The story in Elland: The Crystal Wars is that you play as a pilot caught in an industrial war between two neighboring planets. Elland, the harsh desert planet is whose side you’re on. Elland produces star ships in the galaxy by using crystals and other resources found on its surface. The neighboring planet Mank is a stark contrast to Elland with its plentiful rainfall and lush landscapes. It too produces star ships in the galaxy and is also the largest manufacturer of star ships. Mank wants to take control of Elland and it is up to you to prevent that from happening.
Elland has you piloting a ship in the first-person perspective taking on missions on a harsh desert planet. Missions in the game have a rather wide range of tasks. You could be tasked with downing a number of enemies and destroying a number of enemy buildings to actually capture a number of enemies and buildings instead. There are escort missions as well as missions that will have you guarding friendly ships or installations. There is a town you can visit in between missions. This is presented in a menu form with selections to speak with locals to gather Intel on the upcoming mission or to purchase and sell resources to help aid you on your next mission.
Elland is pretty impressive for a GameBoy Advance game. Featuring 3D buildings and vehicles, it takes a page right out of the Crazy Taxis playbook. Both the building and vehicle models are rather large and detailed, which is impressive given the GBA platform. Vehicle movement which doubles as the camera is very smooth with very little to no performance issues. The only real issue comes when you rotate to spin yourself around. It’s then that it struggles in the slightest with things being a tad jittery.
The only real drawback to the game is how dull the environment is that you’re flying around in. With the only color outside of desert brown that you see is the color of your bullets as they go flying through the air, the environment just feels devoid of color. Though this is to be expected given that it’s a desert planet, an occasional oasis would have been nice to help give more color. Now, this may have not been possible given the potential limitations of the handheld. If the additional set pieces being added just to give the game more color meant it took a performance hit, I am more than happy to fly around in a barren brown landscape.
When comparing this game to the previous game mentioned, this game performs quite a bit better. Yes, this is a once cancelled game that was slated for release towards the end of the GBA lifecycle, but I think that it being cancelled made it a better game. What I mean by that is this, if it was released when it was supposed to, it would have likely suffered from performance issues as similar 3D games do on the GBA that was released during the handheld lifespan. Waiting until now, the developer and publisher are able to take full advantage of the GBA and push the handheld to its limits. Slowdown and pop-in objects don’t exist in this game because of the amount of dedication and optimization that went into this title.
The music found in a DUNE game is nothing less than utterly fantastic. So when it was announced that all references to DUNE were removed, I felt kinda worried that the music in the game would be rather dull and boring in comparison. However, I was pleasantly surprised that this is not to be the case here. The music is fantastic and really sets the tone for each mission. It makes the dog fights with enemies and dodging bullets from the ground units engaging and fun. The sound effects in the game are really good too with the gunfire and the sound it makes when you hit the enemy sound punchy and are very satisfying when you land a hit.
Elland the Crystal Wars was a game almost lost to time. I am very happy that we finally got this release after so long. The time at which this game saw a release helped to give it a much-needed polish. It could have been a buggy underperforming mess of a 3D shooter that would have been purchased just for the DUNE branding alone and it may have been one of those games that was bad, but still expensive due to low sales figures. Instead what we have here is a wonderfully crafted first-person shooter on the GBA that performs superbly well. If you have a GBA and you’re looking for an excellent first-person shooter, you owe it to yourself to pick up this fantastic game.
Disclaimer: Physical copies featured in this article were provided by the publisher for purposes of this review. Purchase links for the games can be found here.