Elf Girl Sim Date

[rioka]

Found this in Download.com- uses Flash, RPGish - sounds like Thousand Arms. Screenshot looks decent. Haven't tried it yet. =P

[musical74]

I've played it before - IF this is the same one that's on newgrounds. It's pretty good, but it helps if you have knowledge of Lord Of The Rings, since that's what the bulk of the questions are about. It's fun as a diversion, for sure. Oh yeah, if a elfmaid is REALLY ticked off at you, wait a few days...she will be nice to you again =) It has a couple of minigames that don't seem to fit (at least, I couldn't find out why there were there except to waste time). All in all, it's a good game =).

[rioka]

Hmmm, sounds more promising than some of the mindless Flash dating sims on newgrounds.

LOTR huh? Makes sense. The map does look like a replica of middle earth now that I look at it more closely...

[Megaman Z]

yeah, it's better than all of klacid's (as far as dialouge (sp?) goes).

I've played it, cheated at it (hey, I get bored), beaten it... the usual, just without nudity.

[gekiganwing]

(Was that subject line too sarcastic? [Looks around.] Nah...)

Here's what I just posted on my journal about this game.

I was ready to write my 2005 year-end wrap-up with a line such as "At least in 2005 there weren't any 'ZOMG!' titles." Yes, I suspect Elf Girl Sim Date RPG is the sort of cheap Flash game that holds immature fans' interest for a few minutes before they move on to something else. (After all, even though I would summarize, say, Io Christmas Eve as "refreshingly short," it IS a short story, and some n00bs find that a baffling concept.) Even so... the first five minutes of the game weren't as awful as I'd feared.

The interface of Elf Girl seems to share the engine of the later Forkheads titles. The hero has hit points that decrease after every action, and therefore the player has to balance out actions so to increase stats, money, and relationships. Gift giving, mini-games, a time limit to add a little challenge... all of these were intriguing ideas in Forkheads' games. But as I've said several times, the potential of those fan games was obscured under bad characterization and even worse dialogue. Even as the gameplay improved, the writers apparently never imagined that good writing could help.

So I was surprised to find that Elf Girl's dialogue was... bland. It wasn't "ugh, make it stop" bad. Instead, none of the original characters said anything notable. Maybe that'll change. But boring dialogue is a big improvement over "we think we're funny" dialogue.

There were quite a few typos in just the first few minutes, but just from looking at the tips in the top left, it seems a writer spent at least a little time on this.

One of the character sprites is the title character from Cardcaptor Sakura. But if you can identify the female character with red hair, then you receive my official Hardcore Fan award.

One disappointment: the downloadable edition worked in Virtual PC very well, but it was an .exe file, so I couldn't use it in OS X.

So those're my thoughts for now. So says the Taiyaki Fan.
http://www.visualnovels.com