Ever wished for Final Fantasy to go mobile? Well, that may or may not happen, thanks to developers Big Blue Bulle. Their game, Elven Chronicles, does have a similar feel to Final Fantasy but I'll let you be the judge of that. You play the role of Rogan, a knight in search of his forgotten past, who is accompanied by Jada, an elf caster. The story is a bit vague in the beginning, however, as you level up and interact with other NPCs, you soon find yourself engaged in an epic struggle between good and evil.
You might be asking yourself as to why did I link Elven Chronicles to Final Fantasy? That’s because the battle system - Elven Chronicles does somewhat mimic Final Fantasy's well-known battle system. You start off by seeing yourself, or rather your character, and you are able to control him, walk around and communicate with non playable characters, obtain quests, and buy items and weapons. However, the moment your character comes into contact with an enemy, represented by what seems to be a spinning tornado, you enter a battle screen with your characters Rogan and Jada on one side, and the enemy on the other. The number of enemies as well as the type and their levels are random, though you can make a guess by looking at the tornado before you engage it. Different colours represent different enemy difficulty. Fighting and damage turn based, with you choosing your actions, whether to attack, cast magic, heal or attempt to retreat. Enemy monsters then make their actions, and then it’s back to your turn. The downside of this battle style is that it can sometimes lead to a game of attrition, and many games of this can sometimes be boring. You can customize your hero by purchasing weapons and items, however, that’s almost as far as it goes. Although you can level up by killing monsters and gaining experience, there’s no way for you to customize your character’s abilities, skills or spells. As you level up, such things are given to you - but everything has been hard-coded so there is a lack of random items. This will of course limits replayability, although the drops from enemies are random, these are rare and few. The good part is, all enemies respawn.
Elven Chronicles does well in music as well as graphics. The game starts with a pretty impressive menu and theme song, which immediately gets you in the mood to play the game. The same music continues while you’re actually playing the game, though while adventuring and fighting monsters, a different theme comes on. All the songs are pretty good stuff, original, and very well composed one might say. As for graphics, the game scores well as well, with bright colours well used, as well as variety in objects. It’s pretty easy to determine what you’re looking at, unlike some games where you have to practically squint and even then, guess what you’re looking at. The game is sort of anime like, that is much like the Japanese cartoons you see in the television.
Elven Chronicles is definitely a must try game for sure for all RPG fans. Although it would not probably score well in the replayability section, the game is certainly fun while it lasts, especially for hack and slash RPG lovers.
Big Blue Bubble Inc.
