Estellium Legends

Review

Team Syukino brings you Estellium Legends, a game where you’ll battle in the arena against multiple rounds of monsters as you make your way through ever harder ranks until you finally defeat all and become the Estellium Legend.

Upon starting a new game you’ll be greeted with the character creation screen. Here you must create your character before moving forward. There are five main selections you must use for your character: Body, Eyes, Eyebrows, Nose and Mouth. After choosing these you can then enter the game, although there will be more customising of your character to be done (unless you want to run around bald and in your underwear). The other options to customising your character consist of Clothing, Front Hair, Rear Hair, Accessory A, Accessory B, Glasses, Beast Ears, Wings and Tails. Each selection has plenty of options to choose from to create your unique character. Next you only have to name your character and you’re good to go!

You arrive in the southern end of a town called Gertalia.  The town is under a vail of fog, as moonlight tries to pierce through. Somewhere in this town lies the battle arena, a place where you hope to vanquish all who stand before you as you strive to become a legend in the lands of Estellium. This is by no means an easy task; a lot of hard battles lay ahead of you. Luckily though for you there is help within Gertalia and its surrounding area.

As you explore the area, you’ll come across characters who may give you some helpful information, or they may sell or buy items like weapons, armour, potions etcetera. Some characters will offer you a chance to play mini games, like a version of rock, paper, scissors, or black jack, or they’ll keep track of your fishing stats. Others may join you on your quest and fight by your side in the arena. Should you feel the need for more help you can hire characters to join you in the arena. The price of hiring these mercenaries ranges from three thousand to twelve thousand gold.

Once you’ve found the battle arena you may want to test your silky skills and spank some botty. To enter the arena, you must speak to Roake, who will ask you which rank you’re interested in fighting in. You’ll then be given the options of Basic or Advanced ranks, although advanced ranks aren’t available to you currently. So you’ll have to choose basic ranks, in which there are six ranks of increasing difficulty. The six basic ranks are G, F, E, D, C and B, with the G rank being the lowest rank and where you’d be best to start from. As your character levels up and grows in strength along with your party increasing in size, you’ll be able to climb through higher ranks.

The class of your starting character is a Soldier, but you can swap and change to one of eleven other classes at any time. The twelve types of character classes are Soldier, Swordsman, Black Mage, White Mage, Specialist, Monk, Knight, Rogue, Archer, Spellblade, Magnus and Berserker. So, plenty of choices to choose from to define your game style, you’ll have to level up any new class you decide to play with.

Each rank battle you enter will be fought over several rounds, fighting stronger monsters as you progress. Once you’ve beaten one round you’ll immediately move onto the next round of battles. Keep in mind that your health and magic will not reset upon starting the next round, and by the time you reach the final round you could be out of magic or potions to heal yourself, so pace yourself through the first rounds if possible. Should you make it through to the end you’ll receive some XP, Gold and maybe some items.

In the options you’ll find General  (Always Dash and Command Remember) and Audio (Master, Background Music, Background Sound Effects, Melody Effects and Sound Effects volume controls).

Visual: Here you can change the colour tone of the game window to your preference by adjusting the colour values (-255 to 255) of Red, Green and Blue. Also, in visuals there’s Battle Animation Speed: Full, Fast, Faster and Fastest, Battle Camera On/Off and Sync Monitor FPS On/Off.

Finally, there’s Controls: A layout of the keyboard functions is here with a choice of playing with the WASD or default layouts. You can also remap any of the keys to your liking should you wish too. You can use a game pad, but you can’t remap any of the buttons, however, the game worked well using a Xbox360 pad.

It’s a good idea to save your progress regularly because if you haven’t saved your game and all your party dies in battle, you’ll find yourself starting a new game. You can save your game at any time; there are twenty save slots available to you, so use them.

I’ve enjoyed playing the game so far, although it is a bit grindy as you try to get enough gold for weapons, armour, etcetera and level up for the higher ranked battles. However, I don’t mind grinding in games to get what’s needed to do the job right. The game is challenging and can be frustrating at times, but who wants to play easy games any way?!

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com!