People call this game a quasi-roguelike, and even on the Roguelike Reddit community, this is almost always never referred to as a real roguelike.
I find that an oddity, given that the gameplay, barring its slice-of-life additions, vastly resembles contemporaries like NetHack and its core inspiration, ADoM.
In any case, don't let those people fool you, this game is as much a Roguelike as the ancient contemporaries are, if you cared about the Berlin Interpretation anyway.
But I digress, you're here for a summary.
Elona is a quirky Japanese roguelike with an emphasis on the slice of life aspects of gameplay, and can feel rather unfinished if you're playing on the Vanilla version.
On the onset of the game, you're already provided a brief tutorial on basic controls that encourages you to eat something. There's a corpse of a beggar somewhere, so your natural inclination is to eat him, right? The game mocks you for this, but it also provides a handy warning that you'll encounter weird things as you go.
The game is particularly grindy, and if you're lost, it's very easy to lose stats and hard to gain them back. Many players give up on the game thanks to this fact. If you last long enough though, you'll end up owning a castle, have a bunch of storage spaces, and even sell goods as well as have a farm to grow plants in. Said locations are areas you can decorate, and adventurers come and go to visit you. You can also marry your pet, which is a choice of a dog, a bear, and a... little girl.
Yeah, the game is weird and in today's climes highly-questionable. Actually, you can marry both characters of your gender and in fact, marry abominations like a Shub-Niggurath which is a random enemy here.
For whatever reason, the game landed on a winning formula, and as such, it has a following on both EN and JP communities, with the JP community developing 2 branches of a variant, which includes: Elona+ and Elona OOMSESTepNC.
Elona+ is the quirkier, yet more-straightforward of the two. The game attempts to provide proper progression, but it doubles down on weird things, such as adding a peeing mechanic and getting characters or yourself wet with pee. Then you die thanks to being wet doubling the amount of damage you get from lightning.
Elona OOMSESTepNC is the other variant that's popular in EN side. This is actually just a mod-mod of a mod-mod, but is most often recommended everywhere for those not wanting to play Plus thanks to better English support and tons of quality of life features in it.
Omake Overhaul Modify Sukutu Edition South Tyris Step Nasuko Custom as it is known when you expand the abbreviation excels in doing what the Omake variants did: expanding existing features and making the whole existing experience more hollistic.
The lategame of this variant gets ridiculous, when attaining 2000 stat (where there is a cap) is just a mere pebble of progress in the game, you know that the game gets incredibly ridiculous with its Disgaea-tier power levels.
In order to beat its endgame, you will quite literally have to become a God ingame, which translates to infinite wishes and armor that grants you invulnerability, which will not save you in the final dungeon given certain enemies can bypass it.
All in all, Elona is a wonderful roguelike if you're not offended by the weirder things in Japan and are willing to put in the time to learn the system and its meta. As a classic roguelike, doing about anything requires multiple keypresses.
I find that an oddity, given that the gameplay, barring its slice-of-life additions, vastly resembles contemporaries like NetHack and its core inspiration, ADoM.
In any case, don't let those people fool you, this game is as much a Roguelike as the ancient contemporaries are, if you cared about the Berlin Interpretation anyway.
But I digress, you're here for a summary.
Elona is a quirky Japanese roguelike with an emphasis on the slice of life aspects of gameplay, and can feel rather unfinished if you're playing on the Vanilla version.
On the onset of the game, you're already provided a brief tutorial on basic controls that encourages you to eat something. There's a corpse of a beggar somewhere, so your natural inclination is to eat him, right? The game mocks you for this, but it also provides a handy warning that you'll encounter weird things as you go.
The game is particularly grindy, and if you're lost, it's very easy to lose stats and hard to gain them back. Many players give up on the game thanks to this fact. If you last long enough though, you'll end up owning a castle, have a bunch of storage spaces, and even sell goods as well as have a farm to grow plants in. Said locations are areas you can decorate, and adventurers come and go to visit you. You can also marry your pet, which is a choice of a dog, a bear, and a... little girl.
Yeah, the game is weird and in today's climes highly-questionable. Actually, you can marry both characters of your gender and in fact, marry abominations like a Shub-Niggurath which is a random enemy here.
For whatever reason, the game landed on a winning formula, and as such, it has a following on both EN and JP communities, with the JP community developing 2 branches of a variant, which includes: Elona+ and Elona OOMSESTepNC.
Elona+ is the quirkier, yet more-straightforward of the two. The game attempts to provide proper progression, but it doubles down on weird things, such as adding a peeing mechanic and getting characters or yourself wet with pee. Then you die thanks to being wet doubling the amount of damage you get from lightning.
Elona OOMSESTepNC is the other variant that's popular in EN side. This is actually just a mod-mod of a mod-mod, but is most often recommended everywhere for those not wanting to play Plus thanks to better English support and tons of quality of life features in it.
Omake Overhaul Modify Sukutu Edition South Tyris Step Nasuko Custom as it is known when you expand the abbreviation excels in doing what the Omake variants did: expanding existing features and making the whole existing experience more hollistic.
The lategame of this variant gets ridiculous, when attaining 2000 stat (where there is a cap) is just a mere pebble of progress in the game, you know that the game gets incredibly ridiculous with its Disgaea-tier power levels.
In order to beat its endgame, you will quite literally have to become a God ingame, which translates to infinite wishes and armor that grants you invulnerability, which will not save you in the final dungeon given certain enemies can bypass it.
All in all, Elona is a wonderful roguelike if you're not offended by the weirder things in Japan and are willing to put in the time to learn the system and its meta. As a classic roguelike, doing about anything requires multiple keypresses.