Evoland (PC) - Part 2

Click to jump back to part one.

After getting geared up and chatting with all the NPCs, I decided to leave the Seiken Densetsu 3 town and carry on with my epic quest to... travel the world.

It wasn't long before I ran into my second party member, lying dead in front of this gang of moles. I think they're being controlled by parasitic roses that have taken root inside their brain, so the only humane thing to do is murder them with my sword. Really kinda hoping that the scale difference between me and them is just perspective right now.

After wiping out all threats with a cunning combination of waiting and then choosing 'Attack' when my turn came around, the not-quite-dead traveller picked herself up and thanked me for my assistance. Then she suddenly dropped a quest to recover a magic crystal on me, with a 'but thou must' style yes/yes choice attached. Well actually they just ghosted out 'no', to save writing unnecessary text.

Guess I'm going with 'yes' then.

Hey how long has my guy's name been "????" anyway? Don't tell me he evolved himself some classic JRPG protagonist amnesia at some point.

You know, it's funny how the game suddenly took a sharp left turn and became a turn-based Final Fantasy clone, considering how the Zelda series actually evolved.

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (NES)

Maybe the developers just forgot about Zelda II. Nice trick if you can do it.

There was a trend for a time after 1987 where platformers began to show up with RPG features bolted on, and RPGs themselves became fascinated with jumping on things. These experiments produced games like Castlevania 2 and Faxanadu, so it'd be fair to say that results were mixed, but it's a notable period of action RPG history.

Anyway, I should get back to the grind. I'm supposed to be searching through a cave now for some crystal or whatever.

Kaeris comes with a new skill to help make battles a little more bearable: heal magic. Well it gives me a new menu option to look at anyway. Anything to help with the monotony. Plus sometimes enemies actually start wearing down my health, and with infinite mana I never need use another potion again now. Not that I ever used them to begin with.

Man this is so fucking tedious, cycling through and hitting 'Attack' over and over and over again. It's totally missing any of the features that make combat like this fun in real games. There's no strategy required, no status effects to be mindful of, there's no skills I'm trying to learn, there's no awesome sword to save up for... the only thing that's keeping me going through all these random battles that keep popping up every few steps I take is the knowledge that at least it'll eventually earn me a level up some day.

You have got to be shitting me. You utter bastard of a game!

So, funny story, it turns out that I haven't been getting a single bit of XP for anything I've done so far. It was all purely for the fun of it! Oh plus a bit of cash.

Hang on, bear with me, I just need to scream at a wall for a second.

Well at least the boss fight music is cool. He's called Kefka's Ghost, get it? It's because Kefka is an enemy that died in a game people liked! Ha-hah... references!

I'm very disappointed in myself here by the way. A friend took a look at my screen and immediately pointed out that my hero's name is a portmanteau of Cloud and Link and my sidekick's is Aeris combined with some Kingdom Hearts character, and I hadn't even noticed.

Alright I'm out of the cave now and the crystal has given me the power of 3D graphics!

I'm a bit confused though, because for a while I was left walking around an untextured polygon landscape, and this reminded me of... absolutely nothing at all. I honestly can't think of a single third person RPG like this with a plain 3D world and that's just weird.

So if you can think of any yourself, scroll down and leave me a comment about it, because I'm curious now.


MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE GLITCHED PLAYTHROUGH. 

Oops, I accidentally walked into a bat off screen and died. It's easy to do when the game's bugged to the point where the screen is now scrolling a few steps behind me. I hadn't collected the save point or the extra hit-points upgrades though so that's that then.

Or at least that would've been the end, if death hadn't glitched my hero into an invisible, immortal ghost, his presence marked only by Wind Waker-style smoke clouds appearing when I walk into an enemy. I can't get much further seeing as the 'attack' button is also the 'quit to title screen' button right now, but... man is this bug just a fluke or did it honestly not occur to the developers that someone might not collect the evolution boxes?

Anyway I'm done with glitches now, back to my proper playthrough.


SOON, IN A DUNGEON.

You know what's funny? When a developer pulls the 'this switch has activated something somewhere else' joke twice in a game about evolving gameplay features.

Actually it's pretty obvious what was activated so it's fine, really. I was tempted to turn the game off a minute ago, but now it's turned into a basic Nintendo DS looking Zelda-clone I'm finding my interest coming back.

Fuck these guys in the cloaks though, seriously. The keep teleporting in, shooting a fireball my way, then disappearing again before I can get the pointy end of my sword over to them. They're taking all the fun out of light up floor panel puzzles.

You know, I miss the old days where I'd open a box and find 16 colour graphics or sound effects inside, instead of a bloody floor tile trap maze. I have to walk around here slow enough to open adjacent floor traps without sending myself over into the lava below. It's really easy, but I keep screwing it up out of impatience. Fortunately the penalty for incineration is basically a slap on the wrist... and having to start again from the beginning.

I kinda wish this really was teaching me about classic action-adventure games right now. I need something to keep my brain occupied.

There you go, this is the first time I've ever had low health in the game. I'm against a room full of teleporting mages and skeletons that are invulnerable from the front right now, so it doesn't look good for poor Clink.

Kaeris is still around by the way, it's just doing that thing where the whole party is represented by one character. All those JRPG stats and inventory items though... they're gone. Even the potions. The FF and Zelda sides of the game basically have zero influence on each other.


EVENTUALLY, AT THE END OF THE DUNGEON.

Oh crap, it's a boss fight... is what I'd say if Evil Clink here wasn't a total pushover.

He's a variation of the classic boss archetype who charges at you and knocks himself out on the wall instead when you dodge out of the way, as seen in... well, everything. Honestly this has been a bright point in the game for me.

Man, now that the battles are 3D and the interface has been given a resolution boost this basically looks like an iOS port now. The evolution of RPGs has taken us to a dark place.

Fortunately combat is a lot more interesting now that... ha ha, no it's actually fucking terrible. The music fits the part, the art is cool, the animation is fine, and it all moves at a decent pace, but there's no game here! I select 'Attack' and sometimes also 'Heal', that's it. The combat system has not evolved one bit and I've been given no new commands.

What's even more annoying is that I can't cast spells or use potions out of battle, so I can only heal up during fights, which drags things out even further.

Oh finally, I've found a town! I didn't have to walk all that far, but random battles every few steps made that feel like the longest stretch of featureless grass I've ever had to cross. The encounter rate is ridiculous.

Hey it's that place that shows up in every single article about Evoland. Probably because there's only two towns in the entire game.

Hang on, they've put pre-rendered backgrounds after textured polygon backgrounds? Well I suppose to be fair I never saw a polygon town, and FF7 did have a 3D overworld and battle screens... oh fine, I'll let them have this one.

This place does seem cool though, plus the music is very Final Fantasy VII. Here, have a link: http://youtu.be/MqjW96YNOvg

Wow, really? I only walked to the next screen!

I mean I get that it's a joke about how 3D games brought loading times with them (and yet there were no disk loading jokes in the monochrome era...), but the thing is that FF7 doesn't actually pause to load the next area for all that long. It certainly doesn't flash up loading screens each and every time.

Here's an example of Evoland's witty NPC dialogue for you.

Now that I've brought the crystal back, Sid (the guy with the airship) fills me in on my next task. I need to recover the two halves of the Amulet of Gorn to open the Black Citadel so I can go inside and take down whoever's in there as he's been corrupting the Mana Tree to spread the Waste that's consuming the land.

First though I need to go run around town talking to people one after the other to find out who has the bomb weapon I need to blast my way in. With loading screens between each screen.

The sad thing about Evoland is that it's not even a good parody of the games its referencing. It's basically just a whole game of 'wow, remember these annoying things, aren't they annoying?'

But hey at least there's a variant of Final Fantasy VIII's Triple Triad card game here for me to play called Double Twin. Get it?

This really is just Triple Triad though, as I put down a single card on the table each turn to flip over any adjacent cards of the opposing colour with weaker numbers on the connected sides. But the FF8 game is called Triple Triad because it's on a 3x3 grid, right? So really Double Twin should be on a 2x2 grid.

Nitpicking is the only thing that's keeping me going here, please understand.


LATER.

Surprise genre shift! I went after one of the amulet halves, and suddenly found myself in a parody of Diablo III. Really this is just Zelda again except that I'm being swarmed by enemies, they drop piles of money, and I've been given a three hit combo move that finishes with this area of effect crystal attack.

It's even started flashing up Unreal Tournament commentator phrases like "Multi Kill", "Killing Spree", "Rampage" and "Unstoppable" because... fuck, I don't even know any more. Would've been cooler if it shouted them out though. It'd also be cooler if I couldn't win every fight by simply standing still and tapping the attack button.

Oh cool, I love this new inventory art. Shame nothing from Final Fantasy or Zelda mode carries over and it exists purely to show off joke item descriptions. "+5% chance to get an item you could actually use" might have been funnier if it had some set up, but as it is it just looks like a joke about how everything I've collected here has fuck-all effect on gameplay.

I feel like there's been a shift in the game as it's gone on and it's become more about mocking classic games than celebrating them. I don't know, maybe I'm just finding it less fun now.


LATER.

Oh hey, I've stumbled across a clever idea that makes use of evolution mechanic in gameplay. Apparently the start of the game was so long ago now that the small saplings here have grown into mighty path-blocking trees in the meantime, but I can activate crystals lying around to turn back the clock to 16-bit times and walk right over them. I need to get into a position to shoot my new arrows through a fire, set the arrow alight mid-flight, and have it land into a sapling to incinerate it. If I get rid of them in the past then I can get through in the present.

There's other complications, like dimensional blocks that can only be walked past in 3D (because they look smaller from a different perspective), or unlit fires, and it all makes a pretty solid foundation for a puzzle.

But even this quickly became the most tedious crap, forcing me to walk the long way around several obstacles several times to figure out how to light fires sitting just off screen. Fortunately this mechanic is only used in this tiny area and once I got my amulet piece I was done with it.


SEVERAL MINUTES/HOURS LATER.

The Citadel Boss is basically called Sephiroth.

The fight against him is unwinnable.

I only found this out after I'd used up all my potions.

I had brought a lot of potions.

Man, I know that the shit game design is supposed to be funny and nostalgic and everything, but it's wasted on me as I still play games like this all the time. This is honestly wearing me down now, I don't think I can take much more of it.


A SHORT WHILE LATER.

Whoa, I'm at the end already? Wow, this is a really short game. Okay Zephyros, it's time for round two!

Actually I just remembered I hate boss fights like this, and this seems like a particularly long-winded one involving a lot of running around in a circle and dodging his flame breath, so I think I'll just turn it off now. I could probably finish the game entirely in just two more minutes if I had a lucky run, but I'm not exactly feeling lucky right now and I can tell there'll be no fun in this for me either way.

I'll just have to miss out on all that closure. Alas.


CONCLUSION

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I've seen Evoland mentioned on forums every now and again, and no one ever seemed that positive about it, but I wasn't too put off by that. I figured that even if the gameplay was nothing special I'd be entertained by the evolution gimmick at least.

I figured incorrectly!

The game's basically split between mimicking Final Fantasy and mimicking Zelda, and the main problem with that is the FF gameplay is the equivalent to someone continually treading on the back of your shoes as you walk. You press Attack and sometimes you press Heal and that's it. Combat works in the FF games because when you journey out into the random battlefields you have some kind of plans and goals in mind. Maybe you want to level up a character or a skill, maybe learn an enemy technique, or maybe earn a little bit more cash for a sword etc. The fights themselves aren't all that interesting in the classic games for the most part, but they're a piece of a bigger scheme you're working towards. Oh plus the FF games generally let you bring out more than two people, and that helps. In Evoland the JRPG sections are like a minefield of interruptions, each more identical than the last, except for those rare occasions you manage to come across too many tough enemies at once and have to run off in the hope that you'll have time to heal up in the next fight before getting stomped.

The game is much more entertaining in the Zelda dungeons however, depending on your tolerance for creeping along invisible safe paths bordered by lava traps. They're really basic, there's not a great deal of insight into the evolution of game design there, but they're functional.

Personally though the biggest shame of the whole thing is that it really is just an expanded version of a browser game that was originally rushed together in 30 hours. The original programmer brought in some talented artists and musicians to polish it up and make it pretty, but it they didn't rework the design to be more true to the concept. The game doesn't even come close to living up to its premise as it doesn't really seem to give a shit about video game history, and that's a real shame as it's a bloody good premise.

Indie developers, quit making Minecraft zombie shooters and start making Evoland clones already! This is a fantastic idea crying out for an inspired execution by someone passionate about video game history, and it would fit basically any genre. Sure it'd take some figuring out, but it would probably be a whole lot more fun to play through a guided tour of the more archaic and unintuitive classics than it is to play them for real. It'd be more interesting than this was, that's for sure.

You can play the original (exclusively Zelda-style) Evoland browser game here for free: http://evoland.shirogames.com/classic

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If you managed to read 10 pictures worth of that article before skipping to the end, award yourself 25 points, if you managed 20 pictures then award yourself 50 points, but if you read the whole lot of it then all I can give you is my apologies and a promise that I will go and do it all over again for some other unfortunate game in a few days. Also, comments are cool, so you should leave me one and throw some feedback my way.