Let me start off by saying that I really wanted to like this game. As a lifelong fan of the pre-Switch Zelda games, I feel like the turn the series took with Breath of the Wild just left me behind, and with the success of it and Tears of the Kingdom, I can't help but feel a series I love more or less died to me.

So I was very much in the market for a game that would scratch that itch for me. But the longer I played it, the more its flaws became obvious. Let me try to break it down.

== Story ==

Young kid saves the world. I don't need more than that. Sure, I do love intricate storytelling, but a game can just have a paper-thin story as a veneer for fun gameplay, and I'm fine with that. The problem with the story of Elementallis is, it isn't much more than that, but it's told in exceeding breadth. There's lots of cutscenes adding confusing happenings and threads that go nowhere to it. If the game is going to expend this much energy on storytelling, it should have a story worthwhile to tell. Without spoiling, a lot of the story beats in various places feel like they are there because the writer liked this type of story beat in another story, so they wanted to include it, but didn't think about whether that sort of beat makes sense in the specific story they were telling. The result is a disjointed mess that uses many words to say very little.

== Gameplay ==

The controls are tight and work. Swordplay is fluid, and reminiscent of the 2D Zeldas in a good way.
Sadly, the elemental powers that take the spot of the classic Zelda progression items feel kinda lackluster.
For puzzles, they aren't much more than keys that open a specific kind of lock. Have a patch of dirt? That's where nature grows a vine. Have a rock? That's opened by earth.
In combat, the powers lead to weird consequences. Nature sucks health from the enemies, so I found myself placing down a plant and then running in a circle to keep kiting enemies through the absorption zone to heal, when I didn't want to risk dying to low health later. That's death to pacing.
Ice is kinda overpowered, it freezes enemies and makes it easy to just wail on them.
Switching between powers is weird too, as it doesn't pause the game, it just slows it down, making juggling powers for a given encounter fairly stressful.

On the overworld, there's various spots where the powers are needed to progress in the aforementioned way. And since switching between powers feels fairly tedious, travelling longer distances is annoying because of the frequent switches in powers necessary to clear the progression obstacles again and again.
There are fast-travel obelisks scattered on the map, but they are frequently placed in weird locations and still necessitate travelling on foot.

== Economy ==

No way to sugarcoat it, the economy sucks. Upgrades to your sword and armor require finding rare minerals on the world (good!) and paying some money (less good!). Before I went in for the bonus boss, I wanted to be fully upgraded and had to resort to about half an hour of just grinding coins in a cave to get the money, even after I had found all the upgrade materials. One reason for this is that the game takes the Zelda approach of a limited wallet that you can find upgrades for. A fine idea in theory, but I found most of the upgrades fairly late, which made me constantly waste money I found in chests because I couldn't carry any more, and by the time I had all the wallet upgrades, I had looted these chests and couldn't fill my wallet with them.

There isn't much more to do with money either. You can find gems that upgrade your elemental powers, but you can only equip one at a time, but you can switch them any time in the pause menu, leading to more tedious busywork if you want to play optimally. Other than that, you can buy potions, one of the ores you need for upgrading (turning ore+money into just money), and I think one piece of heart and one piece of a mana upgrade.

== Summary ==

Do you remember when I mentioned I was looking for a game to scratch that Zelda itch? Have you ever tried to scratch an itch in a hard-to-reach place, couldn't quite get to it and you only manage to sort of agitate it and now you're more aware of it than before? That's, unfortunately, this game for me.

Water. Earth. Fire. Air.

Lightning. Ice. Nature. Ae-

Hold up, this isn't Avatar.

That aside, this was a fun game. Combat is simple but fun. Experiment with the elements and stop relying on just fire to burn your enemies (absolutely not the way I played the game, don't look at me like that). Dungeon puzzles are okay-ish. Fair amount of backtracking BUT the game so kindly gives you map markers for reminding you of that one chest you saw on a ledge that you couldn't quite get to just yet, so it's all good.

Pay attention to the dialogues and plot, I guess? Some NPCs will tell you where you're supposed to explore next, in case you ever got confused. Other than that, I don't really have much to say.

Oh, oh! Experiment with the ele- I already said that. But I realized way too late in the game that water makes your plant grows stronger. Oh well. Still.