Elminage Gothic

It's much better than what the reviews here would lead you to believe. Are the beginning hours a slog? Yep, but keep going. Do stats sometimes go down when you level up? Yeah, but the curve fixes it (savescumming is a noob trap). Are some encounters brutally unfair? Yeah, expect party wipes and keep a B-Team prepared so you're not sending them on a suicide mission. With that all being said Elminage must be enjoyed by acknowledging the game will be unfair to you and it's your job to throw as much unfair ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ back at the game as you can possibly dream up. Oh, and the game lets you capture every monster in the game with the summoner class and everyone knows that makes it a 10/10...

If you're curious about whether to purchase Elminage Gothic, the very first question is whether or not you like Wizardry style dungeon crawlers. If you don't know what that is, I strongly recommend playing the updated version of Wizardry first to see if you like that style of game, because Elminage Gothic is a longer and less forgiving version of that. With that out of the way, there's a lot to love here and a fair amount to criticise. Beginning with the positives, since this is a positive review, the game is absolutely massive and sells for a ridiculous price when on offer. The main game alone delivers you 40-50 floors of content with hundreds of items and monsters, and on completing that you then get a bonus 3 dungeons that add another 30 floors to play with. The game is also super atmospheric. A lot of care has been given to the crafting of the dungeons, and they've achieved a lot with the simple 30 by 30 grid. These aren't just patterns of corridors that all neatly fit together. Caves feel like caves, with random shaped chambers interspersed between windy corridors. There's a tree where you travel in rings as you ascend it, or descend into a star of root like passages when y…

If you're curious about classical dungeon crawlers, i.e. wizardries heritage, this is a refined example. Not modern, but refined. This is Wizardry 10 if wizardry kept patterning itself after 1-5 onwards into the future. A glorious dungeon crawling experience, once you get past the first few dungeons (they are a touch boring), and the somewhat clunky UI (with some key reassignment, its not that bad).

Damn. I finished it.

Elminage Gothic is an unapologetically hardcore dungeon crawler that fully embraces the brutal design philosophy of classic RPGs from the Wizardry era. It is a game built for players who enjoy punishment, experimentation, and extremely deep party-building systems rather than cinematic storytelling or modern convenience. From the moment the adventure begins, the game makes it clear that survival will require patience, preparation, and careful strategy. Every dungeon feels dangerous, every enemy encounter carries risk, and every decision made during character creation can have lasting consequences for the rest of the journey. The game begins with the creation of an entire party made up of multiple races and sixteen different classes, including Fighters, Priests, Thieves, Mages, Hunters, Summoners, Valkyries, and many others. Character creation alone demonstrates just how complex the systems are because every class, race, and stat distribution meaningfully affects long-term progression. Unlike modern RPGs that encourage casual experimentation, Elminage Gothic expects players to think carefully about how their party functions together before entering its deadly labyrinths. Exploratio…

The game is really frustrating.... But ENJOYABLE The character portraits have to be the ugliest in any dungeon crawler game! :)