately doesn’t detract that it can be difficult but it also can make the fear of character permadeath moot, not that it was a prevailing issue in any case. Portingwise, it is the best iteration of the game, fixing the cutoff text issue that was in the PSP version & most text oddities. In my play time, I only saw 1 against a single enemy type & only during a certain action, so it wasn’t a big deal. The biggest flaw the 3DS port has is crashing if you open a ‘Mimic’ loot chest, this can be a non-issue as having a thief class can make identifying them a near deterrent to the bug plus the chances of this trap showing up is already on the rare side. Nonetheless, a thing to be aware of. Ultimately I recommend it, in either for the 3DS for its portability or the PC version for overall better visuals.
Tips, Tricks & Resources:
- This Wiki has most of what you need to get going, especially maps. It is in Japanese, so use Google Translate to get a pretty good translation that with some deduction & common sense will get you what you need.
- Item drops are not set by the enemy killed, instead it is set by the current dungeon & floor in that dungeon. This spreadsheet has all items written by their dungeon & floor.
- Character age affects their initial stat rolls & subsequent gains & losses. 10 years old characters will have the least amount of stats to work with but have lower chances to ‘Turn to ash’ upon revival. As you go higher (up to 999) you get more points to work with but it also increases the chance of permadeath.
- Thieves help in disarming traps as well gaining the ability to remove & steal equipment from enemies. This equipment can then be used by your party. Having 1 thief in your party is highly recommended.
- Most enemy equipment is often cursed, an Alchemist is another recommended party member to have. Their special skill allows you to give &/or remove traits off of equipment. They also learn a fair few debuffs & status effects, one of them being Paralysis, which while hard to land effectively stops an enemy from ever attacking & it never wears off.
- The Devilish race can use cursed equipment freely but not ones considered ‘holy’ & their EXP gain is lower. It pairs well with the Brawler as it doesn’t any equipment through shops so Thieves will provide most if not all of its equipment.
- Brawlers have the ‘Lower AC’ passive as such you must equip them with items that have the ‘Lowered AC ability: On’ trait for their passive to work properly.
- Loot is not identified upon pick up, instead you either pay a shopkeeper to do it or use a Bishop to do it for free. As such, having one in your party or as a back up is recommended as it saves you money in the long run. Occasionally your Bishop will be affected by a status effect when identifying items, to clear it, just leave to the world map with your Bishop instead of paying the Temple to do it, saving you even more money.
- Weapons with secondary ‘On Use’ effects will never break, go nuts using them.
- It is a good idea to multiclass an eventual Summoner class so as to receive the max amount of Spell levels from all magic classes starting from Mage > Cleric > Alchemist & finally Summoner. Spell levels cap at 3 when changing classes & it only takes till about level 14-15 to max get all spells & amount per class. The Summoner class’ skill is also used in a fair few ways such as some quest so it is always nice to have one.
- NISA To Raises Prices On Select PC Games Come July 19th. - July 1, 2021
- void tRrLM(); //Void Terrarium review - July 30, 2020
- The Alliance Alive HD Remaster review - October 4, 2019