Since its surprise reveal last May, Elementa's new open-world title, 'Silver Palace,' has been a game that impressed from the start. It excels in every department: a Victorian-inspired world, a graphic style featuring delicate, manga-like lines and detailed lighting, and high-impact parrying action. While the initial PV showed some frame drops that raised concerns about playability, the first test largely put those fears to rest. Although optimization was lacking in some areas, most of the experience delivered the beautiful world and satisfying action promised in the trailers.

About six months after the Closed Beta Test (CBT) in January, Silver Palace announced a second test and offered a hands-on demo at 'Bilibili World,' a major Chinese subculture festival. This demo focused on a tutorial covering the past of the protagonist detective siblings, improved combat, and the introduction of new playable characters: Supervisor Rex and Red Rose.

The demo reveals part of the airship incident that forced the detective siblings to leave Sylvania. In the previous test, the event that separated the two protagonists was only briefly introduced through a paparazzo's comments and a nightmare. The demo begins on that very airship, where the female detective is receiving a medal from the Queen. As the Queen presents her with gauntlets, an assassin among the guards lunges at her. While the female detective uses the gauntlets to subdue the attacker, the male detective cuts the fuse of a pre-installed bomb, thwarting the assassination attempt.

Just as it seems the siblings have resolved the crisis, the failed assassin starts rambling about 'purists' before erupting into a strange silver liquid and dying. The airship's core reactor then goes into overdrive, causing chaos, and the resulting shockwave sends people flying off the ship. The opening tutorial tasks the siblings with resolving this disaster.

The demo allowed players to control a four-person party consisting of the detective, Cinderella, and the new characters, Supervisor Rex and Red Rose. As is typical for open-world action RPGs, Silver Palace retains its tag-based combat system, but this demo showed attempts to change the flow of battle by adjusting key bindings.

Even before this, combat in Silver Palace was quite punchy for a subculture action RPG. Enemies attack frequently, and the moment a yellow circle appears—signaling a transition from dodge to parry—the satisfying metallic clang and the subsequent counter-attack felt great. This time, the developers assigned guard and parry to the right-click button and moved the skill key previously on right-click to 'E'.

These changes increased the frequency of parryable patterns, emphasizing the satisfaction of actively parrying, staggering enemies, and linking into finishers. The game is designed to allow players to use the familiar 'just dodge' counter-attack found in most collectible action RPGs, or to continue with a parry. The Cinderella boss fight at the end of the demo featured a rapid succession of parryable and unparryable patterns, hinting at an intent to add depth through these 'either-or' choices. Finishers were also improved; previously, they had low damage and a short auto-lock range, but these have been adjusted to make them easier to trigger in various environments.

The tutorial boss fight on the airship features a concept where the detective intervenes in a clash between Vita and Mors. Since attacks that seem unusable by the detective spread as area-of-effect (AoE) damage, the tutorial naturally teaches players to dodge AoE patterns in addition to parrying marked attacks.

The new character, Rex, has parry effects built into his attack skills and is a type that actively mixes basic attacks and combat skills to pressure enemies. Conversely, Red Rose's 'E' skill damage is maximized only when her six-slot skill gauge is full, which is more efficiently charged through tag skills rather than her own attacks.

In short, the distinction between 'on-field' characters who deal damage while active and 'off-field' characters who wait to unleash skills upon tagging has become much clearer. The UI has also been updated; character icons are now placed at the bottom with numbers, making it easier to track the 'ambush' skills triggered by tagging. This configuration intuitively teaches players that the game is not about playing a single character, but about swapping characters at the right moment to maintain the action.

Efforts to highlight character themes and traits were also evident, such as changing Cinderella's ultimate skill to a mode that boosts attack power for a set time before ending in a pumpkin carriage bombardment. Character motions, gestures, and expressions have been refined to increase immersion. While I couldn't see the entire field, I noticed that to overcome the lack of a jump mechanic, the developers placed grappling hooks and balloons throughout the map and significantly increased the number of warp points. The variety of shops has also increased, though it was a pity that only combat consumables were effective since only the combat portion was open.

Of course, as this was a pre-test demo, some shortcomings were apparent. The controls while flying on Pegasus, while slightly improved, still feel a bit sluggish when turning, ascending, or descending. Landing on ledges is particularly tricky; a slight mistake causes you to get stuck on the threshold, and since there is no jump mechanic like in other open-world RPGs, you have to descend and take off again to fix it.

Excluding that, this demo was enough to build anticipation for the second test of Silver Palace. The developers have promised to refine the deduction elements—one of the game's strengths—and enhance daily content, while the combat has become more satisfying and the action sequences easier to grasp. It was impressive to see how they adjusted enemy patterns and the UI to make the action feel more natural and responsive. If this is the quality shown with only a fraction of the combat and exploration revealed, I am already looking forward to what the second test will bring when more of the game is unlocked.