Context: at time of review, 10 hours in. just at the 3rd dungeon. Spending most of my time trying to hunt down the various secrets/powerups I can get to w/ my current kit.

A Fun but Very Hard metroidvaina, which takes a lot of cues primarily from Zelda. LOTS of secrets & powerups to hunt down, although most of the majority of them are just gold drops.

There is a leveling system, where ea. level you allocate a point to strength (range), wisdom (magic), vitality (health), agility (fire rate/move speed), or accuracy (random crit chance). Game works on a save point system, die or quit & you restart at the last save point you touched. the Savepoints give you a base amount of hearts/mana... and the only drawback to dying is you lose current xp to next level. Developers obviously expected you to die somewhat frequently, and then retry ala platformers like VVVVVV.

There is also a morality system, based on a limited set of choices you make thru the game (save this kid, partner with this evil guy, do/don't rob this temple). It's pretty low key though; and you can pretty much ignore it for the most part.

The game is light on explaining its mechanics, while the basic function of most of the items is pretty straightforward, you'll need to experiment a bit to figure out everything they can do. That could be a plus or a minus, depending on your preference, if you hated Dark Souls cryptic item descriptions, you might hate Elliot Quest's lack of almost any direction too.

Graphics are obvious retro-pixely, but they're clean and attractive looking. Think classic NES style, but with more detail. Music is ok, but not spectacular and the 1st level is a very obvious rip off of a Zelda theme.

Bottom line, if you like metroidvanias and don't mind a bit of a challenge, give it a go.

Context: at time of review, 10 hours in. just at the 3rd dungeon. Spending most of my time trying to hunt down the various secrets/powerups I can get to w/ my current kit. A Fun but Very Hard metroidvaina, which takes a lot of cues primarily from Zelda. LOTS of secrets & powerups to hunt down, although most of the majority of them are just gold drops. There is a leveling system, where ea. level you allocate a point to strength (range), wisdom (magic), vitality (health), agility (fire rate/move speed), or accuracy (random crit chance). Game works on a save point system, die or quit & you restart at the last save point you touched. the Savepoints give you a base amount of hearts/mana... and the only drawback to dying is you lose current xp to next level. Developers obviously expected you to die somewhat frequently, and then retry ala platformers like VVVVVV. There is also a morality system, based on a limited set of choices you make thru the game (save this kid, partner with this evil guy, do/don't rob this temple). It's pretty low key though; and you can pretty much ignore it for the most part. The game is light on explaining its mechanics, while the basic function of most of the items is pretty straightforward, you'll need to experiment a bit to figure out everything they can do. That could be a plus or a minus, depending on your preference, if you hated Dark Souls cryptic item descriptions, you might hate Elliot Quest's lack of almost any direction too. Graphics are obvious retro-pixely, but they're clean and attractive looking. Think classic NES style, but with more detail. Music is ok, but not spectacular and the 1st level is a very obvious rip off of a Zelda theme. Bottom line, if you like metroidvanias and don't mind a bit of a challenge, give it a go.