The Legend of Zelda: Forgotten Gates

One design problem I've been chewing on is how to decide which of the game's six canonical elements different enemies are associated with. We're going to need to know the elemental rock-paper-scissors of Forgotten Gates for this discussion, so here they are for reference:

Light beats Water and Shadow
Forest beats Light and Water
Fire beats Forest and Shadow
Water beats Fire and Spirit
Shadow beats Forest and Spirit
Spirit beats Light and Fire

For some enemies, the choice of element is quite obvious. An enemy that's constantly on fire, like a Torch Slug, should have Fire as their element. A plant enemy should have Forest. An aquatic enemy should have Water (with maybe a few exceptions like the electric jellyfish Biri). A great many of the standard enemies in the Zelda series are spooky undead, which puts them squarely in the Shadow category.

The other elements are a little harder to find enemies for. There aren't many enemies in Zelda lore strongly associated with Light...but if you associate Lightning with it, that gives you a few options, like the aforementioned Biri. Spirit is a tough category too. Ghosts are an obvious choice, and to pad it out a bit (as well as give Spirit magic something more physical to work with), I've chosen to associate Spirit with Air, so flying enemies would likely have Spirit as their element pretty often.

I've already let slip a little in that last paragraph what the tricky part of all this is: shoe-horning enemies associated with other concepts into the strict six elements. Light and Lightning/Electricity are not the same, but they're close enough for my purposes...probably. Spirit and Air is more of a stretch. And there are some concepts which create some rather interesting difficulties.

The best example is probably the concept of Ice. At first glance, you'd think, big deal, just lump it in with the Water element. Ice IS Water, after all! But then you start to think about the elemental interactions if Ice = Water. Light beats Ice? Okay, that's believable enough, it shines right through the Ice. Forest beats Ice? Hmmm, not quite so sensible, a good frost is usually rather unhealthy for plants. Ice beats Fire? Whoa, wait, maybe offensively that would work (a dusting of snow would tend to weaken a fire sure enough), but defensively, Ice should be weak to Fire.

There are several approaches I can think of to resolve this conundrum.

• Simply don't use enemies associated with concepts that are difficult for my elemental wheel. I don't like this solution because it rules out too many cool and iconic Zelda enemies, and c'mon, any Zelda game past the NES era has to have at least one ice dungeon in it, right? ;)
• Give particular enemies defensive weaknesses and strengths that do not match the elemental wheel. This actually would not be too difficult programmatically; my system is already set up to specify each enemy's exact vulnerability to each of the six elements. I could simply set an Ice enemy to be weak against Fire, strong against Forest, and whatever else makes sense. I could not, however, make an Ice attack be strong against a Forest target, because the target would treat it as Water. This approach also means the player winds up having to learn a lot of exception cases to the typical rules.
  
• Expand the list of canonical elements. If there actually was an Ice element distinct from Water, then I could make it work as sensibly expected both offensively and defensively. The more elements there are, though, the more complex and hard to balance things become. Besides, the current elemental wheel is based on the powers of the Six Sages, an important theme in the source game.
  
• Match the concept to the canonical element which gives the most sensible interactions, regardless of whether it's the most intuitive match. With the example of Ice, we definitely want it to be weak against Fire, which means it should be associated with either Forest or Shadow. If Ice = Forest, then Ice beats Light and Water, is beaten by Fire and Shadow, and is neutral toward Spirit. Not the most sensible matchups. If Ice = Shadow, then Ice beats Forest and Spirit, is beaten by Light and Fire, and is neutral toward Water. Actually, that's not bad...and there are some intuitive reasons for the association. Shadow and undeath are somewhat associated with cold, and we've all heard of black ice, right? n.n; Of course, that's only one concept rectified.

Despite the awkwardness of it, I'm leaning toward that last solution. The main other concept I can think of that would have to be linked with an element is Rock/Earth. Originally I was figuring on lumping that with Shadow, since Rock creatures might often be found in caves, which are dark. Going by elemental interactions, though, it doesn't make that much sense for Rock to be weak against Light or Fire, and it would make a certain amount of sense for it to be weak to Water. So how about Spirit? That's strong against Light and Fire, which makes sense, and weak against Water, which also makes sense...Rock being weak to Shadow is a little more of a toss-up, but if Shadow is associated with Ice/Cold, it makes a certain amount of sense. Rock being neutral to Forest is also a toss-up. You might actually expect Rock to be strong against Forest, as plants don't grow well in rocky soil...although some plants do thrive on rocks, and can split them with their roots over time. Earth definitely ought to be weak against Forest, but I think there are a lot more Zelda enemies formed of hard Rock than loose Earth.

And finally, you occasionally run into enemies that don't easily associate with any of the canonical elements. Take Wolfos for example. They live in the Forest, but the only elemental interaction of Forest which makes much of sense for them is Fire (burn that shaggy pelt!), and even that is a little weak. Moblins are a similar story. For these cases, I may well consider them non-elemental, and give them neutral interaction with all of the elements.