Dsiware Review; Clash of Elementalists

Elementally Simple

Clash of Elementalists is a 3rd person arena brawler featuring four anime girls with massive weapons and magic, intent on smashing each other to bits. Think Soul Calibur, with a bit less weapons and a bit more magic. Despite not being able to find a prologue anywhere, I managed to dig out an introduction from inside the "Help" bar on the menu;

"'Elementalists are battling all around the world..."

"Every Elementalist has a look-alike out there..."

With rumours such as these ringing in their ears, many young adepts of Elementalism

--some to protect the peace, others to satiate curiosity, but each for their own reasons--

flew to the battlefield.'

This is as far as the storyline goes, but do not fret, for this is not needed or even necessary within the actual game. When booting up the game, you are faced with a simple menu and looping unnecessarily loud music that gets annoying after not too long. The four game modes on offer are; Arcade Mode, Free Battle Mode, Versus Mode and Training Mode.

There are four characters on offer each with their own element; Celcius, Farenheit, Biot and Mole. These follow their respective elements of fire, water, earth and air and have cosmetically suited environments in which you battle them.

Arcade mode is the real meat of the game and this only lasts about 15 minutes, as you defeat the four characters. You can choose what round to start on, how long each bout lasts and AI difficulty.

The controls use L and R to shoot the Wide attack and the Normal attack respectively, while pressing both launches a power attack.

Free battle and Training have obvious enough motives with a few differing customization options setting them apart, while Versus gives you the option to play locally against a friend  who also owns the game.

The action takes place on the bottom screen and the game itself has beautiful player graphics but a questionably empty arena. However, when actually playing, you welcome this choice. The frame rate is also great and overall, visuals are completely on-par.

 The inherent problem is the camera, which seems to not be able to focus on the enemy character for long and which can only be rectified by incessant jumping, but even this is not perfect, for the simple reason that this also launches you into the air. There is also a method involving turning using A, but this is flawed to the core and even worse than jumping.

The control scheme is the same for Melee attacks, as when you are (a rare case) in proximity to your opponent these significantly more powerful attacks kick in. This control scheme can be slowly learnt, but it can never be quite mastered to a satisfactory level unfortunately

The low-down

This is a lovely looking and playing game with a slight lack of content and unlockables and an awful camera. This is a lovely way to kill some time on the bus. Not as much as I would've like for nearly £5.

Activity Log at time of review: 2 1/2 hours total played. 15 total plays with an average playtime of 10 minutes.

6.5/10- A good game, but with a bad camera