Elliot Quest (PC) Review

Change a couple of names and locations, and Elliot Quest could easily be named Zelda 2, as it draws its main inspiration from it, although it feels more like a Metroidvania, instead of a "pure" action-adventure/RPG like Nintendo's cult classic. In other words, this is a platformer with heavy emphasis on exploration, with dungeons to brave, bosses to slay, and useful items and artefacts to find. Standard genre stuff… but, maybe, a bit too standard.

The first flaw here is definitely the lack of any innovations. Have you played Super Metroid, any of the Game Boy Advance Castlevanias, or any other game like these? Then you've played Elliot Quest... but without its boredom, that is. Oh, yeah, this is surely a boring adventure, with simplistic gameplay, unrewarding exploration, and lots of other flaws. Sure, it sounds, looks, and almost smells like a SNES classic, but it doesn't really play like one.

This revisit adds multiple save slots, Steam achievements (for those who actually care), Cloud synchronization, full controller support, localisation for a bunch of languages, a few new secret stuff to find, performance optimization, and bug fixes… and yet it all feels the same, because the gameplay hasn't been altered one bit, as it's still a simplistic Metroidvania, which doesn't bring anything new to the table. The worst thing, however, is that it still retains the many flaws of the original version.

First of all, there's hand-holding, there's no hand-holding, and then there's "what the hell does that do" kind of no hand-holding, and Elliot Quest falls into this last category. It's not a hard game to beat; far from it. It's just that there are lots of things that it should definitely explain, and yet it never does. Some examples? Some info on where to go, what special items do, what the heck the "Chain" gauge is, and, why, why, WHY, is there such a small level cap, and why weren't we informed earlier about it.

Finally, get prepared for tons of slow backtracking, no instant-travel between locations, and the most ridiculous XP loss ever seen in a (non-MMO) video game. Generally, while not really a bad game per se, the developing team behind it all isn't "there" yet. Its love for the genre is evident in Elliot Quest's each and every step, but the same can also be said about the general lack of talent.