Title: ELLE
Original Title: エル
Developer: Elf
Release Date: 1991-06-23
Summary: Postnuclear world last survivors dome city. "Black Widow" organization is trying to obstruct plans for human survival while anti-terror organization along with lady sniper Elle oppose them.
VNDB Link: https://vndb.org/v2293
Video playthrough: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLENAECnNmAq_KMeaBzd3g0HXL2znhn-eQ
Game Type: Point and click adventure visual novel
Story Length: 7 hours.
Complete Story Clearing Difficulty: Easy!
Comments of Difficulty: One-way road. The worst thing that can happen is that you can miss optional H-scene or couple CG.
Character Design Rating: 9/10.
Story Rating: 10/10.
Protagonist Rating: 10/10
Game Quality: 10/10
Overall Rating: 10/10
Rating Comments: I did not really expect this work to surpass De-Ja. But it actually did! Could not stop till finished it in one sitting. I can not give excellent mark to Characters since it's an adventure story and there's little time to crack complex characters. But apart of that I loved every second of it. Point and Click is much more fun than Interactive Adventure choices. There is much less effort needed to capture flags to progress story compared to De-Ja, mostly because you don't need to think/look/investigate etc - story progresses just by talking and checking different locations for new stuff.
Structure: Game is one piece so it was difficult to say how much progress was left. Almost at the very end I was still sure that there was still large amount of story ahead since there were still two locations closed - but - BAM - unexpected stuff showed up and story shortly ended.
Story: First things first. I've NO idea what girl is depicted on game poster. The only blonde girl in the game was secretary side-character. That's not fun making a poster out of non-existing character. And there is zero trace of game's alias title - L-Elle.
Story felt a bit shorter than De-Ja. I can't avoid spoilers although promise not to spoiler heavily about the ending. So you join a unit of snipers to investigate recent abductions of humans by organization Black Widow and their leader Gimmick. "Sniper" is just a cool title, all you have is hand stun-gun with volume ranging from light stun to lethal shot. So five of them are of low ranks and their officer is of S rank. You actually are of SS rank but you can't reveal that so it's blank rank and you're subordinate of a different intelligence body. One of lower rank snipers is girl Elle who takes you on a tour around Media center and the city and then leaves alone. First you encounter a girl sexually assaulted by two Black Widow members, then as story progresses there are two more sexual assaults that you prevent right in the media center, the base of sniper organization. The attackers have bombs explode on arrest. Then one by one fellow sniper team members start to die just after they approach the mystery of Gimmick identity. Their bodies are gravely destructed, partly dismembered with all entrails out. Eventually Elle joins you as an investigation partner and together you eventually manage to reveal the secret of Gimmick. Then Ex Machina happens and everything ends in the spirit of Matrix.
Characters summary: Characters are all depicted very lively. It's a brutal man world story and males advance the story while girls here are just service staff : waitress, receptionist, nurse, pop-idol, tv drama star. They have quite episodic roles and involve a single H-scene each (Chris actually has one and a half since you save her from street gangsters in quite an intriguing state). So Elle is the only heroine here.
Elle: El Mines is a sniper division member. Right from the start she marks you as a pervert and you by chance come to the same place together following the same lead and find the body of first fellow sniper. After that She feels responsible and volunteers to join you to find Gimmick. She's quite a typical Elf main heroine very similar to Gachako from De-Ja. Loud voice, constant use of "ne, ne" , emotional behavior. Just like in Lipstick ADV and De-Ja written by Hiruda before, the most fun stuff happens when she follows you to well-known locations and comments on everything and quarrels with every female around.
Protagonist: Joe Takanaka is the default name, but actually you get to insert your own name just as game starts. Again, very similar to De-Ja, protagonist is one hell of a pervert. Whenever he sees something with a skirt, he can't stand but to try to grab it, to lick it, to kiss it and to devour it with his eyes, of course.
Sexual Content: Low. But freaking funny! There are five sexual assaults made throughout the game by gangsters and in four of them you actually join the assaulters! One superfun scene is of Section chief who we found guilty in murder. So he takes his secretary as a hostage stripping her while threatening her with a knife. We don't have a good angle to shoot him so we just join him to harass her together. The fun part is that he cries : stop right now, it's my secretary, what are you doing to my subordinate. Since it's point and click adventure, you can't skip scenes but must gradually kiss/touch/lick etc, but the good stuff is that H-scenes give you a new lead by the end of it, so it's not just a senseless act, but a plot move.
Affection for the Characters: High. Every male characters has strong individuality and you won't be able to forget them. Every female character is very cute and fun in her own way.
CG Score: 10/10. There aren't too many CG here, but I just love Elf CG even H-CG and guro ones. Special word should be given about animations. There are hundreds of 3d animations in the game. Most of objects grow legs and other parts and do weird things on clicking. Very fun stuff. Really. Every second object on a screen. Another great feature is short videos in most important plot moments. They are of great quality and they make you forget that you're playing a visual novel game. It's totally like anime in those scenes.
Sound Score: There are some 20 compositions and most of them were so-so, just to break the silence. I have not remembered any brilliant ones, but it probably due to the fact that all the multiple animated scenes have their own sound, not the usual compositions. But I never once got tired of any track and never ever felt like one track was looping for too long. So 8/10 it is.
Addictiveness: I'm hopelessly addicted to early Elf works now. And ELLE is awesome mostly because of point-and-click style. Now it's really interactive experience and you really feel like playing, not clicking every possible variant in each location over and over. Just talk and walk.
Humor: Yes! I'm distinguishing a special column for humor here. Game treats everything unseriously. Just look at this picture. Nurse whipping patient to make him drink medicine properly. One guy hanging on a rope. Another one in speed wheel chair. 3rd one smells a pile of poo. Next pair are having sex. Next to them is a nurse who's masturbating with a sofa. To the right is the guy who holds his own eye. Just below is the guy with his head in his hands. This nice grandpa in lower right corner has a dick showing up from his head and cumming. Every object is clickable and everything produces fantastic commentaries and/or animations. That no restraint humor is the best!
Technical Difficulties: Game is based on fullscreen Direct-media and DirectX so it basically freezes on Alt-Tab, but as soon as I tried to run it in window with DXWind, it was perfect solution.
Conclusion: Game that I'll never be able to forget. Every piece that I like came together and produced pervert protagonist comedy adventure story in sci-fi setting with a single intriguing story-line and great shock in the end. It's the first game that I've played that I liked without any but's.
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