VN Talk: Yrsa Major: An Elchemia Story

In which I talk (write) about visual novels from a storytelling perspective...

Platform: Windows (also on Mac, Linux, and Browser)
Release: 2021

Yrsa Major has been in my indie gaming backlog since it came out last year, largely because of its protagonist, Yrsa. She's a tall, broad-shouldered woman, who we're introduced to when she kills a daimon with a shovel in front of a bunch of quaking guards with actual weapons. On top of that, she's the "unimaginable" age of thirty, which is quite old for a female romantic lead, especially in otome.

Though we've had female protagonists before who are capable of handling themselves in the midst of combat, Yrsa is a bit unusual in that despite her size, she's not defined as a warrior. She's a carpenter who just happens to be good at killing monsters if push comes to shove. And not being defined by her strength and her appearance is very much what Yrsa Major is about, even though Yrsa herself is initially unaware of it.

Shortly after Yrsa's daimon slaying introduction, we get to see her in a tavern in the nearby town where people seem to be celebrating her victory, but she's spending most of her time arm-wrestling the men who want to challenge her. We quickly realize something is off when a drunkard challenges her and begins to tell her of all the sweet things he'll do for her when he wins, only for her to quickly defeat him without breaking a sweat. She then leaves as a bard begins to strike up an old song about a man who married a bear in a time when women were literally bears.

Yrsa doesn't complain or show that she's upset in any way, which tells us a lot about her.

She then does her errands in town as a nosy old woman follows her about in seeming gratitude for slaying the daimon. This brief interlude showcases what Yrsa is like and what matters to her, though not all of what matters to her. Yrsa cares deeply about her adopted home of Silvervale, a simple village where the mines have dried up and most of the menfolk have left in search of work.

When her errands conclude, Olayn, the old woman, offers to bond Yrsa with an ishim, an elemental spirit. This is a relatively new phenomenon in this world, usually one given to people of importance and status, but Olayn insists and Yrsa agrees, thinking that a strong earth elemental will be an asset in defending her village against daimons.

However, instead, she gets a water elemental, Uribel. Since our stoic Yrsa is a woman of her word, she accepts that Uribel is now her responsibility, even though she is disappointed that she didn't get the defender she hoped for. In fact, Uribel looks like a frail, older gentleman, and she's afraid he might end up being a burden rather than an asset. Though, Olayn does tell her that ishim can take whatever appearance they like, so the fact Uribel looks old does not mean he actually is.

The story is fairly low key for the initial half to two-thirds, the initial daimon attack notwithstanding. There are a couple near misses with bandits, and Uribel gets a crash course in how humanity does not have the shared sense of unity that his fellow elementals have on the plane of water, but despite that, it's pretty clear that Yrsa is more interested in getting by than being a hero. The important parts of the story are centered around her learning that Uribel is not as frail as he looks and he is not without use.

And to her credit, Yrsa does not suddenly start caring for him because he proves useful. She reminds herself of her promise to treat the summoned ishim as kin, and when she becomes aware of how she may be failing in this, she works to rectify it and see that he is not only comfortable, but happy.

Though it might not come as a surprise for those who play a lot of RPGs, Uribel learns to manipulate water in Yrsa's world, and in turn that includes blood, so he quickly finds a place in Silvervale as the village healer. He stays at Yrsa's home, leading to gossip about his relationship with her, which Yrsa tries to clarify without revealing that he's an ishim, but naturally fails.

Of course, as she spends time with him, and critically, has a disagreement with Uribel, she comes to realize that she has actually fallen for him.

Throughout the game we get fragments of a past event that Yrsa experienced, but it's not until after she and Uribel have made up that we really get her backstory. In short, she had a toxic relationship in the past where she tried to be more helpless, more ideally feminine, in order to please a man who ended up humiliating her in front of the entire village. Yrsa decided that being herself meant she would never find a romantic partner, but she wanted to be herself, which included pummeling the occasional monster to death, so she went about a mostly fulfilling life as a single woman.

But still… She did want someone. So when she had a chance to bond with an ishim, even though she said she wanted a defender of the village, what she actually wanted was someone who would love her. Uribel wanted to leave the plane of water for his own reasons, so he accepted her call and naturally he falls in love with her in return.

This is only a 2-3 hour game so there's not really much room for complication here. I love Yrsa's struggle to be a woman when being herself means she doesn't fit into the typical box society expects of one, and it's a joy seeing her realize that she can wear dresses and put on jewelry even if she's a burly lady who can kill daimons with shovels.

Uribel is not quite as interesting a character, since he is a fairly kind and devoted water elemental, and there's never any question that he will be anything other than supportive of Yrsa. Even when they have their sole fight, we understand why it happened and likely will side with Yrsa since her concern stems from the fact Uribel doesn't know her world like she (and by extension us) does.

My only real complaint is the pacing, because there were multiple points where the game legitimately could have ended, which is strange to say about a game so short!

At first I thought it was going to be the scene where Yrsa nearly gets killed trying to save Uribel from daimons. This is the scene where she realizes how much she cares about him, and he's using so much of his own energy to heal her that she's afraid he'll use up all his power and go back to the elemental plane of water where she'll never see him again.

It was a lovely, emotionally charged scene. Uribel stops short of draining himself completely when she pleads for him not to, and they pass out, to be found later by villagers. The whole passed out lovers thing after a traumatic confrontation (especially with all that surrounded by white imagery) is a common denouement signal.

But then the story continues on to the Harvest Festival. Okay. It was a bit weird that we kept going, but the festival was nice since this was the scene that addressed Yrsa's emotional baggage and why she's had so much trouble picturing herself ever finding a romantic partner. It also makes it clear that Uribel, despite not being human, does view her in a romantic fashion. They confess to each other, they kiss. Okay, the romance is wrapped up!

But we're still going. Now we need to deal with a daimon attack on the village. While this doesn't entirely come out of nowhere, seeing as the details about the bandits, the bait, and the daimons themselves have been planted beforehand, the mega-daimon does. It's like some unholy combination of multiple animals and what appears to be a child and nobody seems to freak out specifically about the last part. Was that something that just happens sometimes so it wasn't worth mentioning or was that a special event?

Until this point there wasn't much need to go into detail about what the daimons were, and the name's close enough to "demons" for the audience to get the picture, but suddenly now we realize there's a critical part of this monster that wants to be put out of its misery. And aside from that, after the monster is defeated, there's a whole summarized in a few screens subplot about corruption in the town from the start of the game, as explanation for how the monster attack came to Silvervale in the first place.

And it's not bad, there's still a lot of good material in this last leg of the game, but by this point I'd emotionally gone through two endings and the third felt tacked on since the journeys of our two protagonists had ended earlier in the game. Though they proclaim their love and desire to stand by each other while facing the daimon, it's not really anything they hadn't said already, which made these proclamations feel redundant.

I think if the game had ended after the Harvest Festival it would have had the strongest ending. It didn't really need the action sequence at the end, and I say this as a lover of action sequences.

That said, I enjoyed the game and it serves as a friendly lead-in to the dev's larger work, Heart Sigil Elchemia, which is set in the same world some twenty-plus years later. Heart Sigil is still in development, but if it's anything like Yrsa Major it will be worth a look when it's done.