Speaker A
Hey people, Seth here.
An in-depth, humorous review of Elona, a free turn-based roguelike JRPG with sandbox elements and bizarre gameplay.
Key Takeaways
- Elona offers a highly unconventional and humorous JRPG experience with deep sandbox elements.
- The game’s complexity and randomness create unique, memorable player stories.
- Despite minimal story focus, the world-building and mechanics provide rich gameplay.
- Player morality and reputation systems significantly impact game progression.
- Elona’s free availability and ongoing community support make it accessible and enduring.
What the video covers
- Elona is a free, turn-based roguelike RPG with sandbox features and a unique, bizarre world.
- Gameplay involves keyboard controls with a steep learning curve but offers a graphical menu for ease.
- Players can create wildly diverse characters, from mutants to musicians to suicide bombers.
- The story is minimal and typical anime-style, focusing on a magical wind causing mutations and political intrigue.
- Quests are often randomly generated, leading to unpredictable and humorous outcomes.
- The game features a karma system affecting player reputation and interactions with NPCs.
- Sanity mechanics and unusual NPC behaviors add complexity and humor to gameplay.
- The game world includes unique locations like Derphy, a city for criminals with no guards but many prostitutes.
- Player actions have varied consequences, including legal penalties and social repercussions.
- The game’s weirdness and depth keep players engaged despite its rough edges and unconventional design.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
Recently, I've been playing the pinnacle of Japanese culture.
Speaker A
A game called Elona, and also realized there are no real reviews of Elona.
Speaker A
Since the game is largely played by weebs and manchildren, myself included.
Speaker A
I felt this is a huge shame because there's really nothing that comes close to the bizarre and wonderful world that is Elona.
Speaker A
Elona is a turn-based roguelike RPG with a lot of sandbox elements.
Speaker A
It's also completely fucking free, so go find and download the latest copy of Elona Plus and play that shit.
Speaker A
Because it's fun as fuck. I'll attach a direct link with everything you need in the video description.
Speaker A
There's also usually a general discussion thread on JP and the weebs there know far more about the game than me.
Speaker A
In terms of gameplay, Elona operates in a very conventional design style for this genre, you control your character from a third-person perspective, move with buttons on the numpad.
Speaker A
And use the entire keyboard to access different interaction menus.
Speaker A
If you get a bit scared by that layout, Elona also offers a little graphical context menu that allows you to access virtually every menu by just pressing Z, X or C.
Speaker A
And that's as much as the game gives you, as for the rest, it leaves you to figure that out for yourself.
Speaker A
Would you like to be a brawny manlet dwarf fighter or a horrific mutant that grows an extra limb every few levels and can eventually swing eight different axes at once?
Speaker A
Or a snail pianist who has to slowly slither to his next concert while being crushed to death by his poor choice of profession.
Speaker A
Or a literal suicide bomber who gives cities the sweet taste of nuclear annihilation.
Speaker A
All these examples are possible, and that's why people keep coming back to the game, even continuing development after the original coders left for other projects.
Speaker A
Story, the game takes place in the land of North Tyris, which sometimes experiences unpleasant weather conditions in the form of Etherwind.
Speaker A
Etherwind is a mild gust of magical bullshit, side effects of which may include random mutations, malignancy, and the progression of Ether disease.
Speaker A
Which is really just the first two examples mixed together with becoming a deformed abomination.
Speaker A
Since the magical wind tumors are magical, everyone points the blame towards the elves.
Speaker A
About time someone dealt with these knife-eared fucks.
Speaker A
Anyway, everyone hates elves, but the ship you're on crashes and elves help you recover.
Speaker A
And then make you eat the corpse of a homeless person.
Speaker A
After giving you a tutorial on the controls, they fuck off to give the king a message, then some shit happens and I didn't really pay attention because it's all English bullshit.
Speaker A
The story isn't the main focus of the game, and thank God because it's some typical anime plot, which can be summarized as this.
Speaker A
Go very deep into Emperor Hirohito's crypt and keep Emperor Hirohito from rising from the underworld as he plans to reinstate imperialist Japan and the Liberal Democrat Party of Japan is shitting their pants because after he consolidates power, he'll publicly execute the spineless cuckolds that took US money and sold their own country from under their feet.
Speaker A
That's as much as I can review, the game is too weird to be held to standard criteria, so instead, I'll tell you some of my personal adventures and experiences to sell you on it.
Speaker A
As soon as you get out of the tutorial cave and enter the first town, you can choose a starting pet, the options are fairly standard: a cat, a dog, a bear, or a little girl.
Speaker A
Naturally, I chose a little girl, sadly, my little girl drank from a dodgy well and got pregnant halfway through a dungeon escort mission, so I had to fend off monsters, fend off children coming out of my little girl while frantically looking through my inventory for something to abort the endless stream of fetuses.
Speaker A
Luckily, I still had two bottles of sulfuric acid, the most effective way to terminate an unwanted alien pregnancy.
Speaker A
Many quests in this game are randomly generated and lead to a great deal of hilarity.
Speaker A
I received a contract from a town guard who wanted me to get another villager's kiwi through fair means or foul.
Speaker A
I found the citizen, offered to trade something for his kiwi, only to find that since the quest had been posted on the public notice board, the kiwi had rotted inside the man's inventory.
Speaker A
I traded for it anyway, and somehow this was still acceptable by the guard, I promptly received monetary compensation and extra karma, something that is very useful for not getting fucked by the authority.
Speaker A
Right after that, the guard ate the fucking rotten kiwi and vomited, my karma sank lower than the amount I gained for doing the quest as I was an accomplice to food poisoning.
Speaker A
Sometimes a villager will ask you to get something for their son's birthday, like a broken vase, garbage, a dangerous wand that could potentially maim your child, or just an actual piece of shit.
Speaker A
The parental instinct in this game is great, as harming grown adults incurs a karma penalty and guard intervention, while attacking and killing a child carries no such repercussions.
Speaker A
Meaning that Elona genuinely just borrows from the Greek school of ethics where a child isn't legally a person unless you survive to the ripe old age of 13 and get to vote when they're 30.
Speaker A
The same villager may then ask you to clear the woods of dangerous monsters such as hermit crabs, unlicensed nurses, and unattended children.
Speaker A
Some of the quests can even be completely rigged, I've had missions where you need to escort someone's family member safely to another town.
Speaker A
Only to discover that the family member in question is a trained Kamikaze Samurai, I didn't exactly know what that meant.
Speaker A
Until I got ambushed by bandits during the escort, to defend his family's honor, the samurai instantly charged the pack of them and exploded, causing me to fail the quest, lose reputation, lose even more karma, and be instantly branded a criminal.
Speaker A
And if you're a criminal, life is hard, there's only one city in the game that'll take you, which is Derphy, a place with no guards but many, many prostitutes.
Speaker A
You can complete quests here and attempt to raise your karma out of criminality, if only half of the quest givers were actually reachable.
Speaker A
Half of the time, the shopkeepers will start openly fucking whores in front of you, blocking all conversation until they're finished.
Speaker A
By the way, there's also a sanity mechanic in this game, which for some reason reduces your sanity after using a hooker, maybe from the rampant herpes they carry, I don't know.
Speaker A
In rare circumstances, this means that a citizen giving out a quest, fucks a hooker, goes insane, and attempts to attack the hooker, however, being insane greatly lowers their stats, meaning the hooker nearly always wins the brawl and kills the citizen instead, preventing you from starting or completing a quest until they magically respond days later, by which time the contract may have already expired and you get penalized with further karma penalties.
Speaker A
After much hardship, I thought there must be a safer way to make money, so I took to performing music for tips, getting tips, however, requires that you finish your performance, which is really hard when midway someone decides they don't like your performance and throw a fucking rock in your face.
Speaker A
Half of the time, this is done by guards because killing terrible musicians isn't a crime in Elona.
Speaker A
On the other hand, everything is a crime if it's done by you, I learned later how to pickpocket.
Speaker A
But as my skill level was very low, I wanted to practice on something easy, like piles of clothing or trees, yes, you can pickpocket a tree and steal it from the forest.
Speaker A
Then, as I'm peacefully uprooting trees in the woods, a fucking ghost flies past and calls for the guards to arrest me, even in the depths of the wilderness, if a hideous abomination lurking the underbrush sees you pilfering a chestnut, they'll make sure the authorities know about your wicked sins.
Speaker A
It did pay off in the end though, did you know you can steal from monsters, furthermore, did you know you can steal the arm off a Mecca and prevent him from fighting back, allowing you to potentially kill the level 30 monster and level up several dozen times, it's true, just don't let them catch you in the act, or the fantasy popo will have a word with you.
Speaker A
Raising skills requires you to spend quest rewards, but raising attributes is a bit more complex, it's a slower process since the gains are exponentially better.
Speaker A
One of the hardest to raise is charisma, as it directly allows you to have more followers, servants, and adventurers in your party.
Speaker A
That is, unless you eat engagement rings, you heard me right, engagement rings.
Speaker A
Any item that has an inherent attribute bonus on it, like engagement rings, which give five extra charisma, will in theory give you those attributes if you somehow eat them.
Speaker A
So, you stack a lot of scrolls of inferior material and degrade that metal ring repeatedly until it turns into paper, then into cloth, then into fucking meat and guzzle on that shit.
Speaker A
After swallowing enough meat rings, you'll be utterly irresistible, even as I was writing this review, Halloween came around in Elona, so trick-or-treaters came to my house dressed as Skellingtons and asked me if I want a trick or treat.
Speaker A
I asked for a treat, so they called the cops.
Speaker A
Some days later, more Skellingtons came around and asked me the same question.
Speaker A
I picked trick, so they molotov my fucking house and burnt down my bed.
Speaker A
Fuck those kids, the karma loss is a small price to pay for their screams.
Speaker A
And that's only some of the crazy shit that's happened to me, Elona is a game that keeps on giving.
Speaker A
Much like chlamydia, it also satisfies your JRPG grinding itch, much unlike chlamydia.
Speaker A
The burning of which will only get more intense as you ignore the symptoms and avoid seeing your local GP.
Speaker A
It is very Japanese, so you can either do interesting things and explore the world.
Speaker A
Or autistically grind your stats and skills to the point where you can kill God.
Speaker A
And then the God inside that God.
Speaker A
Japan.
Speaker A
Elona is a game that defies description and shits on convention.
Speaker A
A game where you can marry your own dog, genetically engineer a child to have more feet so they can wear two pairs of shoes.
Speaker A
Or kill a dragon by throwing alcohol at it until it's too drunk to defend itself.
Speaker A
It's really an experience, and I can't say anything more than go and give it a spin and see if you like it.
Speaker A
As always, hope you enjoyed the review, more videos coming soon.
Speaker A
And remember, everybody loves Shane's ass.
Topics:ElonaJRPGroguelikesandboxfree gameturn-basedweird gamekarma systemrandom questsopen world
