Militibus Elementis Arc 1

Mystic Knight is a sort of tales of based off RPG starring a group of people searching for treasure, because treasure is cool. It is fairly short and I finished the demo with a little more than 20 minutes of playtime.

There is a bit of convoluted elemental system to ignore, a story full with holes, typos, weird revealing moments (our Cyfer is actually a fellow dragon!), as well as a plot twister to finish the demo off and lead us into the continuation.

Now I tend to ignore most more traditional RPGs because .. it's really hard to get into, even for the commercial ones and bigger ones I've bought. It's also really hard to get right, because they largely focus on balance and polish, rather than new creative ideas and quirky things. They can be a nice time sink, a relaxing evening filler and just have a certain brain dead enjoyment to them.
I expect stories to be by default not interesting and am happy when I do get into them. Otherwise, I enjoy the sense of progression and perhaps a little details along the way - which means I ignore most of the game and find most of usual games utterly boring, yet still end up enjoying them in some ways. Sometimes. (I couldn't care for a single line of dialogue in FFIV. sue me).

In that vein - this game lacks overall polish, really doesn't have great assets, but it does play out alright. It plays smoothly without any big filler, overly large dungeons or maps or otherwise dragging portions. It was a lil fun to go through still.

TO THE GAME.

The Battles

The battles are similar to Tales of Eternia .. sorta.. as you have an actual action battle system in 2d. You and your party members run up to enemies to hit them with spacebar/enter/action button and you have a few spells to choose on your keys being a / d I think, and can swap the character you control with s. You may use items with x. There are no directional attacks, but different sets for spells to execute with a direction.

Sadly, it didn't say where to just attack with, only the extra controls were explained - it may be obvious to some, but nope, I was lucky and happy when I stumbled upon the entered solution.

The battle screens ends up being fairly messy with little use for spells as you can easily just auto-attack your way through monsters. You have 4 characters all over each other and the small cute little critters you want to butcher. Your HP and MP are only visible in numbers while the usual battle barely lasts half a minute. For this I would really recommend using a visual display of just how much % of HP you have left, because I could not really pay attention to the small numbers.

There is an option to choose between 4 or 5 levels of difficulty, but with how it is handled you could turn down the options to one or two and still be fine with your choosing. It is a very easy game. You heal upon level up and you do so frequently. I did not once need to use an item, or hit the inn as I was automatically healed all the time.
There is also a large tutorial explaining some sort of far too complex elemental system - there may be a legend containing an eight, but that does not demand 8 elements! The standard 4 (fire, water, earth, wind) do make sense, and even had a more unique take to them. Wind affects wind (birds and such), while the others had one weakness and two strengths. The others (darkness, light, spirit .. sutff) are affecting and resisting each other so haphazardly that it is impossible to keep in mind. For elements .. a chart or graphic display always helps to make it easier to remember, and possible to stick it to a menu option.
If you can't make it into a chart .. you need to work on it, because it's too complex to remember, especially for such a short game.


No, they're not. And not keys, anyhow.

As I mentioned, spells are nigh obsolete and you can just let the AI use them to heal you in-fight, so this did not make a different for how the game plays out. It may as well be only a working in the background. So an explanation was not really needed as you would not exploit it even if you knew. Strangely, your characters start with a couple of available spells, but none of them are equipped. I'd suggest having them equipped right from the start, as you may not mess with their setup early on.

Battles are easy, a lil messy, but fast-paced and you can just hit things. I like hitting things with pointy bits, so that was alright and turned out to be more fun than the usual turn-based system.
You can't flee but you can use items and due to the short duration of battles .. I don't see why I would ever need to.
Enemies are touch-encounters and can be avoided for the most part - they are shown as a flame on the map and chase after you if get close.
Boss fights are initiated right away without prior warning - you do not see where the last area is layout wise, so a short prompt to warn you would be a really nice addition. Or some indicator that it is special (like the stairs in the dungeon). The boss fights last longer, but are just as easy, so it was never a reason to reset my playing time.

The Story

Boy, I did mention my sentiment to it?
The premise was fairly straight-forward and really befitting - treasure hunters are out for treasure and stumble upon a great great prophecy carrying treasure. Or, one of three prophecy carrying treasures.
I think the story could easily have carried along a more outside perspective - we never leave the side of our characters, we never heard anything about big cities and organisations, so just meddling with the big picture from the shadows as a group of individuals would have been a nice charming story.
Greed for treasure can run deeply..

Sadly, it suffers the fate from trying to make it big and grandeous when there is too little build-up for it, too little meat, and too little involvement of the player (or characters, for that matter).
Starting out from treasure hunters comes the backstory of mystic knights and of course we get involved with the one to be mystic knight, get a sudden plot twister in not believable and forced ways aaand the demo ends. There is a lot gone wrong in many places, which I may want to discuss under spoilers if the creator would like to.
There is also various typos scattered across the game, starting with the first dungeon you loot! I was wondering how it was actually spelled now for a bit. Not only names and words, but whole phrases seem odd and out of place

Our characters are bland and have only a few describing features. There are four of them. Spiky hair included! The dialogue is cut fairly short, so while you do get a hint and different vibe, they are not explored. Cyfer is a jealous cool bastard shouting at any guy oggling his fiancée, Cyfer our redhaired spiky spiky piercing eye protagonist and leader.
Raven (the black-busted) is a girl concerned with getting dirty or being uncomfortable. Our Penelope (grey-chested girl) is calm and nice, apparantly, and our grey-haired guy name with R- and something I couldn't remember is calm and friendly .. apparantly.

What I really did appreciate seeing was random dialogues popping up every now and then entering a new dungeon/map, which sadly was kept to neither informative, nor really fun talk, but it was lovely to hear our characters chat more naturally inbetween. I would have loved to see more of these, as they are also a great way to explore the different characters - and moreso than that, how they interact with each other (which is another of the points that falls short .. if not for the obvious pointing out, by behaviour alone, I never would've known we have a couple in our party).
An example of this potential cut short is a dialogue about gnomes .. gnomes only explained feature is their lacking intelligence. Which is apparantly used for a little bit of humour and comic relief without it being obvious or precise enough to make it funny.
Before you meet them, one of our characters mentions she knows many stories of their stupidity .. so why not actually tell one of them? Wasted potential right there. The whole dialogue does not seem connected, it seems like bits and pieces thrown in rather than a dipiction of a full-fledge character, or a full anything.

There is also a glitch where when you returned to the first town you just left .. you would be stuck in a screenshot used as background for a dialogue. Not the actual town. Forcing a restart of the game as you cannot move anywhere.


.. how do I leave?

The World and aesthetics

There really isn't much to the world you see .. there are a two towns, two scraps of world map to go between town and dungeon, as well as three shortish "dungeons". And a pathway inbetween. The mapping is nothing to show off, but works for what it is. A gripe I have is that the path leading to the next area sometimes is really on the outer edges of the map and sometimes hard to see - I always found it, but I sometimes wondered and travelled back checking if I missed something earlier.

There are plenty of treasure chests in plain view without much purpose due to you not needing any items, but I will never say no to chests. I did skip any search for hidden ones or second paths (which there are thankfully few) when I could and just used the fairly small maps to proceed.
They really are more a means to keep you occupied and fighting for a bit .. most areas were slightly blocky. The short maps and short dungeons go hand in hand with the fast pace of the combat, so that works for what it is.

Character art is custom, and look alright overall. I quite liked the general sprites. The armor looked pretty cool and you may almost imagine the boobplate to not exist .. almost. Or it may just be a layer of chainmail, hard to say with the portrait, as it looks more like cloth than any armor. There are quite a few visual changes between sprite and portrait.

The sound design did not catch my attention, except maybe for the presumably (?) ripped attack and hit noises, as well as quotes infight. They make it appear more dynamic, although it needs some getting used to, as all dialogues are silent and you imagine them all wrong.
Music is kept mostly serious with a few RTP backgrounds inbetween, suiting the intention of the game, although I found none of them memorable or particularily pleasing.

All in all -

This is a game with .. little to show off overall, and little to take seriously.
Yet it does play alright and had nothing really bugging me, as for however unrealistic the story portion is (and the many typos there are), they kept it brief.
I think this could become a nice little game to breeze through if more banter and some better fleshed out character interactions were added.

I really suggest searching for someone to proofread and give suggestions on how to pull the story, as well as the characters together. I know the creator to struggle with this a little bit, and it really could make the difference.