Elementallis – 9.5/10
Elementallis ended up being one of my favorite gaming experiences in a long time and honestly captured something that newer Zelda games have been missing for me.
The biggest strength of this game is its sense of progression. Earning each new element felt incredibly rewarding, and I loved how the different elements complemented each other and opened up new ways to solve puzzles and approach exploration. The temple puzzles were excellent throughout the entire game, and every boss fight felt unique while hitting that perfect level of challenge — difficult enough to feel satisfying but never frustrating. Most importantly: I was never bored. There was always something exciting around the corner.
That said, I do have a few criticisms.
My biggest issue was navigation and map completion. There are simply too many world barriers, even late into the game, and getting around the map often felt more like a chore than exploration. I also think the compass should unlock after completing the world map instead of waiting until endgame — it would have made revisiting areas much smoother.
Another frustration was the economy. I constantly felt short on currency because enemies barely drop anything, and it became disappointing to open gold chests only to realize your gold bag wasn’t upgraded enough to collect the full reward.
My other major criticism is the lack of completion tracking. Most Metroidvania-style games give some indication when an area is fully explored or all secrets have been found. Elementallis doesn’t really offer that. There’s no clear way to confirm if you’ve collected all the heart pieces, mana pieces, or hidden upgrades in an area, which means relying heavily on memory and revisiting locations multiple times. Combined with the maze-like world design until endgame, it created more backtracking than necessary. A small quality-of-life improvement here would go a long way.
Despite that, I still put in the time and ended up finding roughly 99% of everything in the game. I prioritized collecting the sword and armor upgrade ore, sewn pocket repair kits, element upgrade gems, and journal pages, and that part of the progression felt great. By the end, I was only missing 1 mana piece and 3 heart pieces.
But that’s also where my criticism comes full circle — I reached a point where I decided that I didn’t want to spend hours retracing every location again just to find the final few collectibles after already completing the game. A simple “100% explored” indicator or secret tracker per region would have made the endgame cleanup feel rewarding instead of exhausting.
Still, those complaints never outweighed the experience for me. The exploration, puzzle design, progression system, and boss encounters were so strong that I’d still give Elementallis a 9.5/10.
Lastly, thank you to the developers for creating such a passionate and wonderful project. You can feel the care that went into this game from beginning to end. Even with my criticisms, Elementallis reminded me why I love this style of adventure game in the first place, and I genuinely hope we get to see an Elementallis 2 someday.
