Eltale Monsters

ELETALE MONSTERS

So I got my Eletale Monsters in the mail today. To my pleasant surprise it came CIB, with instruction manual and a nice little plastic sleeve for the cart itself. I played through an any% and wow. WOW. Here are the changes I found, IMO in order of how important they are:

HUGE CHANGES to gameplay/any%
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1. MASSIVE BRIAN BUFFS/ENEMY NERFS
Everything does less damage. This might be a flat buff to Brian's defense because it felt diminished as the run went on. Will-O-Wisps, Red Rose Knights, and Pinheads were still very scary and well into 2-shot range, however, I did almost zero defense grinding.
1a. Guilty/Mammon are no longer strong vs everything. Rocks do ~150 damage each to them now. Both died in less than 10 turns, lol.
1b. Magic Barrier got a buff, for some reason. It now lasts 2-6+ turns. I had several 5 turn barriers.

2. Bosses now raise max MP upon their defeat.
Solvaring +5, Zelse +5, Nepty +10, Shilf +10, Fargo +10, Guilty +15, Beigis +15
Between this and the buffs/nerfs, there was almost zero need for items once Magic Barrier is unlocked. I had 90 mp at Mammon, lol.

3. Chests/NPC's give you different items
You know those first 3 dew drops in the monastery? TWO of them are now fresh bread. Pat gives you mint leaves. The shop in Dondoran gives you Honey Bread. I think you get like 6 fresh bread by Solvaring so he is a slam dunk now. There are quite a few differences throughout the game, but as I said in 2, items become completely useless (outside of a Magic Barrier miss) as time goes on so I didn't pay very close attention to this.

Minor changes to gameplay/any%
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4. Enemies can score critical hits against Brian. The damage shows up in large red numbers, and is most likely a flat 1.5x damage increase. Bosses can crit -- Fargo's ~42 damage fire punch crit me for 60. The crit rate is pretty low -- I'd hazard 1%-3%. This is slightly scary as it means there is less of a safety net vs bosses, but for the most part it wont matter. The biggest scare was Guilty's close range 78 damage when I had 170 HP, forcing me to heal after every hit in fear of a crit 2shot.

5. Brian's staff hit occasionally hits a second consecutive time, with the second staff hit appearing to do about .75x damage. Minor in any%, actually pretty huge in low%, lol. This triggered proportionally more often than receiving critical hits -- I would guess about 5% of melee attacks scored a second hit.

6. There is a small animation whenever picking up a spirit, slowing down the element selection process by a few frames.

Very minor/ineffectual to gameplay/cosmetic
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7. Enemy/Player movement bounds are no longer octagons. The movement range is noticeably more circular in shape, and is comprised of at least 30 sides.

8. Brian glows a certain color every time an attribute levels up. Red for HP, yellow for defense, blue for MP, green for agility.

9. There is a completely new ending sequence which shows various important NPC's ostensibly discussing Mammon's defeat. The credits are now a dramatic fly-by tour of all of the major towns and landmarks in the game. It's actually really cool and gave the game seem much more finished.

10. There is a custom point on the pause screen map which you can move around. It shows up on the compass as a large red dot. Does not work in dungeons.

11. Bookcases can be spoken to and presumably have a little bit of plot in them.

12. A new song plays while saving

13. Minor cosmetic change dump:
- Menu screens have a smoother scroll between them
- Elements flash when you level them up
- Elements maxed out at 50 experience a soft white glow on the HUD
- Changes to HP/MP show a gradual filling/emptying instead of being instant
- The HP/MP bar never disappears/auto-hides
- A small box displaying the name of the spell being cast appears on top of the screen
- While selecting spells, the elements designated to the spell's path show up on screen (ex: Magic Barrier shows up as "Rock Fire Wind")
- While selecting spells, there is a slight "unfurling" animation as you navigate through the menu

Unverified/Anecdotal
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- Encounter rates of specific enemies may have been tweaked. Two major, but possible coincidental changes: I encountered NOTICEABLY more Bats in the Dondoran Forest and Hot Lips in Glencoe Forest.

- Avalanche may be more evenly distributed. I had three whiff casts in the whole Any%.

Verdict
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EZtale Monsters, lol. If you get a chance you should pick up a copy. I had a LOT of fun playing through it -- after learning to love Quest 64 for all its faults, this was AWESOME. Despite no actual gameplay changes, the attribute tweaks and cosmetic changes made the game feel like a hugely improved experience. A speedrun of this game would actually take speed into account instead of figuring out how not to get shat on by Guilty 2 hours in. A++++++++++