Platform: Steam
Genre: RPG
Completed: 13/09/2024
I originally played the first game, Evoland, back in 2013 and while it was a relatively short game, it stuck with me - mainly for using an interesting gimmick. The game's whole premise was that as you progressed, you would unlock and evolve the world around you. For this reason, new features would be unlocked and the world would change to reflect different RPGs from various eras. It was a brilliant idea that I never found in any other game.
So when I learned that there was an Evoland 2 I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, I wanted to see more of what the first game accomplished. But on the other hand, how does one pull the same trick twice and still remain novel?
Well, the answer is they didn't.
See, in the first game, the devs gave full focus to the gimmick and then slapped into a basic story to tie it all together. This time, however, you could see that they had a full story and then they wrapped the gimmick around that.
In Evoland 2, you don't upgrade your world the same way you do in Evoland. Instead, you travel through time - similar to Chrono Trigger - and each era is represented in an RPG style (Gameboy for ancient times; Legend of Zelda for the past; Chrono Trigger for the present and 3D for future.) So where is the gimmick? That would be with the different genres they snuck in, and boy did they ever. You had genres similar to R-type and Xenon; Street Fighter and Streets of Rage; Bomberman and Candy Crush. They even managed to get in Guitar Hero! And this doesn't even cover them all. And yet, at no point did they feel forced. They may have felt out of place, but not forced.
Another thing they snuck in a lot of was parodies and pop culture references. While I spotted a lot of them, I know that there were some that went completely over my head. In this one picture alone, you have five characters from different video games and a rock resembling Totoro. I'll admit, I did feel proud of myself when I recognized some of the more clever references.
Now while I enjoyed the game, there were a couple of things that bugged me. The first one was that there was no fast travel or escape from the dungeon option. So you spent a lot of time going back and forth to get to the time teleports to shift back and forth. At least, once you unlock the airship, traveling around gets faster.
The second thing that got under my skin was the lack of a sprint feature. It seems trivial, but the amount of times I wanted to get through an area quickly and the character - especially in the Past era - felt like he was moving slowly. It drove me nuts!
The last thing which I found a little disappointing, was the end. See, the story was pretty fleshed out and some effort was put into it. But after defeating the final boss, it ends in a way where I initially thought I got the bad ending. But there isn't one. Then there was a sequence of very quick and short events - some of which I understood what was happening; others not so much. The events were confusing to follow because nothing was said, it was all visual, and they jumped across times, so they felt out of order.
In the end, I had to look up what the ending implied and what I came across, while good if it had been delivered a little clearer, really puts a depressing spin on the conclusion of the game. I was not bothered by the implication of the ending; just the execution of it. I think it could have had a much stronger impact if there weren't segments that were implied but not confirmed.
Anyway, now I move on to my next game which is F for Frigato: Shadows of the Caribbean.
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