Elven Relations - Review

‘We ought to do our bit at improving human-elven relations, don’t you think?’

Warning: This review contains some spoilers

As mentioned in the Omake section, Elven Relations was initially begun in 2003, but ended up stalling with about 2/3rds of the script done. It ended up being completed in 2007 as an IntRenAiMo project, making it one of the few games to be successfully completed after being left on hiatus for a long time.

The overall story of Elven Relations combines a traditional Ren’Ai experience with a relatively standard fantasy world (pre-gunpowder). At times the overall storyline and plot feel a bit conflated as the scale of the mission is rather grand, and everything goes very smoothly throughout. Even so, Elven Relations is (I think) the second longest Lemmasoft forums game, behind Gakuen Redux. However the game’s focus is more on the Ren’Ai aspect, rather than the overall plotline, and as chronoluminaire mentions, the depth of the game comes from the back-story, which requires multiple playthroughs to fully discover. Tohko, Yurika and Asilana all have very well developed personalities/backgrounds etc, and while certain parts of their stories are revealed on every path

One of the best features of Elven Relations is its replayability. Although the overall plot is the same no matter which character you pursue, there are changes not just in the interactions which the character you romance, but also in some of the other conversations. I particularly enjoyed the way other characters noticed and responded to your growing romance – it really increases the realism of the game. Elven Relations will probably require multiple replays to track down the best endings (particularly the semi-hidden Ending 1) – it’s definitely worth replaying to find all of the endings as they are all well-written and each of them has at least one CG associated with it.

Almost all of the art appearing in the final version of Elven Relations was completed under NaNoRenO conditions by Sunkitten. The quality is consistently high, and the amount is staggering (15 CG’s and many characters (including costume changes) with) numerous facial expressions). More importantly, the expressions are matched very well to the character sprites, for example Yurika’s subtle expressions fit her somewhat reserved personality. The backgrounds (a few of which are hand-drawn) and music were very well chosen too - and the gameplay never feels overly repetitive due the numerous resources employed over the course of Elven Relations.

The combat minigames are at the right level of difficulty – they require a little bit of thought (particularly the Dragon combat), but they can all be beaten even if the only character you defend is your love interest. In these sequences, the combat is continuous (as opposed to turn-based), but your actions can only take place (as menu choices) in a reactionary way (you can only decide how to interact with one of the NPC’s as they are attacked). The romantic interactions between your love interest are also carried over into combat, as one way to get ‘her’ to like you more is to protect her in combat, and in return, they will defend you in some way too (for example Tohko distracts enemies from attacking you by Fireballing them)

As there are only three combat sequences in the game, it raises the question of whether they are needed in the game. Personally, I much prefer this mini-game to the story-mode overview, as the written-out comments seem a bit perfunctory. It’s good to have the flexibility to choose between them though, particularly when replaying a characters’ path to achieve the best ending.

Overall, Elven Relations is a high-quality OELVN, with an excellent mix of Ren’ai, fantasy, and some other elements (eg humour). As long as you don’t approach the game expecting a really deep and meaningful story you are likely to really enjoy this.

:)

Review by Ignosco