Elar: Tales of Heroes (Demo)

Elar: Tales of Heroes is the kind of fantasy RPG you'd expect from that titles. There's evil in the world and you play as heroes who are going to stop it. The main thing advertised for this one was the difficult combat, and although I thought it interesting at first, the pacing of the game wasn't very good for the combat system. For me, the demo took about an hour and a half to finish as I did spend some time grinding.

This game gets right to the gameplay -- It took about a minute before I got to the first fight. There's a series of battles one after the other as you try to survive. I lasted about 3 on my first attempt, but was able to get through the prologue without any fuss on the second try.

As advertised, yeah it's pretty difficult. Enemies require smart skill choice, so if you know you have a skill that's effective against something, don't hesitate to use it. Mana management is a huge part, but your mage, Lorik, has a skill that can restore mana. Don't get too cozy using that, however, as you won't always have access to it. Mana regenerates one point at the beginning of each battle round (after you select your actions), so you're not completely dependent on Lorik for your mana.

The other characters fill different roles: Athan is your standard paladin with both offensive and mild healing abilities, Derwin is a fighter who can boost his strength and has a skill good against dragons, Elise is your healer who is also good against undead, and Lorik is your mage with devastating magic and the above mentioned mana restoration. As the game is focused around battles without much room for dialogue, you don't get too much of a sense for personality beyond the stereotypes associated with their classes.

After 5 battles you're left with only Athan... so make sure you end that 5th battle with him in good condition. After the 6th battle you get a free heal, however. Can you win the 6th battle? Maybe, maybe not. I wasn't able too but I sure lasted a long time. By the time I died I was bored because I'd just been attacking/healing with no variation or change in the battle, which is a danger with unwinnable fights... if it really was unwinnable. The story continued in a way that suggests it was, but who knows! If you play for yourself, you could find out.

After this prologue, you play as a totally different level 1 character. In the short-term combat was fun and there IS a resource management element, but the maps are big, you have random encounters, and there's not much enemy variety. Combined with the early-game problem of not having access to too many skills, this made it rather dull after awhile. On top of that, there's 2 boss fights and 2 mini-boss, and both bosses have the common strategy of just boosting their attack strength after you punch out enough of their HP. It doesn't make for particularly interesting tactics beyond attack, heal, attack.



These problems were mostly with the early-game. I thought the prologue was fun and had the full game come out, I probably would have enjoyed it more once you started getting access to more variety. As you go through the demo you do gain two other party members, but one of them had the unfortunate tendency to die very soon into bosses or mini-bosses.



I know I spent most of my time talking about the prologue, but that was where I got super excited. The problems I had with this game are ones I have with a lot of RPGs and not really unique here. For other developers, consider what the early game experience is like. Ideally it should be just as fun as any snazzy prologues or later parts of the game.