REVIEW - Elrentaros Wanderings welcomes unexperienced adventurers to a world of looting

Gaming can be an intimidating hobby for newcomers, as many games expect you to be familiar with all the fundamentals of a given genre. Therefore, titles with simple mechanics become very important as they allow new players into the scene. Elrentaros Wanderings is one of those games, as it presents a very basic introduction to loot-based games, without ever getting too complicated, while also creating the basic feeling of why that genre is loved by many.

You play as a wanderer who reaches the town of Elrentaros, far from the capital of this realm but full of interesting characters. You decide to help the locals with their requests and soon you realize that there is a secret surrounding this town. The story is fairly simple for the genre, but it does get oddly confusing at times. The ending also felt rushed, leaving some nagging questions unanswered (unless I just missed something). That said, the dialogue is cute and fun to read, so there’s at least something to keep you engaged as you help your new friends beyond the gameplay perks so you can unlock.

The gameplay, however, is the most important part of Elrentaros Wanderings. You explore dungeons in order to fulfill requests and unlock more powerful gear. This loot-based loop is the biggest strength of the game, even if it’s very simple.

You can equip one weapon and one piece of armor, which are the sole elements that determine your stats. Stronger weapons give you more attack power and better armor gives you more health. Each of them may also have different, extra skills depending on their rarity. There are four levels of rarity, with the highest level having up to five slots to equip skills.

Each skill may use up to three slots, and it’s addictive to check all the new equipment and their skills in order to improve your character. Would you go for a stronger weapon with less skills? Or will you equip a weaker weapon that gives you more versatility? Some of the best loot-based games, like Diablo or Borderlands, create this satisfaction in trying new skills after every dungeon – and while Elrentaros Wanderings is far from their level, it is a nice introduction for anyone new to the genre.

There are only four types of weapons: the all-rounder longsword, the fast-but-weak fists, the wide-range haldberg, and the slow-but-powerful katana. Switching between them to try out your new skills is very accessible, as you never feel overwhelmed with too many options, and you get to have a little taste of what loot-based games are.

The battle system is also quite simple: you only need to keep Y pressed and the weapons do automatic combos. You can stop pressing if you need to perform other actions, which adds a little bit of strategy to the exploration, and there’s a dodge action that has its own cooldown period. You also get up to four items with infinite uses, but they each have a cooldown proportional to their power. For example, I assigned the two left shoulder buttons to healing items and the two right shoulder buttons for magic attacks.

Eventually you will find weapons that have a Special Attack which, if unlocked, is assigned to the X button and becomes a game changer. I was able to completely decimate waves of enemies with one attack and it was quite fun being that powerful. The Special Attack has a very long recharge time (RT), so you cannot spam it, but it was fantastic when I’d found armor with skills that lower the RT so I could use the Special Attack more.

You are encouraged to change weapons very often; not only due to the different skills that the equipment has, but also because some missions require you to use a specific weapon. Fulfilling these missions leads to items that improve your relationships with the townsfolk. As mentioned before, the dialogue is cute and fun, but improving your relations by giving your friends gifts will give you access to even more skills that help you when exploring dungeons.

You can select one out of ten characters to give you a boost. Each character can give you up to five skills, each being harder to unlock than the previous because gifts become more expensive as you go. Fortunately, you can get Melcoins (the currency used to buy gifts) by fulfilling some missions and by planting seeds that appear in the overworld after each successful run in a dungeon.

Although there are only five dungeons, each with ten non-randomly generated stages, after each run you unlock a harder version, with stronger enemies and more traps, which is again great for new adventurers since they get a familiar map but with a higher difficulty. Some levels hide special stages that appear if certain enemies are defeated, so exploring doesn’t get tired or dull. You don’t know which missions each stage has in your initial run, but all missions unlock afterwards, so you can go back and achieve them. You can even chose to skip most battles and run straight to the boss if your equipment is already powerful enough.

Speaking of bosses, they were another highlight for me. Their designs were great, drawing inspiration from Japanese folklore, including tanukis, foxes or rabbits. They were all rather cute, and the portraits for the townspeople were quite nice, too.

The music was fine, but nothing remarkable. The performance, though, was great. I never experienced a hiccup, even when dozens of enemies filled out the screen. And thankfully, after beating the game you can start again while keeping most of your unlocked items, which is great for replayability.

Every player needs to start somewhere and Elrentaros Wanderings is a simple but fun game to get started in the loot-based genre. Experienced players may still find some entertainment at the cute dialogue, too, making it a great alternative game to play between sessions of more difficult and deeper adventures.