This game oozes magical girl feel. So far, this is the most magical girl game I’ve played. It reminds me of Winx Club more than anything, even the writing. There is a ton of content, and I wouldn’t even imagine that this could be done in a month. The graphics are great at times, mainly portraits, cutscenes but not so good in the overworld - and I don’t mean all the overworld sprites, some are actually done pretty well, like Varien’s house, the furniture and all, but some others are not, it’s inconsistent. As a whole, I think it’s still pretty nice and the game is highly polished. I don’t mind if this is described as a full game rather than a game jam game.
The combat is pretty fun, with nice effects, animations, sounds and everything. The attacks and turn-based mechanics are simple and standard, there’s nothing unique about it but the effort behind the animations and effects made it all the more enjoyable to play. Turn-based aside, I didn’t feel like I was choosing any routes or at the very least the game wasn’t letting me as the player talk to the guy that my character likes, i.e. the romance part was not integrated with the gameplay, it is already part of the story, like reading a book. Even if there was a single route/guy, if I had the choice to interact with him in my own way, compliment him or be shy with him or anything, that would satisfy my expectations for the Ren’ai mashup. With that said, there is some love interaction and I appreciate that. In essence, this is a standard turn-based RPG-like game, like the older Final Fantasy games.
I completed the game and at the end fight, somehow Kisa and Flora is invincible to the Queen’s attacks, so I was able to just push through even though everyone’s supposed to be dead; I’m not sure if this is intended or if it is a bug. The night sky overlay is quite dark which makes it hard to see the effects and text sometimes, tone it down a bit. And no Sudoku… please… I was worried if I had to beat someone at chess next. Maybe add an option to skip mini-games, and if you want you can even include bad consequences along with it to flesh out the story, at least there’s some player choice.
All in all, I enjoyed my time with Elemental Guardians and it’s a wonderful experience. I am very impressed at how much the game has to offer with only a month of development time. Excellent work!