Elsie Review: An Unfortunately Underwhelming Rouge-Like.

Reviewed On: Nintendo Switch
Also Available On: PS5 and PC
Price: $19.99 USD (PC) / $24.99 USD (Consoles: PS5/Switch)
Developer: Knight Shift Games
Publisher: Playtonic Friends
Release Date: September 10th, 2024

Please Note: A review code was provided for this review but does not influence the opinions stated here in any way.

Elsie was originally announced back in 2022 and was on my radar for a while before the game went dark. Knight Shift Games is a brand new development team that crafted this title, and unfortunately it does show in some ways. The title is published by Playtonic Friends, which is the indie publishing team of Playtonic Games. I have loved a few of their titles from things like Yooka-Laylee and Lil Gator Game, and while not the best I though Demon Turf: Neon Splash was fairly good overall. I also have A Golf Journey in my backlog, but for now we are talking about their latest title published title… Elsie. Unfortunately, Elsie fell flat from my personal expectations in a lot of ways; however, there are solid roots that need to be refined in order to craft a more solid title. Why and where did it fall from my expectations? Well, read my review to find out.

So, to be quite honest, the story of this game is one of the better parts of the experience. Dr. Grey created a group of androids to prevent natural disasters, The Guardians. Unfortunately, something happened where they all disappeared. Elsie was created as one last android to help save everyone and to find out what happened with The Guardians. You learned that a virus corrupted them and made them turn evil. In order to save them, you must defeat them in battle and then can take them back to Dr. Grey to fix them. About midway through the story, there is a plot point that comes up about where the name Elsie comes from and who she actually is. It wasn’t the biggest plot twist I have seen this year, but it was one I didn’t see coming. Unfortunately, the way to find the guardians and progress the story is not described in any way. Each area of the game, a total of five, has two mini bosses that you have to defeat at least once each, and then the Guardian of the said area will appear and be able to be fought and saved if you win the fight. You have to fight in multiple runs. I thought the story was good, but it never blew me away compared to other games I have played this year.

So in terms of the gameplay, you are playing a rouge-like with unfortunately less than terrific features. You have your dash attack which can hit enemies and damage them if the timing is right. You also have a parry and counterattack system that is good as a whole. The timing can be adjusted in the settings menu, and I personally recommend adjusting it as the original timing is too tight. Then you have a beam attack that you don’t get invincibility for and couldn’t change whatsoever. I personally hated that we couldn’t change it in the game because it is not really good. Then you have a special attack that you could change from things like restoring energy, creating fireballs, and more. Lastly, you have your main gun attack that can shoot at enemies, create extra things like rockets or fireflies, and more that will help take down enemies. You have an attack stat, max HP, energy levels, and more that you have to balance in each run to get the best chance to win. Here is an example of the first boss that I took down in like 8 seconds because of my set-up I had. I feel like there should be a balance, but you can seriously do a lot of damage, maybe even too much at once.

Unfortunately, you have limited things to work with at first in the game. To get more items, features, weapons, abilities, and more you have to first find random blueprints from enemy drops for everything from weapons, healing stations, shops, and more. After you find the blueprints, you then will have to purchase them on top of that using one of the two different main currencies found in the game. I found that more of a grind for the player than it should be, especially when it is completely RNG for everything and there is no rime or reason for when or where the blueprints drop. On top of this, you can upgrade Elsie’s level in the hub world to unlock different chips that can be found and obtained in future runs to get more abilities, better attacks, and more. Unfortunately in the entire game, it tells you nothing regarding anything about the different aspects or how the unlock systems works in any way. The hub world has a lot to do after each run, including a cook, magician, inventor, and more that helps you in the game… once you find the characters in the different levels. Then you also have to unlock the locations through the blueprint systems. There are even more things in the game, but I am not going to spoil everything the game offers you, just like how there are many things the game will not tell you about.

One of the absolute highlights of the game for me personally comes down to the absolutely stunning art style of the game. The designs of the characters and world alike are both really good, and not just in the intro animation or dialogue scenes but also the pixel art of the characters. The enemy variety of the different bosses are all great with them all looking different than one another. Not just the bosses are great in terms of the visuals, but the regular enemies are also unique enough and look great. The pixel art may not be my favorite artistic style in gaming, but it definitely works well. Both docked and handheld mode looks great, but I personally played the game mostly in handheld mode because the OLED screen makes it even better than on the TV. It is a stunningly beautiful looking game with the wonderful art style, character designs, and overall visuals of the entire experience.

The overall audio design unfortunately is a bit of a mixed bag from my experience. I think the music in the game in the different worlds are varied and lively. The winter vibes from the tundra area to the more electronic sounds in the city area are good throughout. The sound effects from the guns to the special attacks has weight to them, and enemies attacks are also very clear when their ranged and physical attacks happen. The footprints, item pickups, bonfires, and movement sound effects are great as a whole throughout. Unfortunately, the voice acting from my experience was just okay at best. It never stood out to me and nothing is all that bad, just nothing is terrific in any way. Glad that there is some voice acting in the game, but it is just okay from my experience and I wish it was better.

I know the Switch is over 7 years old at this point, and is the weakest console on the market. I don’t buy much in the way of third parties and more intensive indies on it compared to one or two years ago, because of this. In terms of this game performance, at least on the Nintendo Switch, it is extremely unpolished and needs a bunch of work to make it smoother. I checked both on handheld mode and also docked mode, and there were massive performance issues regardless of the mode. There is a button to show the frames per second, and I think that is awesome. I saw that in settings and turned it on right at the beginning of my playthrough, and I am glad I did. Below is a video that I captured from the Switch regarding the overall performance. It does actually hit 60fps on occasion, but then a lot of time it does actually dip much lower, and this will affect overall feel of the game. If it was locked to 30fps, it would be an adjustment for players for sure, but it definitely wouldn’t have the slowdown and issues it does now that. To be honest, it hurts the overall enjoyment of the game when the performance of the game isn’t solid.

Alright, unfortunately the performance isn’t the only big bug or issue the game experiences. There are multiple other bugs and problems from a technical standpoint that I had encountered. The first of these are crashes. In my time of playing the game, I had 3 crashes! Now, that isn’t a giant number, but when you are in the middle, or even close to the end of a run, and the game crashes on you… yeah that is very bad. The fact you can’t get any of your progress back, it seriously sucks. Now crashes aren’t the only thing blocking your progress, sometimes the bosses will bug out. The below glitch happened to me twice during the same boss. I depleted the health bar without too much trouble, and then the boss just wouldn’t die so I needed to restart my run. There are other glitches that I encountered that blocked progress during runs like normal enemies glitching through the map so they could still shoot me, but I couldn’t hit them, “invisible” enemies that were attacking me that I couldn’t hit but could see an outline for, and more that also causes you to need to restart your run. In total, I restarted something like 9 runs for no reason other than glitches, bugs, and hard crashes… that’s more than the number of runs I died on.

I have begun to love rogue-likes more and more as I play them. Saying “one more run” really does turn into hours of playing if the game is good. Unfortunately, Elsie was not one of these games that I wanted to keep doing even more runs than I had to. Within the first hour of playing the game, I saw almost all of the worlds the game had to offer, and that is disappointing when you have to replay them a bunch of times. The story progression is not clear in any way of what you need to do to actually find the guardians; however, the story was actually good overall. I get not wanting to hold your hand, but when you are lost and not sure what to do, there should be a way to notify the player of a next objective instead of having to look online. The gameplay is overall good, but again is seriously lacking in terms of direction in the hub world or overall how progression works. The game took me between 6-8 hours to finish and roll credits, and it would have been less had I been given more clear instructions on everything the game offers. The visuals are great but the performance is absolutely lacking in quality control. The music and audio designs are good as a whole; however, the voice acting unfortunately just meh in all honesty. Progression blockers, crashes, bugs, and more just unfortunately make the experience more of a pain than a pleasure to play. I definitely expected more out of my time in Elsie. It isn’t a bad game, and definitely not the worst one I played this year, but there are better rouge-likes and action games that are available in the market that players should play first. It might be better on another platform, but I would stay away from the Switch version at this time.

Review Score: 6.5/10