Elements of Mikoria Chapter 1

Let me start by saying that I couldn't finish this game due to a certain boss I couldn't pass. It's a pity because this game has a lot of ideas that made it interesting to play. But on with the review!

STORY
The plot in Elements of Mikoria is pretty simple. It's the old 'save the world' with a twist. You begin as the Fox Goddess, Precia, whose power is stolen by lizard-people. She falls to the earth after losing a battle on an airship, only to land near the fox town of Azeri. Krystal and Emerald, young fox sisters who are currently fighting with their father, find the fox goddess and offer to help her return home. They join up with their father and head off. Yeah, it seems like a simple enough plot, but there's more mentioned in-game that makes it interesting.

The best part of the story is the characters. Their interaction with each other is interesting and there's a lot of behind-the-scene story going on. The two main characters are definitely Krystal and Emerald. Their relationship is well-defined and both have quite distinct characters. Hell, most of the characters I've met so far are pretty well crafted and I wish I'd been able to play more of the game to see how things turn out. This is definitely one of the better parts of this game.
3.5/5

DESIGN
Elements of Mikoria is designed as a side-scrolling platform game. Towns and houses are all one level, whilst dungeons have platforms you can jump up to from below. This presents a few problems - for example, jumping in a house (trying to get up a staircase) I somehow got stuck in a wall and had to reset. Your character will never turn to face up or down, even when it makes sense to do so (say, climbing stairs) - you will always be presented with a side-on view.
You will also want to save money a lot. Or kill a lot of monsters. Why? Because normal healing items cost you 500 each. That's double the cost of the first town armour! And don't think you have healing skills. No~ that'd be too easy! The item that heals 200 HP costs more than the one that heals 400HP. That there is pretty bad.
2.5/5

GAMEPLAY
This is where the game shows its true strength, though admittedly there are a few problems. I'm going to split this into two sections - maps and battles. You'll see why.

MAPS
As stated above, Elements of Mikoria is a side-scrolling platformer which means you need to jump from one platform to the other. Unfortunately you have to be at just the right spot to jump up to these higher platforms and the controls are a bit... ugh. To jump up you need to be in the right spot, then charge your magic (hold down and press Enter), then press the up button. You may then jump about three times your body in height. If you aren't in the exact right position you will just jump normally. Thankfully your magic charge isn't used up, so you can just reposition yourself.
Speaking of controls - pressing enter just by itself will make you jump OR allow you to change your on-map character. It's a neat feature, yes, and there for a reason but it should have been assigned to another button. The amount of times I'd meant to jump and changed character instead... then got hit by a monster.
Monsters are shown on-map and have little routes they stick to. Funnily enough near the spots you need to jump from.
You can interact with them in four different ways - sneak up for a back attack (touch their back), jump over them (Jump at the right time), attack them (touch!) or use magic then attack them (charge magic beforehand - down and enter - then press towards them and enter). HOWEVER! The controls are really fidgety for the magic attack and I was more likely to run into the monster than cast a spell on it, or cast the spell and miss the monster altogether. It's a pity because you really need to use this to make monster battles manageable.

BATTLES
The battle system is the DBS with a bit of editing. To begin with your characters have only a specific amount of MP (about 5-15) that they can spend on skills. Each character is assigned a specific element and start off with 2-3 skills each. Attacking normally will restore 1 MP. You have a skill that will double that, though, like MP regen. Later on you get the ability to 'lend' someone else your elemental strength at the cost of half your MP. This is called 'Invoking' and unfortunately it's broken to all hell - you're supposed to be able to combine elements to create new skills. Once a spell is used the invocation leaves and you can fight again... except it doesn't leave, your invoking character can't do anything for the rest of the battle, the other character loses the super invoke spell and the boss heals itself, then kills you both. Yeah.
Then there's limit breaks - which you weren't told about. It's a bit unnerving when your character suddenly loses all their skills/abilities (including defend/item/attack) and gets one command that you have to use even if the monster is almost dead. And don't talk to me about items.
Lastly, spell effects. If you managed to actually cast a spell on an enemy before engaging it in combat, depending on who used the spell you will get an automatic spell cast at the start of the battle. Each has a different effect and element and really help out when you're battling so that you get less damage and need less healing. Hence less items.

Don't get me wrong, though. I really like the battle system and platforming aspect of the game - it's fun to mess around with and isn't all bad. Most monsters stop just short of the place where you need to stand for jumping, there aren't that many around and apart from trying to cast spells on them, you'll hardly run into them by accident. The battles are pretty fast paced and the spells are nicely done - if you run out of MP you can just attack the enemy to regain it.
3/5

GRAPHICS
This is where Elements of Mikoria is severely let down. The game uses a combination of rips and RTP without even trying to get them to blend together. Let me just say I really like the world map. And the church in Azeri. It's a good example of how the style you were going for should be. I'd be quite happy if the rest of the maps were like this. But no.
The town mapping looks okay at first glance, but then you notice the roofs of the houses are cut off and oddly shaped. The inner maps are terribly bare and large and just not nice.
The character graphics are terrible. I could hardly make out what the character was supposed to be when I first saw the fox people. The animations are really choppy and in some cases (Precia for instance) really, really bad. When Precia runs you can see that half of her tail is cut off... The missing piece is floating in front of her face as if to taunt her like a carrot to a mule.
The facesets are incredibly hard to make out. They look like abstract art - and not the good kind.
The forest has vines that hang off the platforms that clearly don't mix well, and look like they were ripped from a PS game. The cave has - I think - a Mario backdrop and huge cave openings that look utterly ridiculous. I thought it was part of the background when I first saw one.
The battle animations are a lot better than the character sets (although Emerald's standby animation is really, really weird) and I don't see why you didn't use them as actual character sets instead. The monsters are mostly RTP, though they don't mix at all with the characters.
I could go on and on, but I think you get the idea.
1/5

SOUND
The music was fine. Most of it suited the scenes and I don't think I'd heard most of it. There was one part of the game where you changed the music 3-4 times in as many minutes. It came off as choppy and really weird, where the sad song that you'd played twice in that time would have been fine for the whole scene. And that one time you had 'One Winged Angel'... It really pulled me out of your game and a serious scene became a bit of a laugh because of it (I was half expecting Sephiroth to pop up). Now, I'm not saying not to use VG music, but it's better not to use the really well-known songs. Still, the music mostly fit well.
3/5

SUMMARY
All in all, I did like Elements of Mikoria. I'm being pretty harsh in this review because I really would like to see this game become one of the greats. It's going to take a lot of time and effort on your part to do this but I really think it'd be worth it. It's got a lot of great ideas and tons of spirit, but it does need work. Especially in the graphics department. Here's a few things I noted down during my play-through:



FINAL VERDICT: I wouldn't recommend that anyone play this game yet. After something is done to fix the graphical and gameplay problems? Definitely!

2/5