Elona Introduction for Tourists

Elona is a unique mixture of JRPG, Roguelike and fantasy life simulation. If one or more of those categories catch your fancy, you ought to give Elona a try. It's probably the closest game experience to a fantasy parody/isekai anime, that provides you with random wackiness but also comfy slice of life and intense dungeon crawling.

The last official release of Elona was in 2010, but after the original creator Noa stopped development, the Elona community continued developing various Elona variants. The two main variant families that are still active to this day (AD 2024) are Omake and ElonaPlus. Omake is the most popular variant family of the Japanese Elona community, while ElonaPlus and its custom English translation variants are most popular outside of Japan.

All these variants can make it overwhelming for new players and many variants are based on each other, making it hard to track all the changes, but in short, the Omake family enhances the existing vanilla experience while ElonaPlus diverges from it and adds new gameplay mechanics, content and an unofficial continuation of the main story.

When it comes to the vanilla experience, the last official 1.22 release of Elona has some remaining bugs and an incomplete English translation where all the story cutscenes are missing. 1.22 also features unfinished content with new empty continents, so some people prefer the more stable 1.16 that focuses on North Tyris. If you're interested in trying the vanilla version, I recommend my Elona 1.16 Cutscenes variant, which includes all the cutscene translations by AnnaBanana.

If you don't mind some enhancements to the vanilla experience and a slew of new late game content, then the Omake variant Elona oom Ex Sukutu Edition STep Nasuko Custom (shortened as oomSESTepNC or Elona NC), might be for you. It adds many bug fixes and enhancements like NPC attack animations, damage popups, higher res NPC portrait support, speech bubbles for NPCs, trophies and titles, new classes, a new playable race, new feats, new gods, new quests, custom spells, custom pet AI, a bestiary system, NPC factions, NPC adventurer parties and much more. NC also includes the English translations for the story cutscenes and has rudimentary English support by default. The only problem with NC is that the installation process is very cumbersome, especially if you want full English support and the faulty English installation instructions floating around the Internet doesn't help, which is why I created an Elona NC EasyEnglishSetup pack!

ElonaPlus is for those who mainly want more story, items and enemies but don't mind the new gameplay mechanics and tweaks like thirst (with peeing included?!), stamina loss from regular combat, chain attacks, savescumming penalties and many fixes for gameplay exploits. It also has enhancements like pet evolution, necromancy and a new god of wealth. ElonaPlus has by default poor English support, but the custom variants fixes this and also adds tweaks on their own like custom AI support and English story cutscene translations. ElonaPlusCustom-GX is the current active custom variant which adds higher resolution support and allows you to tweak many of the new features added in ElonaPlus. The new rendering tweaks can cause slowdown on older systems though.

There are many other variants with some interesting features like Omake MMA that adds custom world modding, but these sadly have no English support.

Finally you might want to grab a graphical mod that improve the somewhat subpar presentation of the original. You can use my Elona Overhauled Aesthetics (ELOA) mod if you play 1.16 or Elona Omake Overhauled Aesthetics (ELOOA) for Elona NC or other Omake variants. The mods aim to improve the originals without deviating too much. The major new feature is player sprites for all races that is compatible with the equipment and riding graphics. No more mutants or snails looking like humans!

Summary

Play Elona 1.16 Cutscenes if you want the vanilla experience Noa intended, Elona NC if you want bugfixes, quality of life features and an overhauled vanilla experience or ElonaPlus/Custom-GX if you want more story, items, enemies, new gameplay mechanics and rebalancing.

Official:
- Elona

Variants:
- Elona 1.16 Cutscenes [Vanilla with translations]
- Elona NC [Overhauled vanilla]
- Elona NC EasyEnglishSetup [Required files and translations]
- ElonaPlus [New game plus]
- ElonaPlusCustom-GX [ElonaPlus translation and tweaks]

Mods:
- ELOA [Overhauled graphics for 1.16]
- ELOOA [Overhauled graphics for Omake variants]

Elona Introduction for Tourists

Summary

Links