Nightmare of the Elven World

Helloooo old-time adventurers!
"Nightmare of the Elven World" is a classic RPG Maker 2000 adventure rpg game about a party of heroes that have to defeat Evil. While this game was uploaded by thedarkdreamer, it was apparently made by Mysterious AEGes and Diabolical Vengeance. Anyway it seems that thedarkdreamer made some edits (like fixing some maps and adding some skills), but I do not exactly what was changed from the original version, in any case let's start from the plot.

Omicron and Minako are two soldiers of the elvish army that are patrolling a forest. They were raised by the elven queen like they were her sons, so when she's in danger they immediately go and fight a werewolf, but unfortunately the queen was poisoned and soon dies, but not before mentioning the arrival of Omega Darkness, a malevolent entity that is threatening the whole world.
So our two heroes decide to embark in a quest that will take them all around the world fighting the corruption that created terrible monsters, meeting allies and facing Omega Darkness.


Don't worry little friend, your help is appreciated but enemies in this game are weak and loot is extremely generous!

Ok, this is the plot, and as you can see it's pretty basic, this is no Three the Hard Way concerning the complexity of the story. On the other hand I appreciate that from a certain point there is a main hub (a ship) where we'll be not only be able to choose different destinations, but also change our party members, since we'll have more than four heroes to create our squad (even if you're forced to use some of them in particular instances). Here we also learn that the protagonist is Omicron, since he's the only hero we cannot drop!

Now, if you see the title you can expect a walk in a park, trust me! Well except for some instances, but most of the time battles are very easy: enemies seems to rarely hit, and when they do damage is really minimum. There are random encounters (aside from the classic boss battles), but you can heal and restock for few money and this will never be a problem since loot will be really excessively generous! Not even bosses will prove to be a challenge, and it's fun that for example, fighting the first werewolf, the game suggest you to go at level 3-4. Really! And that's a lie, I did that battle at the 1st level, Omicron has even a skill that costs 0 MP (mana points) that can paralyze enemies, including bosses. Ok, that's an attack isn't very accurate that can miss, but due to the ineptitude of the enemies there aren't a lot of risks, anyway if you use some of the most powerful attacks things will be even easier.
Later our team is joined by a princess healer, a minotaur that's a powerhouse and other characters... like that theyneeded help! Anyway at least the battlers that rapresent the enemies are pretty cool, I do not remember the source since I've seen them used rarely, but they were nice and creepy.


Yes, my dear you can take a nap. I cannot, because I'm THE HERO PROTAGONIST!

Ok, but "Nightmare of the Elven World" extremely low difficulty isn't its main problem, there are more: first is mapping, that's pretty much awful. I mean it's really basic, with few characters (mostly classic rm2k/rm2k3 Rtps, but there are some edits too) here and there, inns and pubs are almost empty and most of the time they're just huge empty rooms with a vendor. Looks unfinished to me, and while I can understand that this is an old 2003 game, most old games (I mentioned Three the Hard Way before because it was released the same year, in 2003, but there are many others with far better mapping) it looks lazily done: all inns look almost identical, there is a dungeon that's just a big room, and in most dungeons you have to enter, kill the boss and then backtrack to the entry... boooring!

For the rest there isn't much to say: sounds and music are RTPs, mapping is bad (most places feel empty, includes some errors too, for example before the minotaur there is a wall that has only the upper part, so you can walk under it!), difficulty is ridiculous and the story... uhm it's just go around, kill enemies collect allies, but do not expect a lot of twist and turns, many interesting eachenges or revelations: most people seems to sit idly waiting for Omega Darkness to come and corrupt the world, while companions eagerly join as soon as Omicron and Minako ask them. Ok! The only good thing is probably the presence of Know-it-all, a little children that provides info and directions about what you're supposed to do, since sometimes without him I'd have been lost (or maybe not, since the game is pretty much linear except for some parts, and there is not a lot to do anyway!).


Every character has an affinity to one element... for Omicron this means electricity!

UPDATED ADDITION (after the fix! Attention, has spoilers on late game!)
So I was finally able to beat the game after the blocked passate in the swamp town was fixed. The second part of the game, while the first was focused on finding the three pieces of an amulet on different islands has our heroes look for magic gems on floating islands. So new bosses, and lots of random encounters that I'd suggest you to skip entirely since they're pointless: loot is absurd, but will get a ton of permanent upgrades, so much gold you could buy an entire universe and later even a character that can dance-heal healing everyone at will (no mana cost, not to mention that she brings some cool weapons for Omicron and Minako) making the princess-healer totally useless (only a fool will use her!). The spirit of the dead elven princess will also make a comeback giving endgame weapons and accessories and levelling up every party member up to the maximum level!

Ok this would not be entirely bad if things wouldn't become less and less interesting: Dante the Thief joins because he's a score to settle with the corrupted queen, and it's ok, later characters join for... no reason! And they have almost no dialogues. What else? Oh yes, the dungeons, you will have to walk a lot on some silly maps (like for example a spiral-shaped dungeon! No puzzles and really almost no interesting "gimmicks" except the occasional lever to pool. Also many imprecisions on the maps) that serves just to make you walk around and face encounters that you will surely skip to avoid wasting time and resources (I mean that it's an unnecessary risk fighting multiple dangerous enemies that can paralyze/confuse you, you just need to overcome the bosses!). After all you do not need to grind, enemy bosses are pretty weak, even one of the last ones was able to inflict just 10-20 points of damage in total while my characters did 100-300 (or 0 if they used an element he was immune to, of course, but that's easily solved since you have four characters and no one uses the same element of another)... I know it's not an important comparison, but mind also that the dancer could heal-dance every turn restoring everyone of some points! Yes, very easy and sadly very bland, but at least now it was possible to finish the game.


But WHY? Tell me why! Ok... nevermind, that's just the end of the review anyway...

Final Verdict
"Nightmare of the Elven World" is a disappointing game, I mean I played many rpgmaker 2000 games, but this is pretty bland and boring (looks like that most game with ""Nightmare" in the title are quite bad, except maybe for "Desert Nightmare"!). This game would need a GREAT renovation (if thedarkdreamer actually improved it I do not want to imagine what it was before that!), both for story and gameplay, as it stand is really... meh! I'm glad that the game-stopping bug was solved even if I fear that you can still get stuck if you do not follow the intended order of the islands, by the way I think you'll have now an idea of the game and if you may or may not like it.