So by sheer trial and error, I managed to figure out that you
can actually play the game (almost) entirely solo with just Elise. The Enchanted Forest's barriers aren't as well-constructed as I thought, and it's entirely possible to skip past Eligara and go right to the exit (
but don't ask me how, because it's really fucking inconsistent). It just has one major problem with it...
...
it's impossible to beat the game this way. The problem is, to beat the Dark Forest area, you need to get a dungeon key from the two brothers at the rear of the forest, and then go see the woman in the dungeon.
Problem is... the entire front area of the brothers' cavern(?) is surrounded by a cutscene trigger... and any time a cutscene triggers that doesn't have one of the requisite girls, i.e.: Eligara and/or Coralia, the game just moves to a black screen and softlocks—I even tried going up a mountain and dropping onto the door from above, but you
need the cutscene to trigger because the door doesn't actually function like a door. And even if you could somehow get past that, there's a lengthy cutscene afterward with the Dominatrix that requires all three girls, so
that would be a softlock, too. I even scoured the entire outer area of the Dark Forest for any sort of skip that could be performed, like finding the carriage that's supposed to load in after you finish with the Dominatrix... no such luck, because A) it's dark as shit; B) it's incredibly massive; and C) it's entirely possible that unused entities are stored under the map, making them completely inaccessible. So a "solo%" run is completely impossible, but you can at least get pretty damn far in the game.
I did, however, find a couple of neat secrets within the game:
- Outside of the Dark Forest, there's a replica of one of the earlier town areas (I think it's the beach area, but I can't be sure), but since it's in the Dark Forest, it looks creepy as fuck... and no, nothing's loaded in here, either.
- Some general trivia for you now: if you don't have the party member that can acquire certain spells (e.g.: Eligara for Stone / Earthquake, and Coralia for Storm), they just... belong to Elise now. Permanently. They still suck, but... it's an option?
- Finally, the AI for a couple of the monsters is bugged (or at least, it was for me, in which case you can disregard this). The Small and Large Snow Monsters have this weird quirk to them:
- The Small Snow Monsters will attack you just once, and then do nothing until you kill them. So... enjoy that free experience. It could be a nice way to grind up to higher levels.
- The Large Snow Monsters have a similar quirk, but I believe they stop attacking you after five strikes instead of just the one for their smaller variant... not that it matters, because they hit like a truck at the point you encounter them.