Elderand Analysis: “I started out hating this game and ended up hooked on it until the end”

There are games that you fall in love with after two minutes and others that take a little longer. elderand it is of the seconds When I started playing this pixelated metroidvania I didn’t like it at all. I found it very rough, with enemies that kept repeating themselves and excessively similar to many others of the genre. Besides, I didn’t like his jumps at all. In this video game with characters that jump, there are two types. On the one hand we have games like Hollow Knight. You jump almost without thinking, because you feel like it and because you know you’ll be able to correct its trajectory in the air, you jump twice before hitting the ground and, upon landing, you do a dash that leaves you in a safe position.

But Elderand belongs to the others, to those who have castlevania running through his veins. In Elderand you cannot alter the destination of your jump, you can only jump once in the air, and you are fully exposed to monster attacks. until your feet hit the ground. That makes everything hurt and kill you at the slightest change, which is a bummer when lives are low and enemy damage is massive. At the start of the game there is a merman-shaped bug that spits acid and then claws at you. killed me more times of which my shame allows me to recognize.

Yeah, it was a frustrating first hour. The good thing is that Elderand is not a linear game. It’s a very horizontal metroidvania that connects its biomes. Exploring, I leveled up, found better weapons, a shield, and began to understand enemies. I thought back to my days playing the Mega Drive and the Super Nintendo, and those memories of yesterday helped me appreciate the game.

The beginning in Elderand is very hard

In Elderand you have to learn the routines of the enemies, all of them, and how they behave with each other. If there’s a zombie whipping around and a flying eye is floating next to it, you have to know what they do together and how to dodge them. It is so attack routines that, when you learn the behaviors of their bosses, you kill them without touching you. The end game monster tore me apart mercilessly when I met him. After a little while practicing, nor did it ruffle me

And that is the grace of Elderand, being a very Castlevania metroidvania that delivers enormous satisfaction through memorization. Besides, does one thing very well. It is able to help you identify how to break a monster’s patterns by its resemblance to others. You learn that it is useful to jump forward and then back with a hit there, and apply it to multiple enemies. You discover that taking the opponent’s back before he attacks, too, and you apply it.

It helps his proposal that it is a contained game. You can reach the end in about six hours and even do three builds different depending on how you like to play. You can be a mage, a brute warrior who plays blockade, or a rogue who prefers to play parry. Once you finish it, you will still have 30% more of the map left to explore, with arenas, secrets, NPC encounters and expansion of the lore. Its short duration is a treasure. Hopefully more metroidvania this direct to cut off a few heads without having to mortgage your life time.

It is a direct and to the point metroidvania

This is not to say that when the game clicks on you it becomes a perfect title with which to marry and start a family, because is not like that. There are final bosses with very interesting routines to break, but others that are silly. And the same goes for some enemies. The title sometimes abuses long corridors for no reason, or areas with bugs that are repeated over and over again. I have relied on fast scrolling endgame abilities quite a bit to save me all these stretches.

That he is so direct also has a problem with his lore. It is a video game that wants to offer deep world building. How could it be otherwise, there are many nods to Lovecraft. But I think it would take more hours and more scenarios to develop it well. The end of the game is intended to be very cool, but to feel it you would have needed to spend more time in his world, not just three afternoons.

Artistically the game is good. It has a pixel art that orbits between the rude and the rich. It’s not crazy but it works fine. It seems to me that it has found a good balance between the old and what is expected of a title like this today. Musically, it is also correct. I haven’t found any bugs, but I haven’t found anything on a technical level either that has made me applaud.

Technically it is correct. No boasts but no misses

The truth is that I ended up liking Elderand. Once I got the point, I couldn’t put it down until I finished it, and then I was left wanting more. Although it needs more work in the playable or in the development of its world to be totally recommendable, it seems to me one of those games that you are happy when you discover them. I especially recommend it to you if you love metroidvania but you don’t have enough hours to play one. And on Steam Deck it fits effortlessly.