Eletrume

Foreword

I'll admit upfront that I was asked by Rockenberg, Eletrume's developer to review Eletrume's demo on May 27, 2022, in a private message. I'll also admit I'm not the biggest fan of looking at demos since I've been burned by projects like "Ellie Starling's Very Long Walk" by everybear in the past. As such, I typically prefer to look at completed games since I don't have to wonder if they'll go on an indefinite hiatus in the future that leaves me severely disappointed. So if I come across as overly harsh it's because certain elements of this game leave me concerned about this game ever being completed.

My Concerns

My main concerns largely come from the game's story oddly enough. This isn't because I think the basic premise is bad but that your decisions have a lot of influence on dialogue. And these dialogue shifts can even be influenced by how you choose to fight as well. As a result the game probably contains a lot of event switches. At least I think that's the right term. At any rate I'm worried that putting a ton of these into this game may cause issues in later parts of the game. In fact, I can point to a developer that experiences this issue on a regular basis in the form of KrimsonKatt.

My other concern is that the sheer amount of work needed to create all of these event switches will eventually cause Rockenberg to lose interest in completing this game since it will eat up way more of his/her time than initially planned by a large margin. A fear only reinforced by "Eletrume" being the only project Rockenberg has worked on to my knowledge so far, but considering the quality of the mapping I'm guessing they've made a few games in the past that they never posted to this site for one reason or another.

After all, I've run into developers in the past that prefer to post their projects in their google drop box or on their own site instead of having them hosted here. Why there so opposed to hosting them here isn't entirely clear to me, but it really isn't any of my business to question them about it.

Though, I'll admit a lot of my concerns would be alleviated if I knew this game was only going to be a couple hours long. Since the opening bit makes this look like it's going to be a rather lengthy epic like "War of Two Worlds" or "Fable of Heroes I: Legendary Edition". And a project of that length will likely take dozens if not hundreds of hours to complete. And that's a lot to ask from anyone. Especially when your doing something as a hobby and won't see any compensation for your time beyond a few comments or reviews.

Review

"Eletrume" is a game currently being developed by Rockenberg using RPG Maker MV that is meant to have a story whose path can go down numerous paths based on how you engage enemies as well as how you interact with characters. A very ambitious system that will offer a lot of reason to revisit this game in the future. Since you'll need to play the game multiple times in order to experience everything. In a way it reminds me of "Infinite Space" on the DS in that regard. Albeit you were still mostly on rails in "Infinite Space". Your decisions largely influenced how many characters would die in the second half of the game. It would also influence what characters you could recruit as well which also holds true for "Eletrume". Since you can only recruit a certain robot at the beginning if you make a certain decision. Of course, I just killed it since much like Seifer from "Final Fantasy 8" I'm a kill crazy $%##$%% that prefers people don't try to hog my experience. Which is why I would never play "Undertale" since you know I'd instantly go for the extinction ending for all those glorious experience points.

At any rate the combat system features an odd combo of turn based combat and Dance Dance Revolution (DDR). The player's turn plays out like your typically turn-based system, but you can input commands like your playing DDR in order to avoid enemy attacks in their entirety. A system that you'll either love and find innovative or will find highly annoying since it basically adds quick time events to combat.



I'm in the camp of hating this system since I don't have the sharpest reflexes which is why I play so many games with turn-based combat in the first place. And I'm probably a purist for the most part since I really dislike games with active-time battle systems as well. Though I do like the conditional turn-based system in "Final Fantasy X".

As far as graphics and sound goes the game is solid. Though, I'll admit none of the tracks so far are the kind I want to listen to in my free time, but not every game is going to have a track as enjoyable as My Comrade from "Disgaea: Hour of Darkness" or The Slow Doberman from the .hack//G.U games or My Glasses are Addicted from "Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis".

As far as the story goes the demo doesn't give us that much to work with. Your a greater being that has been tasked with protecting someone whose important to achieving the Golden Path as it were in the future, but why said individual is so important isn't necessarily clear. We just know he's pivotal to stopping elementals that can hop through various timelines in the future. And these elementals are most likely connected to the Iron-E. At least that's my assumption based on them being the only notable antagonistic force in the demo.

With all that being said I'd say take a look at the demo if you think being able to avoid enemy attacks by playing short bouts of DDR is a good idea or you think the many forked paths you can go down in the demo is worth taking a look at. Other wise, I'd suggest waiting on the release of the full game. And since this is a demo I'm not going to be assigning a score to this project.