Should’ve been called El-blandia Story instead. -_- Well at least it was short, clocking in at just under 20 hours for the first playthrough. The soundtrack was very finely composed, far too good for a game like this. The voice acting was decent and battles went by very speedily once animations were turned off.
Of course, all games go by quickly when your characters are almost invincible. On top of all its other crimes, Elvandia Story introduced cheap doping agents near the end (costing 3,000 each when I had about 60,000 to my name) that allowed me to max out my MC’s stats and take both final bosses out within 5 turns. Game, set and match.
Story: Ashley is the son of the ruler of Kastol, part of the Elvandia continental alliance thingy. Only not really, actually he’s the secret twin brother of the prince of all Elvandia. Once the king and the prince both meet conveniently messy ends, it’s up to Ashley to unite the continent against Magdaf, the invading king of…I already forgot what his country is called. Anyway, Magdaf has a magic ‘Glaesum’ staff from the gods so it’s up to our troops to collect other legendary ‘Glaesum’ weapons so they can fight against him. I got the Glaesum sword after about 10 stages. A few stages later, I got an accessory that prevents weapon uses from going down. Top that off with a legendary shield on my MC and I could easily have soloed the rest of the game with him.
I explained last time how a few ill-advised changes to the battle system robbed it of any and all challenge, so I won’t go over how easy the game is again. Not when there are so many other flaws to point out. I’ll try and keep the points short and elaborate where necessary, but this is going to be a long post nevertheless. It’s that kind of game.
Story problems
– Magdaf’s point and Ashley’s counterpoint are painfully cliched. Magdaf = war comes from different powers struggling, so if there’s only one power, i.e. me, then there’s no more war. The only thing is, all the nations were at peace until Magdaf came along, so what on earth gave him that idea? Would it be too much to ask for a simple explanation of his motives? Evidently so, because Spike doesn’t provide one. Ashley’s point (stop me if you’ve heard this before) = power of friendship! Everything is possible if we work together! Mankind doesn’t need gods!
– There are three potential routes for this game: Light, Dark and True. I got the True ending, but it was entirely by chance. That’s because according to research I just did, routes are determined based on which of 3 particular characters is standing furthest from one particular boss in one particular stage. If there’s any way to know this beforehand without FAQ’ing it or buying the strategy guide, I’d like to know. [apparently the Light and Dark routes have very bad endings where Ashley is driven mad by the power of the Glaesums, so I guess I got lucky]
– The game tries to set up Magdaf’s four generals as all hardcore and badass, but since I can take them all out in two hits or less, it doesn’t ring true. The time spent focusing on them is wasted.
– The backstory behind the Glaesums and the whole war is that two gods, Giaran and Gi…Gi… uhh, Gi-something had a disagreement, fought bitterly and then were shattered into pieces and the Glaesums are fragments of their bodies. All right, so what did they fight about? And if they really did fight, why are they all buddy-buddy and working together as co-last bosses in the final stage? Isn’t this so-called backstory a big fat lie?
– The story progresses normally for a while. Ashley marches across the land city by city and takes back lost territory. This covers about stages 1-24. Then Magdaf launches a massive counterattack and takes everything back. That’s stage 25. Stage 26 and Ashley is already back at Magdaf’s door? Whut? Then what was the point of the Magdaf’s counterattack? And Magdaf, of course, goes down in 1 hit so, whut?
– This is common to JRPGs in general, but bad guys are too easily forgiven. Magdaf’s general who mowed down half the continent and came within inches of killing Ashley’s family? He just sheds a few tears and tells a sob story about how he was just looking for revenge on Magdaf. Presto! Instant forgiveness. He even gets a heartfelt Troizen? Troizen! Troizeeeen!!! when he dies. Even Ashley’s bro Charles never got that much.
– Everyone accepts Ashley as the new heir to the kingdom too easily. Especially Ashley himself. You’d think he’d have a few more doubts and questions about the whole issue, but he’s just like wow, cool, okay. But seriously, just think about it. The prince of a country suddenly dies and some other dude shows up claiming to be his long-lost fraternal twin brother wot nobody knows about except two old guys who are openly in his camp? Isn’t this story a little too convenient?
– There’s some nonsense floating around about Ashley’s dead mother who was the princess of someplace or another. As far as I can tell it has zero relevance to the main story, but characters still trot her name out every other stage or so for no good reason. Eventually Magdaf says he killed her and IIRC Ashley just blanks him and starts the beatdown so, welp, there you have it.
Gameplay problems
-Last time I mistakenly wrote that side attacks boosted accuracy by 3% and back attacks boosted it by 6%. I was assuming that was the case because otherwise what would be the point of side and back attacks? But I actually went back and tested this theory and discovered that both side and back attacks boost accuracy and damage by a whopping 0.00%. The more you know.
– I also checked the tutorial to see what terrain effects do. Turns out there are only two types of terrain, marsh and desert. And their sole function is to reduce MOV for armored or horse-riding units. The thing is, I only have one pre-promote armor guy who I never use and I only got a horse-rider in level 26 of 28, when all the outdoor fighting was long over. In other words there’s still no point to terrain.
– Enemy levels are just off. Up till the final stages, most enemies were level 9-12ish when my regular party was pushing 15, 16, 17, all the way to 20. Enemy level jumped to 20 unpromoted for the final stage and stayed there, even though the party I took consisted almost entirely of promoted characters. This makes promotion slightly pointless, btw.
– Despite the weakness of the enemies, or maybe because of it, they attack in huge numbers. It’s not unusual to start out against 24 enemies and face another 20 or more in reinforcements. Since most battles can be insta-won by offing the boss, I guess they’re doing their best to protect him by acting as living roadblocks. Which is a valid battle strategy and wonderfully loyal of them, but mowing down tons of weaklings doesn’t make for interesting gameplay at all.
– Something I actually liked: As in FE: Sacred Swords and FE: Awakening, you get to pick one of two paths for promotion. The Light path usually focuses on accuracy and defense while the Dark path focuses more on devastating attacks. A Light mage gets to use healing staves while a Dark mage doesn’t, a Light bowman gets a horse but a Dark one doesn’t, that sort of thing.
– The unfortunate downside of the promotion system is that you need special items for promotion and there are only about 8 of them in the whole game. If there’s a secret place to buy or farm more, I never found it. Not only that but there are only 4 of each type, so you will be forced to make some people Light/Dark by default rather than by choice. Left to my own devices I would have made everyone Dark because I don’t need the extra DEF.
– Weapons like epees and flails/maces are sold in the store, but no one can use them once Charles and two other guys pass off the scene. Yet the store keeps coming up with newer versions. Maybe they’re for a secret character I never got?
– Magic über alles. It comes broken and it stays broken from start to finish. Apart from story-protected bosses, no one can take two hits from even the mediocre Fire magic my mages start out with. If the enemy had similarly powerful magic that would be one thing, but firstly, enemy mages are pretty scarce, secondly enemy mages spend most of their time trying to cast status effect spells that almost never work and thirdly, my characters have such high RES and AVD that hitting them is like trying to swat a fly with a toothpick.
Something I don’t know how to feel about: Apart from the last bosses, who are gods, all enemies and allies are human. I don’t know whether I liked it or not. It gave the game an interesting down-to-earth “regular war between regular folks” kind of feel, and it was a change from the usual fantasy mix. But I think Spike could have done way better adding variety in different ways. Different character models instead of the same red-shirts from start to finish, for example. More and better backstories for everyone. Or original enemy and character classes instead of the same old fighter-thief-archer-mage types. There must be better ways of making a human-only system more interesting.
– There’s a useful system for converting Glaesum fragments into S-ranked weapons. The catch is – and there’s always a catch – no one can equip S-ranked weapons in the game! When you promote, your weapon level is bumped up to A. But the game ends within two stages of when most characters promote so they never get to use the best weapons. Not that it matters because, as I said, everything dies in two hits.
Everything else
Even though it’s such a mediocre game, I actually enjoyed Elvandia Story in a perverse kind of way. I almost started New Game+, but there’s absolutely no reason to do so other than that I love SRPGs. Elvandia Story could really use a tweaked remake, because it would be quite easy to make things right. The story problems can easily be fixed with a few changes in dialogue. For the gameplay, they just need to rework their damage algorithms so that characters are in actual danger sometimes. If this means you have to implement level-scaling then so be it. The early stages were close to decent because that tension and potential for failure existed. The story is bland enough that I wouldn’t replay it even if they did fix it, but then I would at least recommend it to potential players. As it is, stay far far away from Elvandia Story if you value your time.
