If I were simply comparing this against a 'modern ideal of Exploration-Action RPG design' I'd probably give this a 3, maybe a 2. But since it was put out in the late 90s, is 3D, and surprisingly playable, I'll bump it up to a 4.

COMBAT

Mechanically, this is a hard to control action game with no lock-on mechanic. Your sword hitboxes are small and very directional based on swinging up or down. Moving left or right ALSO turns the camera so positioning yourself properly is tricky, especially during boss fights. There's a complex moves system but you end up sticking to two or three useful moves. Basically the 'move economy' is too close together that it's hard to distinguish the value of one move vs. another - usually I just end up thinking 'a combo would be good' or 'a charge strike could be good for getting one hit in and running off.' The depth of combat doesn't go very far. Usually you just hold block until there's an opening, swing, get away, etc. Some enemies attack through your guard, some move very fast, but for the most part combat tends to feel repetitive, sometimes even annoying - it's hard to precisely line up and easy to get smacked without realizing it.

Bosses, rather than pushing combat into interesting and focused space, end up being battles of attrition, trying to awkwardly line up and smack the enemy before getting hit in the face with a 30% damage attack.

HISTORY

STILL, it's pretty admirable for a time where there were only a few decent attempts at 3D exploration-action combat. By the PS2 era various studios had good attempts by that time - DMC, Kingdom Hearts, Tales of, the Ys 6/Oath/Origin, Xanadu Next - but the PS1 era is pretty slim. You have Granstream Saga (also by Quintet/Shade) (1997), which is more focused in combat scope (I haven't played it), as well as Brave Fencer Musashi, which is simple and 2D zelda-y in combat scope. Alundra 2 has a lot of money put into it but the boss design and combat design are a bit straightforward. Parasite Eve is good, although more of a shooter.

We also have Mega Man Legends, great 3D 3rd-person shooter RPGs, and Threads of Fate.

Of course there's the N64 Zeldas - which feature combat, but honestly more as a 'texture' than as a combat system that was interesting to engage with. Funnily enough the Wikipedia article for Action RPG skips completely from late 90s 2D ARPGs to Demon's Souls...! On the Western side, developers didn't seem to explore the 3D ARPG much? I guess it was just hard to do 3D games then. There's Ultima IX, King's Quest VIII (a personal favorite...although not a very sound game, design-wise, haha).

Anyways, the point is, Brightis did a pretty good and forward-looking job in 1999! I wouldn't be surprised if it was the basis for some of FromSoft's 2000s (also mixed/so-so) ARPGs - Evergrace 1 and 2, those other ones after it.

Alright, back to the game...

SO WHAT'S GOOD ABOUT IT...?

The story isn't too substantial, standard genre dark fantasy fare, but it is fun to revisit the village over time and talk to NPCs and see how they're feeling.

What's neat is the overworld and dungeon design. Though both go stale quickly, the game features a fully connected overworld (with loading pauses), which gives it a very 'lived-in' and hiking feel. As far as I could tell there is no fast travel (if I missed the option then... lol), so you have to walk everywhere. Areas feel like snowy mountains, or ravines, or grassy plains. You'll even unlock a few shortcuts around the overworld.

It goes stale, though, as only a few enemy types roam the overworld. They get boring to fight and also barely give EXP or have a reason to be killed. Still, the overworld spaces always have some interesting visual gimmick to them, but you have to really wish that there was a wider screen at the time or better camera controls. This is a case where the super short draw distance is kind of sad, actually...it hides a lot of the expansiveness the game designers were going for.

Dungeons are interesting - they, too, are 'continuous' and I think, realistically laid out. But it's hard to keep the whole structure in your head because most dungeons are interior hallways. Still, the dungeons are very ambitious - there's a beautiful temple near a lake with sprawling, Shadow of the Colossus-esque mossy ruins, and a tower climbing into the sky. You'll find huge underground caverns, strange ruins... etc.

It was a lot of fun to see these RPG tropes brought to life in a way that reminded me of the later Souls series.

That being said the design gets a little boring, simply because there isn't much to do except walk around and fight enemies with the sort of flat battle system where enemies all have the same strategy and it doesn't control well enough to want to fight. You quickly see why N64 Zelda opted for items and puzzles to spice up their fairly flat combat system. Dungeons feature a 'brightness' mechanic where if you can run out of light and it becomes hard to navigate levels or have a sense of the space. This happens a lot in later levels.

Dungeons generally have pacing issues - you have to clear them in one go without leaving or you lose your keys. This is tiring and also, because you can't get a sense for the whole dungeon layout, it's hard to tell how far along you are. this is quite the headache when you're far along from a save point, trying to figure out where you are, without dying to something..

Still, I think it's brilliant for the time and quite ambitious. It's a shame that Quintet and Shade folded after this or split up, because they really could have done something amazing in the 2000s! If there's anything I've learned about Exploratory Action RPGs, from the '80s till today, is that it's very hard to make one. Everyone's just building off of ideas from the previous games, while trying to push things slightly forward, or finding ways around the difficulty of the 3D view and camera.

Even 3D exploration-action games in 2023 are still coasting (FromSoft included) off of the innovations of Demon's and Dark Souls 1, going down more technically-demanding paths (Nioh), rolling around in the impotent mud of gacha action design (Genshin Impact), or falling into that +0.5% Defense Diablo Garbage Picking Hole. To me the genre feels a bit stale nowadays. It's time for someone to shake it up again!

If I were simply comparing this against a 'modern ideal of Exploration-Action RPG design' I'd probably give this a 3, maybe a 2. But since it was put out in the late 90s, is 3D, and surprisingly playable, I'll bump it up to a 4.

COMBAT

Mechanically, this is a hard to control action game with no lock-on mechanic. Your sword hitboxes are small and very directional based on swinging up or down. Moving left or right ALSO turns the camera so positioning yourself properly is tricky, especially during boss fights. There's a complex moves system but you end up sticking to two or three useful moves. Basically the 'move economy' is too close together that it's hard to distinguish the value of one move vs. another - usually I just end up thinking 'a combo would be good' or 'a charge strike could be good for getting one hit in and running off.' The depth of combat doesn't go very far. Usually you just hold block until there's an opening, swing, get away, etc. Some enemies attack through your guard, some move very fast, but for the most part combat tends to feel repetitive, sometimes even annoying - it's hard to precisely line up and easy to get smacked without realizing it.

Bosses, rather than pushing combat into interesting and focused space, end up being battles of attrition, trying to awkwardly line up and smack the enemy before getting hit in the face with a 30% damage attack.

HISTORY

STILL, it's pretty admirable for a time where there were only a few decent attempts at 3D exploration-action combat. By the PS2 era various studios had good attempts by that time - DMC, Kingdom Hearts, Tales of, the Ys 6/Oath/Origin, Xanadu Next - but the PS1 era is pretty slim. You have Granstream Saga (also by Quintet/Shade) (1997), which is more focused in combat scope (I haven't played it), as well as Brave Fencer Musashi, which is simple and 2D zelda-y in combat scope. Alundra 2 has a lot of money put into it but the boss design and combat design are a bit straightforward. Parasite Eve is good, although more of a shooter.

We also have Mega Man Legends, great 3D 3rd-person shooter RPGs, and Threads of Fate.

Of course there's the N64 Zeldas - which feature combat, but honestly more as a 'texture' than as a combat system that was interesting to engage with. Funnily enough the Wikipedia article for Action RPG skips completely from late 90s 2D ARPGs to Demon's Souls...! On the Western side, developers didn't seem to explore the 3D ARPG much? I guess it was just hard to do 3D games then. There's Ultima IX, King's Quest VIII (a personal favorite...although not a very sound game, design-wise, haha).

Anyways, the point is, Brightis did a pretty good and forward-looking job in 1999! I wouldn't be surprised if it was the basis for some of FromSoft's 2000s (also mixed/so-so) ARPGs - Evergrace 1 and 2, those other ones after it.

Alright, back to the game...

SO WHAT'S GOOD ABOUT IT...?

The story isn't too substantial, standard genre dark fantasy fare, but it is fun to revisit the village over time and talk to NPCs and see how they're feeling.

What's neat is the overworld and dungeon design. Though both go stale quickly, the game features a fully connected overworld (with loading pauses), which gives it a very 'lived-in' and hiking feel. As far as I could tell there is no fast travel (if I missed the option then... lol), so you have to walk everywhere. Areas feel like snowy mountains, or ravines, or grassy plains. You'll even unlock a few shortcuts around the overworld.

It goes stale, though, as only a few enemy types roam the overworld. They get boring to fight and also barely give EXP or have a reason to be killed. Still, the overworld spaces always have some interesting visual gimmick to them, but you have to really wish that there was a wider screen at the time or better camera controls. This is a case where the super short draw distance is kind of sad, actually...it hides a lot of the expansiveness the game designers were going for.

Dungeons are interesting - they, too, are 'continuous' and I think, realistically laid out. But it's hard to keep the whole structure in your head because most dungeons are interior hallways. Still, the dungeons are very ambitious - there's a beautiful temple near a lake with sprawling, Shadow of the Colossus-esque mossy ruins, and a tower climbing into the sky. You'll find huge underground caverns, strange ruins... etc.

It was a lot of fun to see these RPG tropes brought to life in a way that reminded me of the later Souls series.

That being said the design gets a little boring, simply because there isn't much to do except walk around and fight enemies with the sort of flat battle system where enemies all have the same strategy and it doesn't control well enough to want to fight. You quickly see why N64 Zelda opted for items and puzzles to spice up their fairly flat combat system. Dungeons feature a 'brightness' mechanic where if you can run out of light and it becomes hard to navigate levels or have a sense of the space. This happens a lot in later levels.

Dungeons generally have pacing issues - you have to clear them in one go without leaving or you lose your keys. This is tiring and also, because you can't get a sense for the whole dungeon layout, it's hard to tell how far along you are. this is quite the headache when you're far along from a save point, trying to figure out where you are, without dying to something..

Still, I think it's brilliant for the time and quite ambitious. It's a shame that Quintet and Shade folded after this or split up, because they really could have done something amazing in the 2000s! If there's anything I've learned about Exploratory Action RPGs, from the '80s till today, is that it's very hard to make one. Everyone's just building off of ideas from the previous games, while trying to push things slightly forward, or finding ways around the difficulty of the 3D view and camera.

Even 3D exploration-action games in 2023 are still coasting (FromSoft included) off of the innovations of Demon's and Dark Souls 1, going down more technically-demanding paths (Nioh), rolling around in the impotent mud of gacha action design (Genshin Impact), or falling into that +0.5% Defense Diablo Garbage Picking Hole. To me the genre feels a bit stale nowadays. It's time for someone to shake it up again!

Review is about 8 hours after getting the easiest ending. I want to play more though.

The short review of this is if you were a fan of the nonlinear way Fez's world unravels, or the item gimmick of Link Between Worlds, or the idea of "what if 2D Zelda was isometric 3D, you had access to all the items from the start and you can tackle areas of the world nonlinearly" OR if you're a fan of very technical platformers, you should check this out. (Note in the case of the game being a technical platformer, the game does offer access to cheat codes early on which can be toggled on to get through very hard sections).

If that sounds interesting I would go play it and stop reading this review! This will spoil some things.

-
-
-
-
-

-The Early Game-

You can explore the world in any order you want, eventually gaining the ability to try out one of 8 items. The twist that you can only hold one. You're then tasked to find Seven Spirits hidden amongst the world. To do so, you need to poke around, figuring out which area you can explore a bit more of if you have the right item. But it's not as lock-and-key as that - with each area you push a bit more into, and with each time you return to the item-swapping area to try out different combinations of items, you start to get a better sense for what items can work well together. You get better at recognizing situations in the world where you can apply certain items and platforming techniques. Some rooms are solvable with different combinations of items, and by the time you have access to 3 or 4 items, it becomes quite fun navigating the various challenges.

As a simple example, the Ring lets you pick up and throw objects. You can use this to climb higher. But you can ALSO throw objects onto other objects. Objects also bounce slightly if you drop them while in the air, and if you can time it you can get a higher jump...

You also have the Wand, which levitates objects. Now if you can combine the Ring and the Wand, then suddenly you have access to a lot more jump height than you expected.

-Height Economy-

The economy of Elephantasy Flipside revolves around (abstractly) exchanging items for jump height.

If you design a platformer with jumping you quickly realize that how you offer a player 'height' is kind of a currency system of its own. If access to height is too easy, then everything becomes trivialized. If you hide access to height through moves or entities in the environment, then you can come up with all sorts of situations for players to get higher (or further).

Why Elephantasy Flipside ends up not being a sort of so-so Zelda-like is because the items interact with this "Height Economy" in surprising ways. Rather than a Hookshot meaning "now you can traverse chasms IF there's a hookshot block on the other side", we get stuff like the Herb Bag, which lets you hold a few herbs of various types - one for high jumps, one makes you invincible, another freezes time, another duplicates everything. You can see how each of those moves actually is a way of accessing the 'height economy'.

A high jump is self-explanatory. Invincibility means that you can step on hazards, and thus jump from new positions. Freezing time allows you to navigate impossible hazards, or do stuff like keep a moving pillar in place, letting you reach a certain height.

The Dash Boots at first seem only useful for running faster and getting across wider pits, but you realize there's a tricky wall-jump tech which means that you now have access to more height when near certain kinds of walls. There's a combo of items involving the dash boots that is too good to spoil, but (maddeningly!) the Dash Boots go even deeper, later on.

Even the Magnifying Glass, which lets you shrink down, at first seems like a Zelda-y gimmick. But once you realize your movement physics are slightly different when small, well...!

The other items are a Book (which lets you read glyphs on stones, except the vowels lol) and a Whistle (calls your fast travel bird, taking you to unlocked checkpoints). The Book is "useless" from a Height Economy standpoint, but it has this interesting feeling to it, where you are trading off possibilities for exploration, with the ability to uncover lore in a far-off area (if you can reach it while losing the inventory slot!).

Likewise, the Whistle lets you skip to an area, but of course you lose access to an item slot. I liked this, because it means that if you get from "Grass Land" to "Mountain" and need Item A + B, the game can impose different requirements from "Mountain" to "Sky", because you can now skip to Mountain without needing A and B. I think this lets the levels of the game always stay at a decent complexity.

Lastly there's the underwater ability, which... lets you go underwater. I haven't made too much progress in the underwater bits, but it feels sort of similar to the Book or Whistle, in a way, where it imposes a new 'rule' on you (you can now access water and swim) while limiting access to items. Some of the item physics/movement is different underwater.

-Difficulty-

E:F gets pretty hard near the "easy" end (the others involve more completionism which I'm in the middle of doing). I would say I didn't personally mind the difficulty, but sometimes I would have to grind for herbs to do some of the challenges... at the same time having to do such a thing did add a certain memorability to it. I guess I prefer it this way, rather than if the challenges just dumped a bunch of herbs near the start, conveniently? The game offers a cheat code for infinite jumping, which I used once when I got tired of one of the grinds (The Volcano escape... lol.. may it strike terror into your heart.)

Later levels have some pretty technical movement, but it was fun to learn and even got sort of surprisingly easy once I got the hang of it. Likewise, the game is an isometric platformer so perspective messes with where you need to aim a jump. Overall I found it to bean interesting logic challenge, as you can always judge one dimension of a platform's position precisely, and have to 'feel' or remember the other two.

I guess there is a little tedium in retrying some challenges and some of the early-game item swapping, but I think it contributes to the game's memorability and texture. And I still feel like with each failure there's a sense of getting a better understanding of the game's mechanics. If you like the feeling of passively remembering the layout and challenges of a game's world then you'll love what you remember after playing E:F!

I guess if I have some personal gripes... some of the automatic dialogue progresses too slowly. Also maybe the fast travel animation could go a bit faster as you warp between screens...? Color-coding the world-map might have been nice, too.

-CONCLUSION-

Well... that's all I can think of for now. I'm going to play more, maybe it'll spark some new thoughts. But I really love how this game got me thinking about the ways of which a simple platformer moveset - single jump - can be extended through the use of smart object and item design.

Review is about 8 hours after getting the easiest ending. I want to play more though.

The short review of this is if you were a fan of the nonlinear way Fez's world unravels, or the item gimmick of Link Between Worlds, or the idea of "what if 2D Zelda was isometric 3D, you had access to all the items from the start and you can tackle areas of the world nonlinearly" OR if you're a fan of very technical platformers, you should check this out. (Note in the case of the game being a technical platformer, the game does offer access to cheat codes early on which can be toggled on to get through very hard sections).

If that sounds interesting I would go play it and stop reading this review! This will spoil some things.

-
-
-
-
-

-The Early Game-

You can explore the world in any order you want, eventually gaining the ability to try out one of 8 items. The twist that you can only hold one. You're then tasked to find Seven Spirits hidden amongst the world. To do so, you need to poke around, figuring out which area you can explore a bit more of if you have the right item. But it's not as lock-and-key as that - with each area you push a bit more into, and with each time you return to the item-swapping area to try out different combinations of items, you start to get a better sense for what items can work well together. You get better at recognizing situations in the world where you can apply certain items and platforming techniques. Some rooms are solvable with different combinations of items, and by the time you have access to 3 or 4 items, it becomes quite fun navigating the various challenges.

As a simple example, the Ring lets you pick up and throw objects. You can use this to climb higher. But you can ALSO throw objects onto other objects. Objects also bounce slightly if you drop them while in the air, and if you can time it you can get a higher jump...

You also have the Wand, which levitates objects. Now if you can combine the Ring and the Wand, then suddenly you have access to a lot more jump height than you expected.

-Height Economy-

The economy of Elephantasy Flipside revolves around (abstractly) exchanging items for jump height.

If you design a platformer with jumping you quickly realize that how you offer a player 'height' is kind of a currency system of its own. If access to height is too easy, then everything becomes trivialized. If you hide access to height through moves or entities in the environment, then you can come up with all sorts of situations for players to get higher (or further).

Why Elephantasy Flipside ends up not being a sort of so-so Zelda-like is because the items interact with this "Height Economy" in surprising ways. Rather than a Hookshot meaning "now you can traverse chasms IF there's a hookshot block on the other side", we get stuff like the Herb Bag, which lets you hold a few herbs of various types - one for high jumps, one makes you invincible, another freezes time, another duplicates everything. You can see how each of those moves actually is a way of accessing the 'height economy'.

A high jump is self-explanatory. Invincibility means that you can step on hazards, and thus jump from new positions. Freezing time allows you to navigate impossible hazards, or do stuff like keep a moving pillar in place, letting you reach a certain height.

The Dash Boots at first seem only useful for running faster and getting across wider pits, but you realize there's a tricky wall-jump tech which means that you now have access to more height when near certain kinds of walls. There's a combo of items involving the dash boots that is too good to spoil, but (maddeningly!) the Dash Boots go even deeper, later on.

Even the Magnifying Glass, which lets you shrink down, at first seems like a Zelda-y gimmick. But once you realize your movement physics are slightly different when small, well...!

The other items are a Book (which lets you read glyphs on stones, except the vowels lol) and a Whistle (calls your fast travel bird, taking you to unlocked checkpoints). The Book is "useless" from a Height Economy standpoint, but it has this interesting feeling to it, where you are trading off possibilities for exploration, with the ability to uncover lore in a far-off area (if you can reach it while losing the inventory slot!).

Likewise, the Whistle lets you skip to an area, but of course you lose access to an item slot. I liked this, because it means that if you get from "Grass Land" to "Mountain" and need Item A + B, the game can impose different requirements from "Mountain" to "Sky", because you can now skip to Mountain without needing A and B. I think this lets the levels of the game always stay at a decent complexity.

Lastly there's the underwater ability, which... lets you go underwater. I haven't made too much progress in the underwater bits, but it feels sort of similar to the Book or Whistle, in a way, where it imposes a new 'rule' on you (you can now access water and swim) while limiting access to items. Some of the item physics/movement is different underwater.

-Difficulty-

E:F gets pretty hard near the "easy" end (the others involve more completionism which I'm in the middle of doing). I would say I didn't personally mind the difficulty, but sometimes I would have to grind for herbs to do some of the challenges... at the same time having to do such a thing did add a certain memorability to it. I guess I prefer it this way, rather than if the challenges just dumped a bunch of herbs near the start, conveniently? The game offers a cheat code for infinite jumping, which I used once when I got tired of one of the grinds (The Volcano escape... lol.. may it strike terror into your heart.)

Later levels have some pretty technical movement, but it was fun to learn and even got sort of surprisingly easy once I got the hang of it. Likewise, the game is an isometric platformer so perspective messes with where you need to aim a jump. Overall I found it to bean interesting logic challenge, as you can always judge one dimension of a platform's position precisely, and have to 'feel' or remember the other two.

I guess there is a little tedium in retrying some challenges and some of the early-game item swapping, but I think it contributes to the game's memorability and texture. And I still feel like with each failure there's a sense of getting a better understanding of the game's mechanics. If you like the feeling of passively remembering the layout and challenges of a game's world then you'll love what you remember after playing E:F!

I guess if I have some personal gripes... some of the automatic dialogue progresses too slowly. Also maybe the fast travel animation could go a bit faster as you warp between screens...? Color-coding the world-map might have been nice, too.

-CONCLUSION-

Well... that's all I can think of for now. I'm going to play more, maybe it'll spark some new thoughts. But I really love how this game got me thinking about the ways of which a simple platformer moveset - single jump - can be extended through the use of smart object and item design.

I loved this game! (And it's free!) It's an ordered collection of 8 games made by a group of friends, with the condition that each installment is influenced by the story of all previous games. In some ways it's sort of 'epic' in that sense - kind of like how all the stories of Live-a-live or something are related, or something...

It's cool to see the way each game makes use of similar motifs of the white flower, or spatial conceits like a labyrinth, but while expressing each creator's personalities.

Buried Flower - John Thyer - I liked how this built a sense of suspense and also violating whatever flower-grave you were delving into.

Labyrinths - lotus - A short visual novel about a house that slowly empties, their parents disappearing one by one, someone recalling memories of livelier times, also with a kind of sci-fi framing to it.

The Aleph Hustle - LeeRoy Lewin - This reminded me of click-to-move flash games, and with that minimal interaction set managed to convey strongly the sense of a looping and disturbing labyrinth. I won't spoil the twist...

Make Like A Tree - NARFNra - A charming/absurd dungeon crawler that has some neat formal tricks as well as a funny change in tone.

another reverie - saori - A thoughtful and mellow, yuri-inspired (I think) RPG Maker 2k3 aesthetic game that is set outside of a labyrinth, two protagonists who have just finished an adventure and are getting to know each other, revealing potent truths about themselves.

Wet Cemetery - nilson - A 'house-exploration' Twine game that explores someone's time or long history living with parents, relationship to gaming, and body image (and more)

Wellness Related Time - Zeloz Mk. II - Felt like a condensed distillation of Ryukishi07 magic-isms applied to this magical college campus setting. It's fun how it builds the skeleton of this deep magic system in the span of a short visual novel.

Pangea's Error - Sraëka-Lillian - A world map exploration RPG with a Brandish-like rotation gimmick! Learn of the history of a massive world while finding weapons strewn about. I haven't finished this one yet.

A neat short visual novel. It creates a setting that's some kind of vaguely dark technofuture, lacking references to our real world that suspends it in something that feels a little like bits of 25th Ward, or BLAME! A girl is able to be grown via praise to create weapons, a scientist harnesses the power of a 4Chan message board and the mix of hate/love the users direct at girls (anime girls, etc), in order to more quickly grow the girl, eventually freeing her. Personally I've always been a little curious about the culture of some corners of the internet of people who seem young, are fairly aggressive, yet wear anime avatars or frequently consume extremely moe visual novels, anime, Japanese culture, etc.

This story was made pretty quickly and could go in various directions, but I liked how it connected certain 'real life topics' to these otherwise strange SF elements.

A neat short visual novel. It creates a setting that's some kind of vaguely dark technofuture, lacking references to our real world that suspends it in something that feels a little like bits of 25th Ward, or BLAME! A girl is able to be grown via praise to create weapons, a scientist harnesses the power of a 4Chan message board and the mix of hate/love the users direct at girls (anime girls, etc), in order to more quickly grow the girl, eventually freeing her. Personally I've always been a little curious about the culture of some corners of the internet of people who seem young, are fairly aggressive, yet wear anime avatars or frequently consume extremely moe visual novels, anime, Japanese culture, etc.

This story was made pretty quickly and could go in various directions, but I liked how it connected certain 'real life topics' to these otherwise strange SF elements.