Elephantasy: Flipside

If you enjoyed the first Elephantasy, or if you are just a fan of exploration-adventure games, then I think you will enjoy Flipside. - huge world to explore - a variety of interesting powerups to combine to unlock new parts of the maps - various small platforming and puzzle challenges, as well as some deeper mysteries - lots of collectibles, and strategic choices about when/how to spend them The caveats I would mention are - there is a short PDF manual that accompanies this game, I would recommend downloading and reading it - the isometric 3-D geometry is sometimes hard to 'read', look at shadows to help you judge depth - when you have herbs, I'd bind them to the secondary action button, so you don't accidentally consume herbs while pressing the primary action button to talk to NPCs and whatnot (I made a lot of button-oopsies) I'm about 20 hours in and there's still a bit left to find, as far as I know. Very fun game.

There's nothing I've played quite like this game, including the first Elephantasy. The items here are unique and allow for each player to solve puzzles in their own way, bringing to mind the open-ended puzzle design of Breath of the Wild. Gradually discovering the hidden depths of your tools and their combinations is very satisfying; some of the things this game lets you do feel like cheating. The world is exceptionally well-designed and I felt clever whenever I made progress after being stumped for a while. Many of the points brought up in the negative reviews here are entirely fair - the isometric platforming sections are often unreadable, the final boss sucks, fast travel taking up an item slot is annoying, and I'm not a fan of how it's possible to lock yourself out of content by spending resources wrong - but at the end of the day if I'm going to give a game a negative review because of some irritating design choices, it's usually because there are any number of other games I'd recommend someone spend their valuable time on instead. What would I recommend someone play in place of Elephantasy: Flipside? Nothing comes to mind. There are no comparable experiences out there.

A weird but not unwelcome hybrid of Solstice and Fez with unconventional metroidvania gating. I would probably only recommend this to people who would still play NES games and not get frustrated easily (it plays like and has the quirks of games from that era, despite being a bit more forgiving). You get access to all the upgrades required for progression near the beginning of the game, but you can only carry a certain amount of them at a time until you unlock more slots by exploring the world. Discovering what upgrades actually allow you to do and how they interact with each other is a big part of the fun. The platforming is harder than you’d think because of the perspective—you’ll have plenty of instances of poor spacial judgment—but fortunately the game’s as forgiving as it needs to be with this in mind. Typically, when you die, you immediately respawn in the same room. There are a few sequences of 4-6 rooms you’ll have to do in one go else restart in the first room of that sequence, but that’s as punishing as it gets (besides the final boss, which is kind of a nightmare). I’m hardly a master at platforming and was able to do everything without too much fuss. There’s a lot of backtracking to the same areas and you will occasionally get stumped for a while, but it doesn’t feel too bad because a) warp points and b) the world’s so packed with secrets you’ll be accessing new rooms in many of those areas until late in the game to find more keys, gems and ore. The main, overarching puzzles and mysteries of the world are hinted at but still pretty arcane and not completely logical, especially if you want true endings. Most people probably shouldn’t expect to be able to discover that last 10% of content themselves, and the map is pretty hard to use. Those are the only real complaints I have about the game, though. It’s full of original ideas, it feels fresh and classic at once, and I enjoyed it so much I binged it over a few days.

Oh my god, Super Mario RPG is one of my favourite games ever and I haven't played a game that scratched the same spot it did since. Elephantasy is damn good. The music is charming, the visuals are deeply satisfying, the map is intricate and rewards exploration. It has so much going on for it and I could not put it down when I started. That being said, [b]The game is also hard as ####[/b]. There's times where it felt like Celeste—you have infinite lives for each room, and each room is 7x7 (how hard can it be really?). Some of the rooms are super technical, requiring wall-jumps, temporary item boosts and precise timing to overcome. Getting 100% is a chore... and does actually require what I consider to be "abuse" of its own gimmicks, but its not the worst because the game does have cheat codes! A lot of the frustration that may come from its retro-esque challenge is mitigated if you play the game with the game manual open. Indeed, this game comes with a super cute manual and you SHOULD use it while playing (its on the store page). The manual makes the game kinda feel like Tunic too! It tells you what all the items do, how they get better when upgraded and has a map to aid with familiarizing yourself with the world! Really adds to the experience in a nostalgic way. Now would I recommend this game to everyone... no... but if you like any of the games I mentioned in this review, you gotta give it an honest try, its really good.

I sort of like that the game tells you nothing and you get to go out and explore. In many places the map could be better though. I also dislike the item system that the game shares with the previous Elephantasy title, where you can carry whichever item you want but only a few at a time. The game bombards you with like 10 different items/abilities you can 'borrow', whereas I prefer to find them one by one in a more typical metroidvania style. Instead of this, what you find are 'extra slots' to carry more of these items at a time. I guess it's just a different way of doing things, but having access to all of these abilities from the start sucks some of the fun out of it for me. Platforming can be tricky in multiple locations due to the isometric view. It's sometimes impossible to tell where the platforms are exactly. There were times where I needed to jump up many screens of platforms, but it was impossible to discern exactly where these platforms were. Causing you to think it's in one place, to miss your jump and fall all the way down to the bottom again. A problem that appears to be no fault of your own (trial and error). I experienced a similar issue with determining where platforms were in another isometric game called [b]Oolo[/b], but I could at least rotate the camera a bit in that which helped a tiny bit. Exploration in [b]Flipside[/b] reminds me a bit of Kings Quest 1-4, in that you have many screens you can visit in the world and need to find the items and backtrack a lot. I do like games like this (I loved [b]Oolo[/b]), but here with this item system it feels far more directionless.

lost track of the time playing this one

Elephantasy war ein süßes kleines Abenteuer und Elephantasy: Flipside präsentiert die Welt in 3D und Isometrischer Ansicht. Der Stil ist echt spitze und zeigt wie ein Sequel die Formel vom Vorgänger verändern, ohne die Verbindung zu verlieren. Das Spiel hat mich mit seiner offeneren Herangehensweise überfordert und ich habe relativ schnell die Orientierung verloren. Ich weiß auch nicht ob ich mir mit den Codes im Leuchtturm, vielleicht kaputt gemacht habe?! Nach gut einer halben Stunde musste ich, dann doch aufgeben, weil ich Kopfschmerzen bekommen habe, was vielleicht an der isometrischen Ansicht liegt. Schade, ist anscheinend doch kein Spiel für mich, obwohl ich das Konzept echt genial finde und der visuelle Stil echt kreativ ist. Ich würde jedem empfehlen, zuerst einmal Elephantasy auszuprobieren. Wenn man damit vertraut ist und es einem Spaß macht, dann kann man Elephantasy: Flipside ausprobieren, aber das ist nur meine Meinung und jeder kann natürlich sofort mit diesem Spiel starten. Bin auf alle Fälle gespannt was dieser Entwickler als nächstes herausbringt.