Elemental Powers / Video Games

Elemental Powers in video games.

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• AdventureQuest and DragonFable feature eight elements in general: Earth/Nature, Fire, Wind, Water, Energy, Ice, Light, and Darkness. DragonFable's main storyline also revolves around eight elemental orbs, each one with one of those respective elements. It also throws in a ninth element, called Void, which is drawn from a magical realm of the same name.
• In addition to all the elements that both AdventureQuest and DragonFable feature, AdventureQuest Worlds throws in a new tenth elemental in the form of Chaos, which is represented by purple Chaos tentacles and a purple eye. Chaos has the power to chaorrupt (short for chaos corrupt) objects and beings, sapping them of their sanity and giving them the power to chaorrupt others. It is controlled by the Big Bad, Drakath, and his 13 Lords of Chaos.
• After Armageddon Gaiden: Each one of the five main characters has control of a specific element of magic. Radune is Wind (which includes lightning), Jokos is Fire, Dhalzam is Earth, Freya is Water (including ice), and Loperus is Nothingness.
• Anvil of Dawn has seven schools of magic: the usual four, plus Lightning, Flesh, and Void.
• All over the place in Arcana Heart, with each of the Arcana representing a particular element — fire, water, earth, wind, lightning, and yes...even "heart" (it's more dangerous than it sounds...Take Our Word for It). Each of the girls has their particular preference, but the player can use whatever Arcana they want when selecting a character.
• Armageddon (MUD) has six kinds of elementalists, all getting an in-universe name:
  • Vivaduans are the game's resident water mages, whose spells focus on healing and restoration.
  • Rukkians use the earth element's powers, and are said to have spells good at protecting people.
  • Whirans control the element of air, and use magicks useful for transportation and stealth.
  • Krathi can channel the powers of fire, which is used mostly to deal death and destroy.
  • Drovians are those mages who use the shadow element, and are described as a secretive, elusive lot.
  • Elkrosians use both energy and electricity in the spells they cast, with spells focused on great bursts of force.
  • Nilazi deserve mention for not controlling an actual element, but more a pseudo-element that is anathema to all the other magickers' powers.
• Baten Kaitos has six elements, which oppose each other in pairs. The pairs are Fire and Water, Light and Darkness, and Wind and Chronos (a.k.a. Time).
• Battle High is a Fighting Game where all characters have some sort of elemental power. The neat thing is, every character uses their powers differently, so no two characters fight alike, even if they have the same element.
• Berserk Boy has five Berserk orbs, each one with their own unique element.
  • Lightning Justice
  • Flame Drill
  • Ice Kunai
  • Soaring Wind
  • Mine Buster
• Blasphemous II has a downplayed example. The game's three weapons are all Elemental Weapons, but the player can also find wooden figures called Altarpieces, some combinations of which either alter the elemental damage of a specific weapon or otherwise grant the Penitent One unique abilities.
  • Equipping the Punished One and Tempest altarpieces causes the Ruego al Alba to do Lightning damage instead of Mystic damage when Blood Pact is activated..
  • Equipping the Veteran One and Guide altarpieces causes Verdadera Destreza to imbue Sarmiento & Centella with Mystic damage instead of Lightning damage.
  • Equipping the Anointed One and Alchemist altarpieces makes Veredicto do Miasma damage instead of Fire damage.
  • Equipping the Veteran One and the Tempest altarpeices means that each strike with Sarmiento & Cantella unleashes Lightning that damages nearby enemies.
  • Equipping the Pillager and the Tempest causes the Penitent One to unleash lightning bolts whenever they dodge, whilst the Pillager and the Alchemist combo makes them unleash a barrage of thorns.
  • Equpping the Partisan and the Alchemist causes the Penitent One to unleash a cloud of poisonous miasma when they block a strike.
  • Equipping the Trifon and the Alchemist causes enemies who strike the Penitent One to take miasma damage.
• Bloodline Champions has quite a few. The Guardian's powers seem to be of the holy nature, especially with them being a Church Militant. The Inhibitor is a Church Militant as well, but their powers seem to have an arcane theme and appearance to them. The Glutton's magic is stated to be earth magic. The Stalker's powers aren't stated within their background, but has a darkness look and naming to it. The Seeker can use fire, ice and lightning on their arrows with an ultimate in the past that was called Elemental Fusion (later changed to a different ultimate called Marksmanship). The Harbinger has darkness powers. The Thorn has twisted plants to use them as abilities. The Herald of Insight is a Time Master. The Psychopomp's powers are of soul and spirit. While not mentioned in their background, the Nomad has wind powers. The Igniter burns stuff. The Astronomer seems to be able to Light 'em Up, but subverts it — their abilities are actually due to their scientific tools.
• Boktai gives you access to earth, fire, water, and wind type elements each with their own properties. Earth revives plants, fire melts ice and burns wood, water extinguishes flames, and wind smashes rocks. You also get solar as the default attack, lunar which expends no energy but inflicts no damage, and dark which is reserved for the New Game Plus. It only gets more complicated in the sequels.
• Brave Frontier has six: Fire, Water Earth, Thunder, Light and Dark. Each summons can be of one element and has a simple advantage and disadvantage to one or two others.
• Breath of Fire IV: Nina uses wind, Cray uses earth, Scias uses water, and Ursula uses fire. There are, however, two more characters in the party, with Ershin getting the most powerful spells of all elements but have little mana to use them regularly, and Ryu's dragon forms focusing on fire but also having access to wind and earth.
• Brütal Legend, set in a Heavy Metal world, features an appropriate selection of four elements: Metal, Noise, Blood, and Fire (which are actually the four elements that made up Ormagöden before his death). Although "magic" attacks in the game are not directly associated with them, they all fall into one element in one way or another.
• Bug Fables: Elemental powers are the more common forms of magic in the setting. Main character Leif has ice magic, along with Roach constructs in freezing areas. Other Roach constructs can use sand, electricity, and poison. The Wasp King has fire magic, which appears to be rarer than the other known elements and is significantly more deadly.
• While the Castlevania series generally shies away from this, Castlevania: Circle of the Moon uses as the basis for their magic system ten elements, represented by cards:
  • Salamander: Fire
  • Serpent: Water and Ice combined
  • Mandragoras: Plant
  • Golem: Earth
  • Cockatrice: Stone
  • Manticore: Poison
  • Griffin: Wind
  • Thunderbird: Lightning
  • Unicorn: Light
  • Black Dog: Dark
    • While some enemy varieties(ie. demons) have representatives for a few of these elements, the Armor enemies have (at least) one for each.
• Child of Light:
  • Fire is strong against Earth creatures.
  • Water/Ice is strong against Fire.
  • Lightning is strong against Water.
  • Light is strong against Dark creatures, and no enemies are resistant to it.
• Chrono Trigger has the four elements of Fire, Water, Lightning, and Shadow. Interestingly, even though Robo's laser attacks are all based on technology instead of magic, they are considered "Shadow". This makes more sense in the remake, where Lightning and Shadow are clarified to be Light/Purity and Shadow/Impurity. Hence, an imperfect energy attack generated by techonology by a being without the ability to cast magic naturally is quite impure. Lightning is just the traditional manafestation of the divine in many cultures.
• City of Heroes has multiple powersets for using many elements for ranged and melee attacks, defensive armors, controls, and buffs and debuffs. Elements available include Fire, Wind (Storm), Electricity, Ice, Darkness, Energy, and one of the few heroic examples of Radiation, used by one unambiguously heroic character.
• The Denpa Men has eight different elements: Fire, Ice, Wind, Earth, Electricity, Water, Light, and Darkness. Magic antennas correspond to these elements (as well as the Denpa Men's body colors). All but Darkness are common, but to make up for it, Dark is an extremely powerful element offensively. Very few enemies resist Dark-type attacks, and many are outright weak to them.
  • Some gear you can give your Denpa Man will change the element of its physical attack (normally typeless). For example, a pair of Shock Gloves will give your Denpa Man more physical strength AND an Electric-type physical attack.
  • In The Denpa Men 3: The Rise of Digitoll, there are dual-type magic antennas. Under very specific circumstances, a Denpa Man's party-wide magic antenna can evolve into a different antenna with a different name and design, an extra element, and more power.
• In Destiny, magic is divided into two categories — Light and Darkness — based which of those two fields one draws power from. Both types manifest in three elemental forms; Light comes in Solar (Fire), Arc (Electricity), and Void, while Darkness comes in Stasis (Ice), Strand (Soul), and a yet to be revealed third. There are other elements mentioned in the lore, but these are the ones that the Guardians have learned to use so far. It's later elaborated that the difference between the two categories is that Light embodies physical, material phenomena, while Darkness embodies more abstract and psychic concepts. Both are rather more esoteric than typical for this trope and it's noted that the elemental "spells" are really more like manifestations of complex fundamental forces; Solar, for instance, is really more like Entropy magic while Stasis is ice magic because that represents the enforcement of order, control, and, well, stasis.
• In the Devil May Cry series, elements are all over the place with the Devil Arms (the weapon and its original demon form otherwise), ranging from fire, to wind, to ice, to thunder and lightning, or to light. Some entities even use a combination of these elements, such as Agni & Rudra in Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening who can channel fire or wind respectively, or both when the other dies. Also, many of the demons themselves are often stated to use determinated elements in order to appear in a solid form, while the others can wield specific elements as parts of their attacks and abilities.
• Diablo II only uses Fire, Cold and Lightning. Fire deal the most consistent damage, ice is generally useful due to its incapacitating properties while lightning has the potentially highest but also the potentially lowest damage. Sorceresses have a separate skill tree for each though lightning contains some strange choices as well, like teleportation (fire only has one that increases mana regeneration). All three elements have separate resistance values; poison (mastered by Necromancers) does as well but in terms of gameplay mechanics, it's not considered to be elemental damage. Also, in terms of gameplay mechanics, elemental and magical damage are considered two separate things ie. magical immunity won't block elemental attacks and vice versa.
  • Some monsters have the "Spectral Hit" attribute that gives each of their attacks random elemental damage. Additionally, some are elementally enchanted, giving them increased resistance to that particular element as well as special powers:
    • Fire: fire damage with each attack, explodes when killed.
    • Cold: cold damage with each attack, casts a Frost Nova when killed.
    • Lightning: lightning damage with each attack, casts Charged Bolt when hit. Unpatched versions can combine this with Multi-Shot, creating a Game-Breaker combo.
  • Diablo III, meanwhile, has a Wizard class who uses Fire, Ice, Lightning but also the Time and Arcane elements. Their non-appearance before now is justified as being because the use of either element is seen as a Dangerous Forbidden Technique by the Mage-Clans.
    • The other classes can arguably stray into Elemental Powers territory as well, most notably the Crusader and the Witch Doctor, who have a strong affinity for holy and poison, respectively.
• Dinosaur King divides certain types of dinosaurs along elemental lines. In order of opposition, carnosaurs are fire, smaller theropods are wind, large ornithopods are grass, stegosaurs, nodosaurs, and ankylosaurs are earth, ceratopsians are lightning, and sauropods and spinosaurs are water. There is also Secret, which has no definite dinosaur type and no elemental weakness. Dinosaurs and other Mesozoic reptiles obtained through move cards are usually neutral, though there are exceptions.
• Disgaea has three elements: Fire, Ice, and Wind. All units resist one element and is weak to another. There's a fourth element called Star, which is the neutral element. Nothing is weak against it, and nothing resists it... until Disgaea 5 added Star as an tracked affinity, with some units either having a resistance or a weakness to it.
• Dragon Age
  • In Dragon Age II, elements aren't considered polar opposites, but allied. Learning Fire and Ice together, or Earth and Lightning (a more spectacular manifestation of Air) improves mastery of both. There's also the Spirit element, and the Force school amplifies the side effects of all elements (Fire burns, Ice freezes, Earth knocks down and Lightning stuns.)
  • Dragon Age: Inquisition makes Fire and Ice separate skill trees, and gives Lightning (Storm) a tree to itself, removing Earth altogether.
• Dragon City has sixteen elements: Terra, Flame, Sea, Nature, Electric, Ice, Metal, Dark, Light, War, Pure, Legend, Primal, Wind and Time. Each element has a habitat. A dragon can have a maximum of four elements and can be placed in one of the habitats corresponding to an element it has. There are also six Ancient Elements found in the Ancient World: Happy, Chaos, Magic, Soul, Beauty and Dream. They only have an effect against each other.
• The Dragon Quest series has most of the basic elements but divides them up based on character class or type. Wizards only get fire and ice magics, while clerics get wind and dark magics. The hero is associated with lightning. In fact, only the hero and the hero class can learn lightning magic. Of the standard four elements earth is extremely uncommon. Offensive light magic as a counter to dark is also pretty rare though the role is partially taken up by the lightning element.
• The elements Fire, Water, Air and Earth appear in the game Dragon Rage, though only Ceal Cyndar and General Mandek can use them all.
• Drakengard: While only one character has actual powers, the three side characters all have pact partners associated with a classical element: Leonard's is a sylph (air), Sere is a golem (earth, though the original creature was a gnome), and Arioch has Salamander and Undine (fire and water, used as a Yin-Yang Bomb).
• Drakensang: In Drakensang 2: Phileasson's Secret, at one point you have to learn and use the powers of the six elven elements of Tie'Shianna, first in a series of room to complete a labyrinth, and then in a boss battle. The elements (and respective power ups) are:
  • Fire: Burns through your veins, increasing your might and boosting your attack.
  • Air: The winds of freedom storms the enemies, unleashing allies on them.
  • Ice: Freezes the blood of your enemies, injuring them.
  • Earth: Embraces you with the warmth of life, covering the battlefield with a healing aura.
  • Water: The everchanging element breaks through the defense of your foes.
  • Stone: The might of stone will stop your enemies (or, in the boss battle, prevent him from summoning reinforcements).
• The Monk class in Dungeons & Dragons Online come stock with elemental attacks in Air, Fire, Earth, and Water, which adds electric, fire, acid and cold damage to attacks, respectively. Combining or repeating some attacks yield special results, such as shooting flames from your hand. Offensive/defense stances based on the elements are included, too. Earth gives best defense, Fire gives best strength to damage, Wind generates the fastest and most prolific attacks, and Water generates the best offensive/defensive balance. A Void attack is optionally available, which, in its ultimate form, sends a foe out of existence. Special attacks that generate light, force and negative energy damage make the class nearly a Trope Codifier, were it not for the online game's relative youth.
  • Elemental damage powers are common in the game. Acid, cold, lightning, and fire attacks are associated with earth, water, air, and (of course) fire, respectively. There are also Sonic and Force attacks, which are treated like the other "energy" attacks but are not associated with an element.
• Dungeons of Dredmor, given its very silly place on the Sliding Scale of Seriousness Versus Silliness, has some rather odd damage types, though even its normal elements are oddly named:
  • Conflagratory: Fire. The entire Promethean Magic school focuses on spells to burn everything, though this isn't always a good thing.
  • Hyperborean: Ice.
  • Voltaic: Lightning. Often found with Viking Wizardry, courtesy of Thor.
  • Toxic: Self-explanatory, and one of Fleshsmithing's two main ways of hurting things.
  • Righteous: Sometimes Light, sometimes Holy. Astrology uses a lot of it, as does demonology, at first.
  • Necromantic: Self-explanatory. Necronomiconomics loves this damage type, and you'll be facing it a lot.
  • Acidic: Self-explanatory
  • Putrefying: The other part of Fleshsmithing's damage output, rots the flesh off the target. Often found with, but otherwise unrelated to, necromantic damage.
  • Transmutative: Attacks like turning chunks of your opponent into gold coins or just plain re-arranging their atoms. Combines elements of radiation and Pure Energy. Mathemagic loves this one, and it's common among magical staves as well.
  • Aethereal: Magic from the stars, one of the primary damage types dealt by Astrology.
  • Asphyxiative: Anything you risk choking to death on.
  • Existential: Sort-of psychic, sort of darkness, and rarely seen outside of Emomancy.
• In Earth and Sky, Austin and Emily wear superpower-granting suits with elemental themes: the earthsuit gives Austin super-strength, damage resistance, and the ability to leap great distances; the skysuit gives Emily the power of flight and the ability to generate fog and lightning. The final chapter of the series reveals that there are also fire and water themed suits, worn by Austin and Emily's parents, the long-missing creators of the suits.
• In EarthBound, you can use thunder, fire, stars, ice, and light (in the form of PK Flash). PK Rockin, Ness' signature move, sounds like it's control over Sound.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • This is present in the series' Destruction school of magic. The three elemental types are Fire, Frost, and Shock. While the exact effects of each type vary depending on the game, they generally follow the following formula: Fire spells tend to deal the most direct damage, cost the least Magicka to use, and often have the effect of continuing to burn the target for some time after the initial impact. Frost spells tend to do the least direct damage, but typically have secondary effects of slowing the movement speed of targets after they've been hit as well as draining the target's Stamina. This makes Frost spells especially effective against enemy melee combatants. Shock spells typically deal damage somewhere in between Fire and Frost, cost the most Magicka, (if ranged) sometimes strike instantly (similar to a hitscan attack), and sometimes drain Magicka in addition to damaging health. This makes Shock spells especially effective against enemy spellcasters. A fourth "element" covered by the Destruction school is Poison-based magic, which often deals little direct damage but drains the health of the target over a longer period of time.
  • Atronachs are a type of unaligned lesser Daedra which are essentially the Elemental Embodiments of the elements they represent. The most common are the Flame (also known as "Fire"), Frost, and Storm varieties. Others include Air, Flesh, Iron, and Stone. They typically attack with spells of the element they represent while also being immune to spells of that element.
  • The "Dragonborn" DLC in Skyrim adds a Destruction spell that knocks back enemies in melee range with a whirlwind.
  • The Elder Scrolls also uses the Greek four, plus light. Relmyna Verenim in Shivering Isles believes she's found a sixth element, flesh.
• In Elemental Master for the Sega Genesis, Laden starts out as a user of Light magic, and through completing stages gains access to Fire, Wind, Earth and Water as well.
• Elemental — War of Magic: Fire, ice, air and earth. Not to mention life and death. (Or potentially ruin instead of death.)
• Epic Battle Fantasy: The series has consistently had ten elements since the third game. They are Fire, Thunder, Ice, Earth, Bio,^note Named Poison prior to Epic Battle Fantasy 5, Bomb, Wind, Water, Holy, and Dark. Noteably, Earth, Wind, and Water are three of the rarer elements in the series, with the most common being the Fire, Ice, Lightning trio. Bio is a fairly common element and usually associated with organics and poisoning, while Bomb is typically used by machines. Holy and Dark tend to be used by later or more powerful enemies, and are the strongest of the elements, with Holy being associated with healing skills and Dark associated with casting death on a target.
• Fake Happy End: Everyone except the protagonist learns elemental spells through leveling up, though the protagonist gets an extra Soul slot to give them access to two elements anyways.
  • Light spells specialize in HP draining and status recovery. Karin can learn spells of this element naturally.
  • Dark spells specialize in dealing AP damage and reviving allies.
  • Fire spells specialize in manipulating the attack value of both allies and enemies. Mishika can learn spells of this element naturally.
  • Water spells specialize in granting AP decay or AP regen.
  • Nature spells specialize in manipulating HP decay or HP regen.
  • Bolt spells specialize in manipulating speed.
  • Air spells specialize in acting at the start of a turn and immediately healing AP. Aeri can learn spells of this element naturally.
  • Ice spells specialize in manipulating defense.
• Factory Town: Magic works with the four basics: Earth, Air, Fire and Water. There's research on the elements, elements become components of items that get crafted, etc.
• Fall from Heaven includes most of the above elements in its mana types.
• Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts:
  • Black Magic is usually based around Elemental Powers, with Thunder, Blizzard, and Fire being common Black Magic spells. Less commonly, Holy, Dark, Wind, Earth, and Water are also mixed in.
  • Blue Mages or other casters not directly connected to the classic classes often cover the more unusual elements. White Mages often get Holy, though.
  • "Gravity" is a class of spells which deals percentage-based damage but is generally not directly associated with an element (unless it's associated with Darkness, in which case it takes off an extra fraction of damage to those weak against it). There are also countless "non-elemental" spells like Flare and Ultima.
  • In Final Fantasy, the last boss Chaos has the powers of the four elemental fiends at his command, and thus uses the powerful elemental spells Blaze, Tsunami, Tornado and Earthquake. This is echoed in Dissidia Final Fantasy, where Chaos' original form Garland has these spells as well. What's more, Garland's Swiss-Army Weapon has four alternate forms, each symbolizing an element, and he uses each form to launch that element's attack.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics Advance introduces the Elementalist class, which specializes in single-target elemental spells. Uniquely, Elementalists also have access to healing spells of unusual elements in the form of White Flame and Earth Heal, which are fire and earth spells respectively in a game where all other healing magic is holy-elemental.
• Flight Rising has 11 elements: Earth, Water, Wind, Fire, Lightning, Ice, Light, Shadow, Nature, Plague, and Arcane; each element is associated with a flight (the site's factions), which themselves are ruled by a dragon god. The Coliseum makes ample use of Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors, with each element being strong against and weak to multiple other elements.
• Gacha World has Fire, Water, Wind (including Earth), Light, and Darkness. The first three form an affinity triangle, while Light and Darkness have a Mutual Disadvantage.
  • Gacha Club keeps all of the above, and adds Corruption and DJ to the mix.
• In Genji: Dawn of a Samurai there are four basic elements which can be use both by the player and the enemies and each of them has a status effect and color: Fire (Red, set ablaze), Ice (Blue, freeze), Lightning (Yellow, paralyze) and Poison (Purple, intoxicate).
• In Genshin Impact, the seven elements are Hydro, Dendro, Pyro, Cryo, Electro, Anemo, and Geo. They have a wide variety of interactions, like Electro and Pyro causing explosions or Anemo spreading other elements' effects.
• The Golden Sun series:
  • The four elements are represented by planets: Jupiter (wind and lightning), Mars (fire and lava), Mercury (water and ice), and Venus (earth, plants, and curses for some reason).
  • Nearly all of the major characters are "Adepts" with elemental powers, and the player gets one or two party members per element. It also tends to follow the Personality Powers connotations, with (for example) Ivan (Air, which includes lightning attacks here) being quiet and thoughtful, most Fire Adepts tending to be brash and aggressive, water (and ice too) characters being more even and level-headed, and of course Isaac, Felix, and Matthew (Earth) being Heroic Mimes. The game categorizes all the magic as one of these four elements, with one exception, even when there's not much of a link between the spell and the element (i.e. stat-in/decreasing spells and some of the puzzle-solving ones). None of the other elements get used, actually.
  • Golden Sun: Dark Dawn ends by adding light and darkness to the setting. We can only guess how they'll play into future installments of the series.
• Playable characters in Granblue Fantasy come in one of six elements, Fire, Wind, Earth, Water, Light and Dark.
• Grid Warrior has eight: Fire, Ice, Water, Lightning, Earth, Wind, Light and Virus/Darkness. Each element specializes in a certain aspect — Fire deals heavy damage, Ice slows enemies, Water deals area knockback, Lightning penetrates armor, Earth has Anti-Air and Stun, Wind destroys projectiles, Light slows along with homing projectiles and Virus/Darkness causes a poison effect.
• Grim Dawn has many powers. Maximizing all resistances can be very challenging especially in higher difficulties. The powers are: Fire, Cold, Lightning, Acid (with Poison as its long-term counterpart), Vitality (health-draining effects coming from both necromantic artes and contact with the Ch'thonic void), Aether (often brought in by Aetherial spirits and raw magic) and Chaos (seen in both Voidborne and Hellish magics as well as raw primordial energy, usually accompanies fire).
• Elementalists in Guild Wars. They have five spell attributes: Fire, Earth, Air (Most of which are Lightning), Water (Most of which are Ice), and their Primary Attribute, Energy Storage, which gives them a large Energy (mana) pool. It has one offensive spell, Energy Blast, which does more damage based on how much Energy you currently have. Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors isn't invoked much, mainly against some monsters with an obvious elemental bent.
  • Mesmers can also perhaps be called in here, invoking a strange mix of Heart and Mind, collectively designated Chaos, and they excel at making life for other people miserable by turning their own powers against them, sabotaging those powers, and attacking the very essence of the enemy.
  • Rangers also feature a series of Nature Rituals, tying them into Life, and Ritualists use Spirit as their main power source, with some ties to Life.
• The four main sets of damage-dealing spells in the Harry Potter games for the Game Boy Color act as elemental powers. Flipendo is wind, Vermilious is Pure Energy, Verdimilious is electricity, and Incendio is fire.
• Harukanaru Toki no Naka de has a system based off both the Five Elements and the Eight Trigrams^note specifically, the "Later Heaven" order. The eight characters in the party fit into the Eight Trigrams concept (to the point of it being used in the manga/anime to track down one of them), and their powers are also tied to it, yet the Combination Attacks utilise the Five Elements version (with wood, metal and earth assigned to two characters each — and two of them aren't even tied to the same holy beast).
• Jewel Master, a fantasy-themed game where you're on a quest to collect twelve magical rings granting you control over the elements, from throwing fireballs to creating earthquakes and summoning ice shards. And in the final stage, you fight four statue guardians, each with their own elemental powers as well, in respective order, fire, water, earth and wind, where your ring's elements can counter your opponents' when combined correctly.
• Kameo from Kameo: Elements of Power uses her powers to transform into ten Elemental Warriors related to Plant (Pummel Weed and Snare), Earth (Major Ruin and Rubble), Ice (Chilla and 40 Below), Water (Deep Blue and Flex), and Fire (Ash and Thermite).
• In Kao The Kangaroo: Mystery of the Volcano, you have to find 4 elemental artifacts in order to open a door leading to the Final Boss. The levels that you find these artifacts in are themed after the four elements.
• Kirby, depending on what enemy he copies, can control a ton of different elements: There are the standard ones, like Stone, Iron/Sword/Spear/Cutter (for Metal), Leaf, Water/Bubble, Ice/Freeze, Fire/Burning, Tornado/Wing (for Wind), and Animal, but then there are weirder ones, like Needle, Magic (which is stage magic), Fighter/Suplex, UFO, Laser/Beam, Ghost, Ball, Mini...
  • A complete list can be found Here.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Organization XIII members have their own "attribute". Most of the time, they use elemental attacks based on their attribute. Axel controls fire, Demyx controls water, Xaldin controls wind, etc. Others just use their attribute as a source of power (Saïx), or visual motifs (Marluxia). Or it's just very tangentially related to their fighting style (Luxord's timer is the extent of his time attribute). In Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days, these elements are extended to Heartless enemies as well, and each one is given a status effect.
    • Nothingness: Xemnas. Can null your defense in 358/2 Days.
    • Space: Xigbar. Can "shoe-glue" you in 358/2 Days, preventing you from jumping.
    • Wind: Xaldin. Can "air-toss" you, making you fall to the ground if you're in the air.
    • Ice: Vexen. Can freeze you in 358/2 Days.
    • Earth: Lexaeus. Can halve your health in 358/2 Days.
    • Illusion: Zexion. Can "flip-foot" you in 358/2 Days, reversing your controls.
    • Moon: Saïx. Can silence you in 358/2 Days, preventing you from casting magic.
    • Fire: Axel. Can ignite you in 358/2 Days, making you lose small amounts of health at intervals.
    • Water: Demyx. Can damage-drain you, healing the enemy if you get hit by their water attack.
    • Time: Luxord. Can rewind your defense in 358/2 Days, setting your defense back to what it was at level 1.
    • Flower: Marluxia. Can blind you in 358/2 Days, making you miss enemies much more often.
    • Lightning: Larxene. Can shock you in 358/2 Days.
    • Light: Roxas and Xion. Can zap your radar in 358/2 Days, messing with your minimap.
  • Kingdom Hearts coded has Fire, Ice, Wind, and Thunder variants for a lot of commands, and each of the four elements goes beyond the usual third-tier of spells into advanced commands that parallel each other.
• In Kingdom of Loathing, there are the five elements of Hot, Cold, Spooky, Stench, and Sleaze, with rare occurrences of Bad Spelling and Shadow (the former used by creatures parodying the Internet like Flaming Trolls and Spam Witches, the latter used, appropriately, by your Shadow).
• In Kult: Heretic Kingdoms, Alita has to choose (non-permanently) an element to begin her magic use with, picking between Fire, Water, Air, and Earth (which are said to correspond with destruction, paralysis, speed, and resilience, respectively).
• In Legacy of Kain series, both Raziel (and Kain in Defiance) can obtain elemental power ups for the Reaver. Raziel started with the Spectral/Material reaver and could gain: Darkness, Light, Fire, Air, Water and Earth. Discarded Reavers include the Sound Reaver, the Stone Reaver, the Sunlight Reaver and the Ariel Reaver.
  • Kain's power ups for the Reaver includes: Balance, Conflict, Dimension, Energy and Time.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The four villains trying to revive Ganon in The Legend of Zelda: Oracle Games consist of Koume (who uses fire magic), Kotake (who uses ice magic), Onox (who can summon tornadoes and can turn himself into one), and Veran (who forces the people of Labrynna to build the Black Tower and smothers the surrounding area in dust as a result).
  • In The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, Link can obtain four magic rods (Fire Rod, Ice Rod, Tornado Rod and Sand Rod), which also roughly correspond to the Four Elements (fire, water, air and earth). Some of them existed before, but this is the first time he's been able to obtain the whole set.
  • Who gets which element has been played with before. In The Wind Waker, we find that a Rito is the Sage of Earth. The previous one? A Zora. Meanwhile, the Sage of Winds is sort of an in-joke: in Ocarina of Time, the Forest Temple in the Kokiri Forest was going to be a Wind Temple. So in Wind Waker, a Korok (altered/evolved Kokiri) is the new Wind Sage and a Kokiri was the old one.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the Divine Beasts have the power to control different elements. Fire and magma for Rudania. Water and ice for Ruta. Wind for Medoh. Earth and lightning for Naboris.
  • Hyrule Warriors assigns each character one of five weapons based on their element: fire, lightning, light, water, and shadow. These roughly correspond with Ocarina of Time's Sages, except with Spirit replaced with lightning (both use orange) and with forest/wind removed^noteSpecifically, "forest" is merged with water, as Lana's Deku Stick class of weapons is given the water element.
• Light Crusader has Air, Fire, Earth and Water. You can mix the elements to create unique spells like Needlecrack.
• There are three elements in LISA: Fire, Water and... Animal. Fire attacks are used by several characters (Brad, Terry, Mad Dog, Percy, Clint Olympic and so on). Water attacks are much less common and are only used by two party members (Harvey and Crisp, the latter of whom suffers from Late Character Syndrome). Then there's Animal, which only one boss is weak to. Beastborn, Yazan and Geese use animal-type attacks.
• Loser Reborn: The game has only two elements, fire and lightning. All armor is resistant to one of these elements while being weak to the other, forcing the player to consider their characters' elemental weaknesses when going up against rogues and wizards. Rogue classes also have access to a field effect that can shift everyone's elemental resistances one way or the other.
• Luminous Plume: The elements in this game include electric, fire, ice, wind, shadow, light, and spirit. Raven has access to all of these elements except for ice.
  • Fire techs tend to have higher damage multipliers.
  • Electric techs have higher hitstun.
  • Wind techs tend to be ranged and have higher crit chance when it hits a target's back.
  • Ice techs have a chance of inflicting the frozen status.
  • Light techs have a chance to remove the target's buffs.
  • Shadow techs have a chance to inflict the haunted ailment, which weakens the target's damage.
  • Spirit techs don't have a consistent property.
• The Magical Vacation series really stretches the definition of what counts as "Elemental Powers", with characters having powers over Sound, Beauty, Poison, Bug, Beast, Machinery, and Love along with the more traditional ones. The sequal simplifies it to Air, Earth, Water, Grass, Fire, Light and Dark.
• Magicka's magick system is entirely based around combining eight elements, each with different properties and effects, (including opposites with which they cannot be combined) to create your own spells.
  • Water: Creates a spray that makes targets wet and pushes them around, but does no damage on its own. Opposite of Lightning.
  • Life: Heals things (except undead, which it hurts). Opposite of Arcane.
  • Shield: Creates a barrier out of energy. When combined with other elements, makes barriers out of those elements. Can also be used to make personal shields, elemental resistance auras, and landmines.
  • Cold: Creates a spray that chills enemies, and freezes them if they are wet. Can also be used to freeze water, making bridges. Opposite of Fire.
  • Lightning: Electrocutes people, jumps between targets, does extra damage to wet targets. Opposite of Water and Earth.
  • Arcane: Fires beams of energy, and turns whatever it's combined with into a beam. Opposite of Life.
  • Earth: Fires boulders, and turns whatever it's combined with into a projectile. Opposite of Lightning.
  • Fire: Creates a spray that sets things on fire. Opposite of Cold.
  • There are also two elements that can be made by combining other elements. Ice (Water+Cold) has similar properties to Earth, but fires a spread of projectiles. Steam (Water+Fire) acts like Water but has no opposites, and is used in the recipes of Magicks related to air, weather, or the sky.
  • If you cast a spell with no elements selected it uses Air, which pushes once and does no damage.
  • There was originally a Poison element that was removed from the players' arsenal due to being overpowered, but is still used by certain weapons and enemies that give a Poison effect, and there's one section where you fight Elementals attributed to Water, Life, Cold, Lightning, Arcane, Fire, and Poison.
• Manafinder: Lambda and human enemies can imbue themselves with elemental ores, which include fire, water, thunder, earth, ice, light, and dark. This causes each physical hit from them to be followed by a magic hit and changes their elemental resistances.
• Master of Magic is halfway between here and there. It got 5 types of magic, but in the sense of "Resist Elements" spell and suchlike elemental damage is caused by Chaos (fire bolt, lightning bolt) and Nature (ice bolt, call lightning) magic. Summoneble elementals are Air (in Sorcery), Earth (in Nature) and Fire (in Chaos) — Water is absent.
• Mega Man:
  • Mega Man had Bomb Man, Guts Man, Elec Man, Ice Man, and Fire Man.
  • Mega Man 2 had bosses based on four of the 5 chinese elements AND three of the 4 classical elements:
    • Metal Man: Metal (obviously)
    • Wood Man: Wood (obviously)
    • Bubble Man: Water
    • Heat Man: Fire
    • Air Man: Air
    • It also had a Time Master in Flash Man, who was also An Ice Person and Crash Man.
  • Mega Man 3 had a few like this as well: Magnet Man, Spark Man, Snake Man, Gemini Man.
  • Mega Man 4: Toad Man, Bright Man, Pharaoh Man, Skull Man, Drill Man
  • Mega Man 5: Wave Man, Star Man, Gravity Man, Crystal Man, Stone Man, Napalm Man
  • Mega Man 6: Flame Man, Blizzard Man, Wind Man, Centaur Man, Plant Man
  • Mega Man 7: Burst Man, Freeze Man, Cloud Man, Shade Man
  • Mega Man 8: Tengu Man, Frost Man, Sword Man, Aqua Man, Clown Man, Astro Man, Grenade Man
  • Mega Man 9: Galaxy Man, Tornado Man, Jewel Man, Splash Woman, Magma Man, Concrete Man
  • Mega Man 10: Sheep Man, Pump Man, Solar Man, Chill Man, Commando Man
  • Mega Man 11: Block Man, Fuse Man, Blast Man, Acid Man, Tundra Man, Torch Man
  • Mega Man X had bosses that represented 8 of the elements:
    • Chill Penguin: Ice
    • Spark Mandrill: Electricity
    • Armored Armadillo: Earth
    • Launch Octopus: Water
    • Flame Mammoth: Fire
    • Storm Eagle: Wind
    • Sting Chameleon: Light (his weapon is an optical laser of sorts)
    • Boomer Kuwanger: Probably the odd one out, but could be Darkness as he employs frequent ninja tactics.
  • Mega Man X2: Bubble Crab, Flame Stag, Morph Moth, Magna Centipede, Crystal Snail, Overdrive Ostrich, Wire Sponge
  • Mega Man X3: Blizzard Buffalo, Toxic Seahorse, Volt Catfish, Neon Tiger, Gravity Beetle
  • Mega Man X4: Web Spider, Storm Owl, Magma Dragoon, Frost Walrus, Jet Stingray
  • Mega Man X5: Volt Kraken, Shining Firefly, Tidal Whale, Spiral Pegasus, Spike Rosered, Dark Necrobat, Burn Dinorex
  • Mega Man X6: Ground Scaravich, Blaze Heatnix, Blizzard Wolfang, Rainy Turtloid, Metal Shark Player, Infinity Mijinion
  • Mega Man X7: Soldier Stonekong, Vanishing Gungaroo, Splash Warfly, Tornado Tonion, Ride Boarski, Flame Hyenard, Wind Crowrang
  • Mega Man X8: Optic Sunflower, Gravity Antonion, Dark Mantis, Bamboo Pandemonium, Gigabolt Man-O-War, Earthrock Trilobyte, Burn Rooster, Avalanche Yeti
• MeiQ: Labyrinth of Death: The five elements are Fire, Water, Wood, Metal, and Earth. Each heroine and Guardian have a certain elemental affinity, and matching a mage to a Guardian will bolster that affinity. There is also Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors to consider, as enemies can and will try to exploit weaknesses.
• Might and Magic VI to VIII has nine schools of magic (split into three categories). Four of them are explicitly categorised as Elemental magic (Fire, Earth, Water and Air). The Self-Magic schools (Body, Spirit, Mind) contain supportive spells and status effects, though they have occasional damaging spells as well. Finally, there is advanced Dark and Light magic. In VI the spels dealt one of 5 types of damage (Fire, Poison, Cold, Electricity, Magic) and only in later games they would deal the elemental damage of school they're in (though there is occasional exception such as Dark Magic's Shrapmetal, which does physical damage instead). There is also an Energy element that does not have a magic school but is available to you in VI and VII via Ancient Weapons and is usually the damage typing of strongest monsters in the game.
• The Stoutheart faction from Minion Masters has its own unique Runic Magic which allows them to imbue rocks with the powers of ice and wind.
• In Monster Sanctuary, every attack falls under one of the classical elements or is Non-Elemental. Fire is self-explanatory, but water encompasses ice, earth encompasses plants and poison, and air encompasses electricity.
• Both Neverwinter Nights and Neverwinter Nights 2 have these elemental powers: Fire, Cold, Electricity, Acid, Sonic, Magic, Divine, Positive energy and Negative energy.
• Wizeman from NiGHTS into Dreams… uses fireballs, ice balls, waves of boulders, and tornadoes against the Visitors, hitting the four basic elements.
• In Nioh, the Guardian Spirits and a few Yokai are based on different elements, usually each with a related status effect. These include: Fire (Scorched, suffers damage over time), Water (Saturated, suffers 20% more physical damage), Earth (Muddied,suffers double damage from Ki attacks), Wind (Blustered, weakens attack and defense) and Lightning (Electrified, slows down movement).
• Octopath Traveler:
  • "Magic" attacks are referred to as "Elemental" attacks. Most of the jobs are capable of using at least one Elemental attack:
  • Clerics use the element of light, which they can cast on a single enemy or all enemies.
  • Scholars use multi-target fire, ice, and lightning spells.
  • Merchants have the element of wind, single-target or multi-target
  • Warriors are the odd man out and use only physical attacks.
  • Dancers use single-target and multi-target darkness abilities.
  • Apothecaries have a single-target ice attack.
  • Thieves have a single-target fire attack.
  • Hunters have a single-target lightning attack.
  • Even beyond the eight classes, elements can still show up. Of the four secret classes, a Sorcerer gets access to multi-target attacks of each of the six elements; a Starseer gets one attack that causes Light, Dark, and Wind damage; and a Runelord adds elemental damage to physical attacks, with their Divine skill targeting one enemy with all six elements. The Warmaster is like the Warrior in that the class gets no elemental attacks.
• OFF does have elemental attacks, though the actual elements are Smoke, Metal, Plastic, Meat and Sugar. A few parallels are made, like Metal being earth and Smoke being air, but that's about the extent of it.
• Ōkami:
  • Each of the thirteen brush gods has dominion over one branch of power, some more niche than others:
    • Tachigami (Rat): Rending
    • Itegami (Ox): Ice
    • Gekigami (Tiger): Thunder
    • Yumigami (Rabbit): Moon
    • Yomigami (Dragon): Restoration
    • Nuregami (Snake): Water
    • Kazegami (Horse): Wind
    • Kasugami (Sheep): Mist
    • Sakigami, Hasugami, and Tsutagami (Monkey): Flora
    • Moegami (Rooster): Fire
    • Amaterasu (Dog): Sun
    • Bakugami (Pig): Explosions
    • Kabegami (Cat): Walls
  • Each of Orochi's eight heads also have an elemental type associated with each of them: Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, Electricity, Light, Dark, and Poison. The Fire head is the only one that actually talks.
• In Paladin's Quest, there are 8 Elements: Fire, Sky, Light, Spirit, Heart, Air, Earth, Water. All spells (except nine) are made by combining two elements together. Example: Fire + Spirit is "FireG", or "Fire Group". When leaning a new Spirit (element), you suddenly get a batch of new spells. The last, is the ultimate spell only the Hero can learn, because only the Hero ever gets access to the Fire spirit, as there are no Fire or Earth Spirit teachers. The Hero only gets Earth through a scripted dungeon-and-boss.
• The original Plants vs. Zombies started out with just fire and ice plants, whose effects cancel each other out, meaning they couldn't be used effectively together. PVZ also has the unique case of Blover, who can literally Blow You Away. One of the first plants introduced in the sequel is the Lightning Reed, who hits zombies with weak Chain Lightning. By Garden Warfare 2, there are plants encompassing quite a few elements, most easily seen with the different elemental versions of Peashooter. There's Snow Pea, Fire Peashooter, Toxic Pea, Rock Pea, Electro Pea and Shadow Peashooter.
• Pokémon:
  • There are eighteen types: Bug, Dark, Dragon, Electric, Fairy, Fighting, Fire, Flying, Ghost, Grass, Ground, Ice, Normal, Poison, Psychic, Rock, Steel, and Water. To make it even more complicated, a Pokémon can either have one of those types, or have two types and get the Weaknesses and Resistances of both. The card series uses a simplified version of the games elements and combines some of them together: Grass (Grass, Bug, or Poison in early sets^note reassigned to Psychic in the Diamond and Pearl expansion set), Fire, Water (Water or Ice), Electric, Psychic (Psychic, Ghost, and Poison in later sets^note reassigned from Grass in the Diamond and Pearl expansion set), Fighting (Fighting, Rock, or Ground), Darkness (Dark), Metal (Steel), Dragon^note made its own card type in the Dragon Vault expansion set, Fairy, and Colorless (Normal, Flying, or Dragon in earlier sets^note made its own card type in the Dragon Vault expansion set).
  • Shadow is a pseudo-type that, so far, only exists in the Pokémon Colosseum games. Technically it is the only element that is a temporary one as well as potential for Pokémon to have a third possible "type", but in certain circles, it still counts as a type in and of itself.
  • Pokémon FireRed ROM Hack Pokémon Sweet Version: There are 12 types total, in the first game: Vanilla, Cherry, Strawberry, Apple, Orange, Banana, Lemon, Lime, Blueberry, Grape, Raspberry and Chocolate. The sequel added 8 more types: Mint, Peanut, Molasses, Marshmallow, Honey, Coconut, Cinnamon, and Caramel.
• The Psygnosis RPG Hexx: Heresy of the Wizard has Earth, Chaos, Dragon (fire), and Night. The game lets you pick from sixteen characters — one for each element for each of the four classes. Character alignment affects what spells you can learn.
• Puzzle & Dragons has earth, fire, water, light, and dark. Earth, fire, and water are in a triangle just like pokemon, while light and dark are effective against each other.
• The four Classical elements form the basis of Quest 64's magic system.
• Quest for Glory uses the four traditional elements, with a fifth one needed for life... Pizza. In the words of Dr Cranium "Would you want to live in a world without Pizza?" We cannot fault his logic. The Pizza thing became a recurring joke in the last two games. So much that the AGD Interactive VGA Fan Remake of the second game (where the player must defeat 4 elementals) includes a Pizza Elemental as a Superboss.
• The MMORPG Ragnarok Online has 9 elements. Earth, Fire , Wind (most of it is lightning), Water (almost everything of it is ice), Ghost , Holy , Undead , Dark , Poison. There's also neutral. First five are used by Mages, holy by Priest and Crusaders, Poison is utilized by Assassins. Dark and Undead is used by monsters. The game involves Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors and elemental levels, from 1 to 4. The higher the elemental level the more important its elemental weaknesses and strengths. A Water1 monster is highly resistant to fire attacks, but a Water4 is invulnerable to them.
• Rift has six elemental planes that are all trying to invade the world of Telara. To wit, Life, Death, Fire, Water, Air, and Earth, each and every one of them opening the titular rifts and each and every one of them hating all the others. Fun times, everybody!
• Rivals of Aether's setting and characters are based around the four classical elements. Additional characters have "sub-elements" related to one of the main elements.
  • Fire is represented by Zetterburn. The sub-elements are smoke (Forsburn), plasma (Clairen), and explosives (Mollo).
  • Water is represented by Orcane. The sub-elements are ice (Eltalus) and poison (Ranno). Hodan is unique in the fact that his sub-element ranges from traditional water to mud and even sweat.
  • Air is represented by Wrastor. The sub-elements are lightning (Absa), steam (Elliana), and music/sound (Pomme).
  • Earth is represented by Kragg. The sub-elements are plants (Maypul and Sylvanos) and crystals (Olympia).
• The Chinese MMORPG Roco Kingdom has a set of Mons as one of its primary elements (no pun intended!), with these Mons, called "pets", each having one or two of several power types that may or may not be based on an elemental power — much like in Pokémon. The possible types include 火 (fire), 水 (water), 电 (electricity), 草 (grass), 冰 (ice), 武 (martial arts), 毒 (poison), 土 (soil), 翼 (wing), 萌 (cute), 虫 (insect), 石 (stone), 幽 (quiet), 龙 (dragon), 恶魔 (demon), 机械 (mechanical), and 光系 (light).
• In RuneScape, the basic spell book divides up offensive spells into wind, water, earth and fire attacks. The Ancient spellbook on the other hand uses smoke, shadow, blood, ice and miasma spells. In addition, all spells are based on Runes. Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Mind and Body Runes can be crafted and used by anybody. Nature, Death, Order, Chaos and Cosmic Runes can only be crafted by Members. Blood, Soul and Astral Runes (and the Life Rune before it was scrapped) can only be crafted or used by Members. There are also Runes made from combining the classical elements: Lava (Earth+Fire), Mud (Earth+Water), Dust (Earth+Air), Smoke (Air+Fire), Mist (Air+Water) and Steam (Water+Fire).
• In Samurai Warriors series there were different elements, each with a determinated power and effect and a fancy japanese name. It affects weapons, but also some characters are more incline to determinated elements than others, and often changes from game to game. Furthermore, some characters have elemental attacks involving Light, Water and Sound. Most of these elements also appeared in Dynasty Warriors
  • Fire (Guren, lit. Crinsom Lotus): Set the enemies ablaze and damage them for a while or if in air. Fire users include Yukimura, Magoichi and Okuni
  • Ice (Toga, lit. Freezing Fang): Freeze the enemies and make them helpless. Ice users include Ranmaru, Masamune and Nene.
  • Thunder (Senko, lit. Light Flash): Stun the enemies and make them crumble. Thunder users include Keiji, Mitsuhide and Ginchiyo.
  • Dark (Kyuusei, lit. Absorbtion): Drain the life energy from enemies. First game only.
  • Wind (Reppu, lit. Violent Gale): Blow the enemies and increses knockbacks and such. Wind users include Sakon, Yoshihiro and Gracia.
  • Demon/Slay (Shura, lit. Massacre): Inflicts damage based on percentage of the enemy life bar. Demon users include Musashi, Hanzo and Nohime.
  • Earth (Kongo, lit. Adamant): produces small quakes to extend the range of the attacks and make more combo attacks. Earth users include Naotora, Katsuie and Kagekatsu.
• Sengoku Basara uses elements, but unlike Samurai Warriors above, each character is tied to an element, can channel it through certain aligned weapons (changed in later games) and have elemental-themed techniques. They have:
  • Fire: Burns the opponent dealing damage over time.
  • Lightning: Shocks opponents and deal damage to nearby enemies.
  • Wind: Draw the enemies closer and deals them damage.
  • Ice: Freeze the opponents.
  • Darkness: Heals the user with each killed mook.
  • Light: Break any defense.
  • Passion: Confuses enemies, either charming them into becoming allies for a while or forcing them to ignore the player. Only a single character, Sen no Rikyu, has this element (Mitsunari can use it through a downloadable weapon)
  • Quake: Releases additional shockwaves which further damage enemies from anywhere. Only two official users in Ashikaga Yoshiteru and Sanada Nobuyuki.
• Septerra Core. The spell cards provide these.
• Shin Megami Tensei:
  • The series has tons of different spells across its whole library, with the exact lineup rarely being the same from game-to-game and between spinoffs. There are four element types almost universally present throughout the series, however: Fire (Agi), Ice (Bufu), Electric (Zio), and Force (Zan), although the Persona series replaces the latter with Wind (Garu).
  • Two other common elements are Light (Hama) and Dark (Mudo).^note Also sometimes called Expel and Death, respectively, especially in earlier titles. These two elements mostly consist of attacks that have a chance to deal instant death, with the exact chance dependent on the target's resistance to it. Persona and Persona 5 expanded on these spells with Kouha and Eiga, which do standard damage instead of instant death, while games in the main series from Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse onward tweak the Hama and Mudo spells to normally deal regular damage, their instakill properties only kicking in when certain conditions are met, which allows Light- and Dark-focused demons to use them against bosses who are immune to instant death.^note Persona 5 also refers to these elements as Bless and Curse, names formerly used for certain types of healing and ailment spells. Element type naming in SMT can get....complicated.
  • Another very common spell type is Almighty (Megido). These spells never hit enemy weaknesses, but also do loads of damage on their own and are very rarely resisted. Some games also have spells outside the Megido line which are Almighty as well, and physical attacks can sometimes be Almighty too.
  • Less common elements in the franchise include:
    • Water (Aqua), appearing only in the Persona 2 duology.
    • Earth (Magna/Tera), appearing in Persona, Persona 2, and Devil Children, and Digital Devil Saga duology.
    • Nuclear (Frei), appearing in Persona, Persona 2, and Persona 5. The first game also borrows the usually-Almighty Megido spells as its multi-target Nuclear spells.
    • Psychokinesis (Psi), appearing in Persona 5 and Devil Summoner.
    • Gravity (Gry), appearing only in the original Persona. There are also Gry spells in Persona 2, but they do Almighty damage.
  • The original Persona is probably the absolute king of elements in the whole franchise, with 10 damaging magic types,^note Fire, Ice, Wind, Earth, Electric, Nuclear, Force, Gravity, Expel, and Death 3 healing/status elements,^note Miracle, Curse, and Nerve.
• In Shuyan Saga, the guardian spirits of each of the Five Kingdoms seems to be associated with a different element (and since the Five Kingdoms are based on China, the elements are probably the five classical Chinese elements). The Vermillion Phoenix, protector of Shuyan's kingdom, is associated with fire.
• Skylanders has each and every playable character fall under an element. The first game had Magic, Tech, Life, Undead, Fire, Water, Air, and Earth. The fourth game in the series added in Light and Dark to the mix of elements. And the series’ big bad, the extremely hammy Kaos has his own self-titled element.
• A number of Sonic the Hedgehog characters are associated with particular elements and have matching attacks:
  • Sonic is associated with the wind and can use his speed to produce and manipulate wind.
  • Tails is associated with the sky and possesses the ability to fly, as well as a few air-based moves.
  • Knuckles is associated with ground and is an expert at digging.
  • Blaze is associated with fire, being a pyrokinetic.
• In Spellbreaker, the player character discovers thirteen of the seventeen Cubes of Foundation, each linked to an element. The cubes are grouped into four categories:
  • Earth, Air, Fire, and Water
  • Life, Death, Light, and Dark
  • Time, Change, Mind, and Connectivity
  • (The other four cubes, never revealed)
  • And then the final cube, Magic.
• Several in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic:
  • Physical (piercing, slashing, crushing). Can also be found in disruptors, but only in the first installment.
  • Fire/Heat.
  • Cold.
  • Electric. Mostly from dark side powers.
  • Sonic.
  • Poison.
  • Energy. Lighsabers and blasters.
  • Ion. Devastating against droids.
  • Unstoppable. Only found in disruptors of the the sequel and some very rare items.
  • Light Side energy. Some very rare items have this power.
  • Dark Side energy. Some very rare items have this power.
• In La Statuette Maudite de l'Oncle Ernest, eight of the insecto-robot's forms are based on fire, water, air and earth, with each elements having two forms.
• Summoner has two sets for the two sets of rings you collect, the first are the four demons: Machival (Dark), Luminar (Light), Titus (Earth) and Pyrul (Fire), the second set are the four dragons of Water, Forest, Four Winds, and Jade. Each ring (eventually) unlocks two different summons related to its element.
• Super Mario Bros.: Several depending on the game and the power up, but fairly consistently in the spinoffs the characters tend to prefer
  • Mario — Playing with Fire
  • Luigi — Playing with Green Fire, Blow You Away (added after Luigi's Mansion), and Shock and Awe (added after Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga).
  • Yoshi — Care-Bear Stare
  • Peach — Heart Beat-Down
  • Daisy — Petal Power / Green Thumb and Gemstone Assault (in Mario Strikers Charged)
  • Toad — Poisonous Person (uses spores)
  • Wario — Shock and Awe (at least up until Power Tennis)
  • Waluigi — Casting a Shadow, Blow You Away and Making a Splash sometimes
  • Rosalina — Star Power and Gravity Master
  • Donkey Kong — Green Thumb, jungle themed maps, and uses wood and fruit (barrels and bananas) in his specials
  • Bowser — Playing with Fire, sometimes combined with Shock and Awe and Casting a Shadow.
  • Paper Mario: The Origami King has the Vellumentals, four element-themed deity figures that each give Olivia an Elementa Power when defeated. There is a Vellumental of Earth, Water, Fire, and Ice, encountered in that order.
  • In Super Princess Peach, the four Vibes are associated with the four classical elements. Calm = Earth, Gloom = Water, Joy = Wind, Rage = Fire.
• Super Robot Wars, especially the Masou Kishin portion of the series. They are not called The Lord of Elementals for nothing.
  • Earth: Zamzeed piloted by Mio Sasuga.
  • Fire: Granveil piloted by Hwang Yang Long.
  • Air: Cybuster piloted by Masaki Andoh, the main character.
  • Water: Goddess piloted by Tytti Noorbuck.
• Zelguard's first three attacks in Super Robot Wars X are based on Fire (Ignest), Water (Vartex), and Wind (Tempesta).
• The Tales Series, has various elements the characters can use in combat, by either using elemental physical artes or using magic.
  • In the first Tales of Symphonia game, there are eight temples for the eight elements, Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, Lightning, Ice, Darkness, and Light. Spellcasting characters can use spells from each element except for darkness, which for some reason doesn't have spells usable by playable characters other than one of Sheena's summons late in the game. In the second Tales of Symphonia game, each character is assigned a different element.
    • Also in Tales of Symphonia was heart, which the spirit can't be used and there are no techs of the element, but by the sequel the element becomes much more important. Other non-tech elements seen in Tales of in general also included the sea, monsters, origin, and sound.
• The Telepath RPG series uses heat, cold, light, and shadow. "Shadow" is the only one to have a metaphysical component, as the miasma it summons is made of negative thoughts and emotions. Word of God says it also causes chemical corrosion, so Poisonous Person may also apply. Psy fighters usually specialize in one element, and the protagonist of each game can pick up special items that grant a resistance to one of the four.
  • Telepath Tactics adds elemental weaknesses in addition to resistances, and segregates units more strictly: psy fighters are split into four distinct classes instead of being one class with different specialties, and a new "golden spriggat" is introduced to allow the same for spriggats.
• Touhou's Patchouli Knowledge is known as the "one-week wizard" for a reason — along with the five oriental elements (fire, water, wood, metal, and earth), she can control solar and lunar power as well (each element corresponds to a day of the week in the Japanese calendar). She can even combine multiple elements for her attacks, up to the five-element "Philosopher's Stone".
• The Trails Series (Kiseki in Japan) uses seven different elements for its system. Interestingly, anyone can invoke elemental powers by using a Combat Orbment, and use any or all elements by fitting appropriate-color quartz into it. There are two tiers; four lower elements (Fire, Water, Wind, and Earth) and three higher elements (Time, Space, and Mirage).
  • Fire is represented with the color red, and ruby quartz, and its primarily-offensive spell list ranges from small fireballs to supernova-like explosions.
  • Water is represented with the color blue, and sapphire quartz, and primarily invokes healing spells (manifest as purifying drops of water) plus some offensive magic such as water geysers or ice storms.
  • Wind is represented with the color green, and emerald quartz, and uses windstorms to blow enemies around, improve allies' movement and agility, or spread the effect of another art over a wide area (i.e., AoE versions of single-target arts of other elements tend to require a small amount of Wind quartz in addition to the other element). Lightning attacks also fall under the purview of wind.
  • Earth is represented with the color brown, and topaz quartz. Besides throwing boulders or creating earthquakes, it can also create protective walls around allies.
  • Time is represented with the color black, and onyx quartz. Its support magic, predictably, involves speeding up or slowing down time, but strangely its offensive magic typically invokes dark powers such as blades of darkness or channeling power out of a Hellgate. Time is also associated with instant death effects—as all things die given enough time—and characters who have a mechanical affinity for Time tend to be associated with death.
  • Space is represented with the color yellow, and gold quartz. Its primary spells include gravity wells and miniature black holes. As the counterpart to Time, it also sometimes includes light-based magic. True masters of the element, such as Georg Weissmann, can even teleport or temporarily displace people from reality.
  • Mirage is represented with the color gray, and silver quartz. The strangest of the elements, Mirage governs cognition and information, and is often associated with the moon. Its repetoire primarily consists of support magic for confusing or debilitating your enemies, information gathering, and a small handful of Pure Energy attacks for offensive presence. Powerful enough Mirage entities, such as the Demiourgos, can alter more than just the perception of reality; they can manipulate actual reality.
• The Elemental class in Twilight Heroes has powers and skills themed on the four classical elements.
• In Ultima VIII: Pagan, much of the plot involves the Avatar learning magical powers related to three of the four elements, only to later defeat the gods responsible for them. You don't get to acquire any water-based powers, since the mastery of that element seems to be an inborn talent of a particular royal family. However, the player can optionally learn Thaumaturgy, a branch of magic particular to a fifth element, Aether.
• Utawarerumono: All characters have an associated elemental power: Fire, Earth, Wind, or Water. A couple of rare characters have Darkness or Light as well, while the protagonists (being actual humans) are Neutral. There's an Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors system going on that determines whether characters are resistant or weak to attacks by an enemy. It also comes into play in the story somewhat: in the first game, Oboro and Karulau are both said to be Fire-aligned, which causes them to instinctively want to fight each other. Yuzuha's sickness is said to be caused because she is aligned with all four elements at once, which ravages her body since that's not meant to happen. In the sequels, Yuzuha's daughter Kuon inherited this, but due to also being essentially a demi-god, Kuon avoids the sickness issue by magically suppressing three of the elements within herself... in effect, she can swap between elements as she likes.
• Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider has several characters with elemental abilities, most notably the Guardians:
  • Flamestalker uses fire abilities like a fire boomerang, a flaming Shoryuken, and a rain of fireballs. Moonrider obtains a flaming boomerang after beating him.
  • Hydromancer uses water abilities like shapeshifting into water, or shaping water and throwing them like projectiles. Moonrider gains an Orbiting Particle Shield of water shurikens after beating him.
  • Stormdiver uses wind abilities in the form of tornadoes and flight. Moonrider gains a horizontal air vortex after beating her.
  • Geocrusher uses earth abilities like a ground punch as well as sending shockwaves across the floor. Moonrider gains a Ground Punch that creates a spread of projectiles after beating him.
  • Photondrifter uses light abilities such as firing lasers and bolts of light. Moonrider gains a damaging, fast dash attack after beating him.
  • Darkchaser uses darkness abilities which take the form of opening portals of darkness that spawn fleshy tendrils or appendages. Moonrider gains the ability to conjure a portal that extends a shadow tendril after beating her.
  • While not a Guardian, Shinjen uses lightning attacks in the form of firing bolt projectiles and summoning lightning bolts.
  • Sunseeker uses sun-based abilities like waves of fire and energy balls.
• Visions & Voices has five elements: Cold, Fire, Shock, Necrotic, and Radiant. Five of the playable characters specialize in one element, and one character can switch between light and dark skillsets.
• Warframe
  • The game has fourteen elements, each with its own associated Status Effect:
    • Three physical elements: Impact (knockback), Puncture (lowers damage dealt) and Slash (Damage Over Time bypassing shields and armor).
    • Four primary elements: Heat (damage over time, causes a panic effect plus halved armor), Cold (reduces attack and movement speed), Electricity (chains between enemies and stuns) and Toxin (heavy damage over time).
    • Six combined elements: Blast (Heat+Cold, reduces accuracy), Corrosive (Electricity+Toxin, lowers armor per stack up to 80%), Gas (Heat+Toxin, area of effect + dual-effect Toxin), Magnetic (Cold+Electricity, drains energy and increases damage to shields whilst preventing shield regeneration), Radiation (Heat+Electricity, causes enemies to fight each other) and Viral (Cold+Toxin, deal more damage to HP per stack).
    • And last but not least, the two Element No. 5, Void (ignores all elemental resistances) and True (ignores everything).
  • Many Warframes specialize in some of these elements: Ember has Playing with Fire powers, Frost is An Ice Person, Volt wields Shock and Awe, Saryn is a Poisonous Person. And then there's Lavos, the alchemist Warframe, whose four abilities are each based on the four primary elements, and who can imbue these abilities with any of the 10 elemental damage types.
• The titular heroine of the Shoot 'Em Up arcade game, Sylphia, obtains her powers from Fire, Water, Plant and Earth, which she can collect one of four from the start of each level to rain havoc on her enemies:
  • Fire power-ups allows Sylphia to blast fireballs and streams of flames, and further upgrades can release multiple homing fireballs all at once. It's one of the strongest of the four, but it's range is limited.
  • Water upgrades have Sylphia shooting blue liquid bubbles that can reach the other side of the screen and can increase in speed after being upgraded.
  • Plant power release a wave of razor leaves in assorted sizes. Smaller ones can home in on enemies or become a Reverse Shrapnel that remains on the screen for several seconds.
  • Earth is a slightly slower, defense-based power that conjures heavy boulders to be dropped on enemies, with several boulders serving as an Orbiting Particle Shield around Sylphia.
• WildStar has six 'primal elements' that compose everything in the universe: the four base elemental energies (air, earth, fire, and water) and the forces that bind them (life and logic). Creatures heavily 'infused' with one or more of these elements are common enemies; some are even composed of pure Primal energy alone.
• In The Witcher the classical elements are used in full force by mages (for example, Azar Javed is a fire mage, who attacks with fire, and summons a monster from the planes of fire.). Mad Scientist Kalkstein however mentions he has a theory that is effectively a basic description of atoms.
  • Wizards in Witcher's world call upon the elements for mana points magical power they use for spells. Water is easiest to channel, requiring but to find a ley line, so it's the one taught to wizardry students. Earth requires much strength to get magic from it, while Air is technically difficult. Fire offers great power that is easy to reach, but also is a poster child for With Great Power Comes Great Insanity.
• The later games in the Wizardry series, from Bane of the Cosmic Forge onward, use six spheres of magic-fire (also folding in light and general energy), water (including ice), air (involving lots of poison, oddly enough), earth (including acid and wild/nature), mind (lots of weird/limited use spells, but also some directly offensive ones), and magic (which also includes holy/light). Mages mostly specialize in fire and water, alchemists in earth and air, psionics in mind, and priests in magic, but all spellcasters pick up an array of spells from all spheres.
• In the World of Mana series, the world's magic is governed by eight elemental spirits: Gnome (earth), Undine (water), Sylphid/Jinn (wind), Salamander (fire), Lumina (light), Shade (darkness), Luna or Aura (the moon or gold, respectively), and Dryad (wood/Mana).
• In World of Warcraft the Shaman class can create elemental "totems" that produce various effects; Earth totems tend to give defensive buffs, Fire ones are usually offensive, Water ones provide healing/restoration effects and Air ones provide a variety of support effects such as acting like a lightning rod for enemy spells. And let's not forget the fact that they can shoot lightning (and lava) from their hands.
  • The game is unique in that air and earth count as the same element (nature). It also features Shadow, Arcane (magic) and Holy (which, unlike the other five, has no resistance stat).
  • Story-wise, the Warcraft universe contains universal self-aware spirits for each element. The fifth element, and the strongest of all, is life Wild.
  • Note that there doesn't seem to be any connection to the elemental spirits that Shamans get their power from and the damage types in-game; which are the above mentioned Nature, Shadow, Arcane and Holy, plus Fire, Frost and physical damage. Nature in particular seems to be a 'dump' category, including air and earth, but also poisons.
  • The schools of magic damage simply don't correspond to anything in particular. Arcane damage is usually dealt by either pure magical energy also known as Mana or by 5 separate elements(collectively called the Schools of Arcane) of created from mathematical equations referred to as Arcane, Displacing Arcane, Fortified Arcane, Replicating Arcane and Time which are used almost exclusively by cerebral mages with, which warps reality in large concentrations — but focused moonlight, a gift from the moon goddess, also deals Arcane damage despite not being anyway related to Arcane. Fire from demons is a completely different thing from fire from elemental forces or a chemical combustion reaction, but it's all Fire damage. Frost damage is dealt by all water elementals everywhere, even on tropical islands. Some earth elementals (that is, with a certain animated rock model) deal Nature damage and some deal Fire damage, if they're found in places where volcanic forces are strong, and somewhere there are probably some that deal physical damage. In addition to some earth elementals, Nature damage also comes from lightning, poison, plant elementals and wildlife-associated spells, Shadow damage comes from Shadow, Fel, Void, Death(created from mathematical equations like Arcane and other Elements of the Schools of Arcane which it is a member of) and strangely enough Life Spells(Ra-Den's spells that use life against the player either do Shadow or Plague AKA Nature/Shadow damage) and Holy damage comes from spells associated with The Light, The Loa and Elune.
  • Of course, every spell is connected to an element and most classes have at least two elements used regularly. Exception being the Warrior, who doesn't use anything at all, the Rogue who has poisons and the Paladin who relies solely on Holy spells.
  • Storm, Earth, and Fire! Heed my call!
• X-Men Legends has four: elemental (which include, fire, cold and lightning), energy, mental and radioactive.
• The main enemies of the first Zoids Saga are called the Four Heavenly Kings, and their first Zoids correspond to the four "heavenly creatures" associated with them — a blue dragon (dinosaur), red bird (well, dragon), white tiger and black tortoise. There's also some subtle Theme Naming happening, based on the corresponding elements: Blood Keel = wood, Flam Vogel = fire, Gale Tusk = metal (+ wind), and Opis Kerone = water (Opis was a water spirit in Greek mythology).
• The magic crystals in Pathways into Darkness:
  • Yellow — Spirit
  • Blue — Ice
  • Orange — Fire
  • Violet — Lightning
  • Green — Earthquakes
  • Black — Stone

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