Elminage (エルミナージュ) is a series of Japanese fantasy role-playing video games published by Starfish SD since 2008. They are Japanese Dungeon Crawl in the tradition of Wizardry series. It is one of the most well-regarded series in this genre.
These are the methods over making the game easier, since common complaints are over the low Experience Points curve, and lack of expendable maps which made it harder due to doors and corridors looking alike. To use mods, extract the mods to the game's directory. To be able to open the directory, left click Elminage Gothic from the Steam Library, choose View Downloadable Content, local files and browse local files.
Elminage Gothic Game
Magic maps are expendable in the game. A magic map costs for 10 G each at stacks of nine, and due to the exploration nature of the game it is bound to run out. Remember to buy a map for the cheat to work first.
Unzip the file into your Elminage Gothic directory, it should contain only one .exe file, double click on that; a console window should pop up and lots of text should scroll through it for a few minutes. The result should be four directories S00 through S03 and a ton of files in them. S03 is music/sfx; S02 is backgrounds/character/monster/tarot art. S01 is dungeon walls and combat effects; S00 is the rest of the files, and specifically a pile of csv files that have all the game data in them.
Elminage Gothic is a dungeon-crawler RPG in the style of Wizardry I-III, originally developed for the Sony PSP, and ported to the PC by Ghostlight. Said company had been responsible over bringing obscure Japanese games to the PAL region. The game also received an enhanced port called Elminage Gothic 3D Remix on the Nintendo 3DS in Japan. Elminage Gothic is the fourth game in the Elminage series, but the first to receive a US PC port.
Some of you might remember the original Elminage game, which we released in Europe last year on PSP. The game is currently available on PSN but the boxed release was a highly exclusive offering, with one of the smallest, if not the smallest, PSP print runs ever. Only 300 very special limited edition physical copies were ever manufactured!
Enemies are tough not only because of their individual strength, but the sheer numbers that they attack in. Encounters commonly involve row after row of a horde of enemies, and while this does mean that encounters can drag on for longer than many will be used to, the flip side to that particular coin is that each encounter is a suitably epic one, requiring players to remain aware and not simply rely on passive auto-spam attacks to get through on the way to a boss. With dungeon environments being generally uninteresting to explore, the combat needed to keep players awake in order for the game to have any kind of value, and it does succeed in this regard.
Combat is probably the most straightforward component to the game. Enemies are encountered in groups and engaged in a round-based system. You select your party's actions, and then the turn-order is decided by each participant's agility stat. The goal, of course, is to keep your party alive and the deplete the HP of all enemy units. But this is easier said than done, as there are many tough creatures that will test your ability to do just that. This isn't your average RPG where random mob encounters are mostly there to easily push aside as you progress through the game. Instead, every battle has the chance to be tense, and every battle is likely to defeat you if you don't prepare properly. Random encounters can be just as dangerous as boss fights.
This means you have to buy maps as you would potions, keeping a collection of them available at all times to use when you need to. As I progressed further and further into more and more complex dungeons, separating already tight inventory space to hold stacks of one-time use map items became more of a chore than an interesting limitation. Outside of anything else the game has to offer, this can easily be a deal-breaker. You can get around this by modifying the game files or looking up maps online.
The game also has quite a number of quest events to reward you for going out of your way to explore to the corners of the various dungeons. Many require conquering extra bosses or navigating to the most difficult-to-reach places. While totally optional, gaining more levels and equipment by completing these events is very beneficial. Elminage Gothic is challenging the whole way through, so anything to up your advantage is something you are going to want to do.
Dungeon-crawlers seem to be a video game sub-genre that is going extinct on the PC. Years back, you had highly successful dungeon-crawling RPG series such as the Wizardry games, along with the Might & Magic and Bard's Tale games. Nowadays, your choice of games if you want to do some dungeon-crawling are a bit limited in terms of modern selections to play, so most of us are still firing up the old classics from time to time. Thankfully, rare games like Elminage Gothic exist and are able to bring this wonderful dungeon-crawling experience back to PC in the modern era where it belongs, hopefully bringing with it some fresh ideas and making a few new fans for the niche genre along the way.
Elminage Gothic is a party-based dungeon-crawler RPG similar to the early Wizardry games or any good old-school dungeon-crawler. You roll a party of 6 characters from a wide array of races and classes to choose, outfit them as best you see fit and crawl through dungeons, fighting and looting along the way.
Yes, Elminage Gothic is a true-to-life dungeon-crawler, and that is what the majority of your time will be spent doing. The dungeons in this game are devious, devilish and diabolical. Most of them are maze-like, huge and confusing, often with hidden switches to find and secret doors to uncover. The challenge level is also raised when you realize that the simple task of using your map is limited in this game. The game uses a Magic Map system, which means that each time you glance at your map, a Magic Map in your inventory is used up. Run out of Magic Maps and you no longer have a map or any way of knowing where you're at. If that happens, you will be running around blindly until you re-load a previous save or somehow find your way back to sunshine again. This aspect is made easier once you get teleportation magic, but the early parts of the game can be brutal.
The story is a bit bare-bones here, as you initially get word that a cave has started spawning monsters and you have to get to the bottom of why it's happening. The story simply acts as a backdrop; a reason to get you exploring the dungeons and ultimately spending your time in the dungeons themselves. As you progress, you can start to piece together a narrative, much like a Dark Souls game, and the story starts to reveal itself to you. There are plenty of NPCs in the dungeons and villages you encounter that also help move things along, often with interesting lore bits and clever little quotes that will definitely get a chuckle out of you. I had to laugh when I mistakenly fell to the bottom of the wind cave, Hastrana, only for a fairy there to tell me how foolish I was for even entering this cave without wings. This area of the map turned out to be a dead end with no apparent way up, so the fairy was, in fact, quite right. There are many of these moments in the game where the game cleverly and cutely tells you things that show that it is not taking itself *too* seriously.
While you're crawling through dungeons you'll be fighting all sorts of beautiful, weird, unique and surreal monsters. They are colorful and on display in full HD, which is a great feature as the artwork for the various enemies in the game is extremely well done and always visually interesting. Combat is turn-based and tactical as you and your enemies exchange vicious blows, often in quick, life-or-death battles. Tactically, each enemy you fight will have at least one special skill that makes it unique, if not more. Some enemies will attack you and damage your weapons or armor, others can charm various party members with a kiss, or use a lightning breath attack on one of your lines. Given that there are literally hundreds (over 400) monsters in the game, ranging from slimes and spore balls to unspeakable demon horrors and enemies that are so disturbing and strange you will have no words for them, it stays interesting. Every encounter in the game stays fresh as well because you are never quite sure what the enemy type you are facing is going to hurl at you. Even when you do have an idea of the enemy's tactics, the situation remains tense as you wonder when they are going to unleash their special skills on your party that could all but cripple you. These are the type of tense situations that exist in Elminage Gothic and make the game worth playing, as you can't simply sleepwalk through the combat in this game. It will challenge you at every step, and you must be prepared, patient and persistent if you want to make significant progress in the game.
As you continue to dive ever deeper in the various dungeons, you will have to manage your party carefully if you expect to survive. You will have to manage your maps, as we've already discussed, along with your inventory, and, most importantly, your spells. The magic system in the game uses an old-school Dungeons & Dragons approach, where you are given a limited amount of spells to cast from each spell level, and once they are consumed they are gone forever until you head back to town to rest at an inn. There is no resting in the dungeons themselves, so you better come prepared and manage your spells extremely carefully or you could run out mid-dungeon and once again be in a heap of trouble. Thankfully, the game seems to balance encounters fairly well, as most encounters can be beaten if you execute a proper strategy. Luck also plays a role in the game as well and balances itself well as you will have both unlucky moments of grief as well as lucky moments that cause quite a bit of happiness when everything goes right in the Gothic world. 2ff7e9595c
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