Just dug that game back out again after getting so damn bored with Lock's Quest. Search didn't find a thread about it.
Ecolis is a Pikmin-like RTS with the big theme being saving the forest and fighting the polluters (a bit like Captain Planet) but I wouldn't call it edutainment unless the proper solution to pollution is to summon a bunch of magic squirrels to beat up the polluters.
You run around, sending your forest sprites to beat up things that you don't like and make sure your home tree doesn't die. It's mostly really easy, just spam units and you'll likely win. There's a bonus timer for every level, I suppose you can go for beating that time if you want an actual challenge. Or play it against a friend, there's single-cart MP but don't ask me how that works.
You have three basic types of sprites which can be turned into 4 different subspecies each. There's a separate raising mode where you can level them up or alter their stats with items you gather during missions. They also have a number and a temper. To make more sprites you need to plant matching trees during missions but the more of them you actually put into your team the thinner their experience points are spread and that lowers their level (the number you have is the maximum number you can summon in a mission at the same time, they're still replaceable). The temper is affected by semi-random events popping up, the sprites want to play with you and that shows some random event, you then can choose one of three options that will affect the temper differently. It's used to determine the autonomous behaviour of the sprites in battle, how much they run around when idle, how much they try to attack enemies and how much damage they will take before running away. Mix that however you like it.
The interface is a bit limited, like in Pikmin you have a character running around but you give orders with the stylus instead of throwing the sprites around. A problem is that even your gather and select all functions have a limited range around your character so it can get difficult to round up all the sprites you have fielded, especially if their temper makes them run around when idle which makes them spread very far across the map. The upside is that since you can only be in one place, giving orders in one area those stray sprites can end up fighting enemies on other parts of the map, saving you travel time. In one case I even had most of my sprites elsewhere autonomously fighting the boss while I was hanging back and dealing with his attacks to my home tree. One of your sprite types can airlift stuff but using them to airlift other sprites would take way too long to input, you'd have to give the orders one by one so you'll probably limit that to airlifting important things like your character or springboards. The individual sprite abilities rarely get used outside of the tree growing which is the equivalent of building things and also unlocks additional skills for your character if you do it enough (to a tedious degree).
What I don't like is how easily your character dies, there's no real consequence to that except being teleported back to the home tree but it's very annoying because it means running back to where the action is (or was if the sprites do all the fighting in the meantime). I suppose if I wasted hours of my life growing more trees with the ecolis dance I could grind up the health by increasing the greening percentage but I'm already way over the mission par times without growing more than 3-4 trees. You can't queue those things up and they keep your sprites busy for a while so growing many trees is tedious.
It's interesting how much auxiliary effort has gone into the game with local and online MP and even a level editor but the extremely low challenge kinda makes the game boring.
Topic: Eco Creatures/Ecolis (Read 1772 times)
