Games like Elohim Eternal make me glad that RPGmaker exists, allowing more creators to put their stories into the world in video game form.

Elohim Eternal takes a large amount of inspiration from Xenogears and Abrahamic tradition, with a sprinkling of other Egyptian-Mesopotamian mythology. The Xenogears influence is strong enough that I think of the game in many ways as Xenogears-lite, but not disparagingly so. Outside of the obvious facts that Elohim is largely a solo project and clocks in under 15 hours, it also feels much more modern and streamlined than Xenogears, allowing for a smoother play experience. For example, there are no random battles and enemies only respawn if you choose for them to do so. Furthermore, the heavy use of Abrahamic symbolism and historical elements give the game's world a very different feel from any JRPG I've played before.

The writing and characters are solid and kept me engaged and curious throughout the game. That said, I felt at some points that the themes were explored a bit too bluntly -- it could feel like the character was directly telling the player what they should take from events, rather than showing. Luckily, the game never felt preachy, just a bit clumsy in a few instances.

As mentioned, the game is full of modern conveniences, from non-respawing enemies, to auto-optimizing equipment (if desired), to easy access to fully healing between battles. Combat consists of determining an enemies elemental weakness, hitting them with the correct spell which then allows for timed button press for bonus damage, and using "divine mageia" as they charge up. The "divine mageia" allow for most of the interesting strategy having a wide array of buffs, debuffs, damage, and utility, all of which have some sort of cost (e.g. health points) outside of the divine cost to cast them. It's not my favorite JRPG battle system, but it's well done and holds up for the games somewhat short runtime.

Elohim Eternal is only the first game of a planned series. As with any solid first entry, the storya was self-contained enough to be satisfying, but left many questions about the broader mysteries of the world. I'm certainly interested in seeing where those mysteries go.