Elemental Abyss 元素之渊 Reviews

Its a solid puzzle/strategy game. Do it

Yet another time I wish that Steam also had a Thumb Sideways option. I normally skip reviewing games like this in which I feel that I'm strongly on the fence about. Attacks are automatic. Depending on what colored tile you move to will trigger the elemental attack related to that color. Elemental attacks have different range patterns: Forwards, Sideways, backwards, or Circular around your character, or in diagonals. You have a ghost when making decisions how to move around the board and they will show you if and how much damage you are doing to the enemies you pass by on that turn. You can take three or four steps per turn. You have three different cards that you can play per battle. These offer things like more armor or further attacking range. You also have optional feats to score more coins and better cards at the end of battle. ie; Land 12 Fire attacks at once. You have an overhead screen before battle (like many card battlers) where you have limited choice as to which battle or direction you wish to head in. You can use coins to upgrade your character. Here's the thing, if the game has been designed so that enemies and colored tiles are always the same and the tiles change to the same colors every play then the dev has methodically created a puzzle game with a strict pattern to move in for the best score. However if everything is dropped randomly then this all is pretty low effort. I can't say for certain because as you complete a battle you can't go back. All things considered this is a sure win/win if you can catch a sale on it for 5 USD or less but I would highly recommend keeping in Wishlist until such sales occur.

After a good 60 hours of playtime I think it's time to share my thoughts. First of all, let me say I really enjoy this game. Sure it has its flaws, but which game doesn't? During each fight, you don't really get too many options. Where to move your character each turn is pretty much all you have to decide. However, there's so much more depth there. A depth that may take awhile to notice. By moving, the elements you step on becomes stronger for the turn. Should I take a detour to power up just a single attack or should I do a few weaker ones? Is there a way for me to do both? Figuring out how to do the most damage is however not the only thing to keep in mind. How much of a defence can I muster given this path? Sometimes it might just be better to not attack at all to be able to end the turn with the best possible defence. Which monsters attack this turn? Where are they smiting (dealing double damage)? On top of this there are also traps and sliding ice. Sometimes you take a detour which will decrease your damage just to seize the moment to disarm that trap while it's safe to do so. Or why not get rid of that obstacle to open up the map some more? Where you walk will also have an effect on how the board will look next turn. Setting up for future turns are also important. None of these things are complex on their own, but together they form a challenging puzzle made of simple rules. What makes it feel fresh, and keeps me playing are a few different things. Something as simple as changing the attack area of your character (different classes uses different rules for targeting enemies) has a surprisingly big impact. While playing a Fighter you have to pay close attention to the smite areas. A good path for an Archer might criss-cross across the map in an attempt to find the best spots to shoot from. The Mages on the other hand often require good foresight, as their attacks can be a bit tricky to hit effectively. Apart from the class you choose, which character you play also has a big impact on how you play. I really like the Spartan and his counter attack. While playing the Spartan the main plan is to stack as much defence as possible, even if it means sacrificing almost all your attack. On top of this, the cards you collect matters a whole lot for the strategy. Are you collecting a lot of cards or keeping your collection small? You have to decide which cards to upgrade, duplicate and even remove. Should the gold you collect be used on restoring HP, buying scrolls, unlocking new cards or modifying the collection of cards you already got? Each card have values modifying the attack and defence of its element (although those can be 0). However, it's quite rare that that's the only thing the card does. There are cards that makes your blocked attacks deal more damage, cards that turns traps from harmful to useful, cards that makes elements stronger from a distance, cards that prevent enemies from smiting, cards that encourage you to end your turn at specific elements and a whole lot more. The cards really do alter the way you play. So what's bad with this game then? Well, there are a few things worth mentioning, although there's one thing that overshadows the rest. The English translation is really bad. This can be really distracting at times and quite annoying at others. It takes a bit longer than necessary to understand what to do and sometimes the cards work in a different way than the text claims. It really can be a deal breaker, which is a shame. Furthermore, the tutorial is a little bit short. You'll get to read a few screens of text and then that's it. You don't really need much more, but a little bit would be nice. Another thing, although I don't mind it that much, is that the story itself is quite shallow. There's not a whole lot of logic or reason given to why you venture forth into the abyss. A last thing to mention is that there's of course many random elements that one could potentially find annoying. Personally, I don't though. There are plenty of ways to control the randomness to get reliable strategies in place. In some games it can feel that you're at the mercy of RNG, but I haven't felt a problem with it here. Thought it was worth mentioning anyway. With all this said though, It's an Early Access game. Most of its shortcomings are fixable. Before I finish I'll leave you with this: Elemental Abyss is a really interesting strategy game, that with a small set of rules creates a really deep and complex challenge. I really do recommend it. That being said, if bad English is a big concern it might be a good idea to wait until it's improved. P.S. I'm currently making an unofficial English version of the game and am maybe 80% done. We'll see if I can get it included in the game or release it in another way somehow once it's done. This review was written with version 1.04 in mind, so things might have been changed since then.