Evoland – Review
Evoland is a game about the EVOlution (get it?) in RPG games. Evoland begins as an 8-bit black and white RPG that evolves into a more advanced and modern hack ‘n slash adventure. During your journey you’ll have to find chests that ‘upgrade’ the game. The unlocked chests add more and better movement, advanced sounds and music and better graphics. This way you go from an 8-bit RPG to a 3D hack ‘n slash game with several other RPG styles in between.
Story
Besides the changes to graphics and sound, the story also evolves from you being a nameless character to a hero who has to save a village and do some, uhm, other RPG things. The story that you get from opening the chests isn’t very interesting, it’s cliché and lacks actual depth. The writers could have done a better job with it to make it more interesting and engaging. However, the ‘real’ story is about making the world evolve and take you on a short journey through the history of RPG gaming and this is quite fun.
Graphics
It goes from 8-bit graphics to advanced 3D. It looks decent but it’s never really impressive. The environments are good but they severely lack the creativity and quality of the ‘original’ games. On the other hand, we can’t expect a game with very limited funding to look as good and shiny as the more expensive games. The one thing that did bother me was the amount of enemies. It felt like I was fighting the same ones over and over again. They could have created some more.
Sound
Just like with the graphics, the music evolves as well. You start out with no music and limited sounds and you improve the music as you open new chests. The soundtrack fits an RPG perfectly but, again, it never gets as good as the referenced material.
Gameplay
You start with your character in a two dimensional 8-bit world where you need to unlock chests to improve the game. These chests change the graphics, sounds, story and how your character moves. The important ones are almost never hard to find.
You move around using the arrow keys. The controls are good when you start out but near the end they should have switched it to movements with the mouse. In a 3D environment, moving around with the mouse gives you a lot more freedom. This would have been especially handy in the village and the Diablo-part.
While playing you’ll have to fight enemies (duh). When you’re still in 8-bit mode you have to hit the enemies with your sword one time and they die. It’s not difficult but if they hit or touch you, you die instantly. In the beginning I found this frustrating because they walk or fly randomly and very often they’d hit me before I could hit them. When you die, you go back to the start screen so this can be very time consuming.
Another style of fighting comes after a while; the typical Final Fantasy turn based fights. These are extremely simple but lack variation. You always have to fight the same enemies over and over again and basically you only have one attack. The amount of fights is also very high so it gets boring really quick. There is no real reason for these battles since the XP and money you gain is almost useless. They could have lowered the frequency of the fights, put some more varation in the enemies and they should have added more attacks than basic hitting.
The last fighting style is like a hack ‘n slash game like Diablo. This one is definitely the most fun and it’s a pity it’s so short.
There aren’t really puzzles in the game. It’s mostly killing enemies and opening chests. In some dungeons you also need to evade traps or go press a button somewhere to open a door but that’s hardly a puzzle.
Conclusion
When you look at Evoland as an ordinary game it’s not that special. Fights are boring after a while, the story is a non-story and the graphics aren’t exceptional. What makes this game fun is the humor, the references to other games and the way it keeps on ‘evolving’. If you’re a fan of RPG’s you should probably pick this one up to have a few hours of fun but don’t expect a compelling RPG game.
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[…] It’s always nice to take a trip down nostalgia lane. The Evoland series has taken this concept very seriously. If you’re not familiar with the series it’s hard to describe. It’s like several games of different moments in time had a baby and it actually turned out alright. The game lets you experience the full range from 8-bit worlds to full modern 3D landscapes. Evoland 2 took this concept even a little further and became a full-blown RPG adventure in the same style as its predecessor. A trailer might tell you more then a thousand words ever could. You can find our review of the first installment right here. […]