not so much a game
but a nostalgic voyage
down memory lane
Additional Comments:
"...despite my criticisms toward digital purchases, this "teaser" more or less convinced me it may be worth purchasing after all. We'll see though. We'll see...."
-Lifted from my remarks on Evoland Classic
Well then...huzzah! My selfish material ways have, at least temporarily, subsided enough for me to venture further into the realm of digital purchases so that I could finally advance beyond the mere demonstration of Evoland into the full blown game. But the gnawing question on everyone's mind - well, maybe not everyone's mind, but for sure, my mind: was it worth it?
Knowing I'm just repeating myself, it's worth noting that I love the concept behind Evoland. After playing Classic and now the full game, I still love the concept, except...I'm not sure Evoland delivered the concept in the best possible way. Evoland Classic, essentially a short play demonstration of the full game, introduces the concept of RPG evolution by steering the player from a primitive Game Boy-esque action/adventure game through to a 16-bit top down RPG. Despite a couple minor personal grievances concerning extraneous material, Classic managed the evolutionary trope perfectly. It accomplished exactly what it set out to do. Enter Evoland proper.
Obviously, Evoland follows Classic to a T - after all, it's the same game, up until the latter half of Classic at least. Here, Classic deviates from what eventually became the official play route of the full game. Besides, Classic had to explore an ending of it's own. The full game takes the reins and further ventures into the RPG genre, introducing 3D models, side quests and mini games, complex boss fights, and its own take on the tried and true Diablo formula. Unfortunately, as the game ventures further along the RPG evolutionary timescale, the game begins to feel more and more hollow.
It's hard to pinpoint this empty feeling as the game's sole focus is about the development of the RPG genre over time as opposed to an actual story. However, there is a story embedded into the game. I can only assume this was done in hopes of deterring the game from becoming a pure abstraction of itself. Players need a hook to keep themselves invested in a game, at least in an RPG. Otherwise, the whole experience becomes droll at best. Not much is to be expected as far as story, considering the game opens up with offering our hero the ability to walk right and then to walk left. Where do you go from there? Especially when the game continually breaks the fourth wall with each graphical upgrade or other such historical innovation. Perhaps that's part of the reason while the game feels so hollow at times. There's no true investment in the world as the game feels less of a game as opposed to more of a study on gaming history in general. But the question prevails, is that a proper definition of the game as well? It should be, but it isn't.
But I could overlook the entire meta aspect of the game and focus my attention on what plot does exist within the constantly developing architecture of the game world. Whether I'm fighting monsters in a turn-based battle system across the overworld, administering wounds in the action/adventure segments, or slicing up eyeballs in the Diablo cave, I'll appreciate the story for what it is as the game wishes to express it at that given moment. In many respects, this is my big problem with the game. There's times where the game seems to hit its stride as certain play styles relate better to the game or story at hand while at other times, certain game styles seem to exist just because the developer likely had a list of things from the evolutionary chart of RPG games that he wanted to hit up, or deemed important to the cause. Whether or not he could relate them to the story made little difference. The result is a disjointed structure that instills apathy in the player. Other than seeing how the developer implemented certain key aspects of the ever evolving RPG genre, I have no incentive to accomplish anything, and never is this more true than in the Ruins of Sarudnahk.
Obviously, Diablo was an important presence in the grand scheme of RPG styles and I think Evoland pays a nice tribute to it, but in a microcosmic contextual view, as per the good of Evoland, it fails. That's not to say it shouldn't exist, it should, but it should also relate to the story as much as every other element relates to the story if the game is indeed attempting to put any merit into the story. The Ruins of Sarudnahk was nothing more than an empty playing experience because nothing meant anything other than some quirky, nerdy jokes and a necessary ingredient to achieve 100% status in the end credits. Of course, any other part of Evoland could be argued to befall the same pointless existence, but most every other locale or style seemed to have at least a drop of substance.
In the end, Evoland becomes a tale of two premises at loggerheads fighting over the intended point of the game. Are we, the players, playing a conceptual, piecemeal stroll through the early years of RPG goodness or are we playing a terribly cliché, good vs. evil parable that happens to be swaddled in a perpetually amorphous shroud of key RPG likenesses from throughout the years? I would play either. Sure, each option would inherit obvious flaws depending on how you hoped to perceive the game yourself, but at least each option would be stable. Instead, the game is an odd mix of the two; never quite sure how it wants to approach the next evolutionary element - story enriched or merely a surface element to tick off a developer's check box.
I still enjoyed a majority of the game, even if it felt vacuous at times. All of the pre-3D elements were well done as was the Sacred Grove - likely the best area in the game. While the rest of the game slowly evolved from one element to the next or awkwardly flopped from one element to the next - turn-based overworld vs. action/adventure dungeons and the clumsy usage of inventories, or rather faux inventories, the Sacred Grove took advantage of properly meshing two elements into a unique dimensional shift puzzle. I would have loved to see further implementation of this throughout the rest of the game between some of the other styles. If anything, I could imagine it giving the game a much needed shot of innovation above and beyond history repeating.
Perhaps I'm attempting to read too much into Evoland, or I expected far too much out of it. Perhaps the game is meant to be nothing more than a hollow affair accompanying our trek through 20 years of RPG evolution. If that's the case, I can only apologize for my own interpretation. In many ways, I'd rather that be the case than having just played a disappointment in comparison to the free demo. I tend to imagine my enjoyment of the game is fictitious, based on what I imagined the game was going to be as opposed to what it is in reality. My willingness to like the game boiled with such intensity that I overlooked all of the glaring flaws voluntarily. Perhaps there was truth to all those mediocre reviews I read some years back and intentionally disregarded them because I wanted to believe that they just didn't "get" the game. It's disheartening because Evoland Classic gave me such high hopes and gave me reason to ignore many of the more dismal reviews.
However, I must make it clear that most of my general disillusion occurred upon finishing the game when I realized I somehow missed out on a proper gaming experience somewhere along the way. It wasn't readily apparent and only upon reflection it hit me how devoid of actual substance it is. Until that point, fantastic game, as long as you accept the fact that you're shallow. Guess my advice is don't finish the game or else fall prey to how artificial the whole experience is. Maybe the best way to sum it up is that on the whole, Evoland lacks that certain soul that appears lacking in so many of the games crafted in RPG Maker - an intangible quality that's terribly difficult to describe but noticeably absent when such is the case.
The music is typical RPG fare, but to play into the hands of an ever evolving style, uses multiple versions of each song befitting to each stylistic cue, be it 8-bit, 16-bit or one of the more modern incarnations. Generic or not, I enjoyed the approach and appreciate the soundtrack for what it is. And honestly, when done well, I enjoy generic RPG fluff. A personal favorite would probably be Overworld [16 Bit]. Airship is fairly pleasant as well.
Interestingly, a sequel came last year and much like I was with this game initially, I'm intrigued. Even after my disappointment in Evoland, I'm strangely positive about the sequel. It looks promising, but then, I could be just as naïve as I was going into this game; under the influence of grand illusion invoked by my own personal hopes and desires for an "evolutionary" style gaming experience. I suppose as I already said after having played Evoland Classic; musing on whether or not I'll buy the full game, here too it's only appropriate to say, "We'll see..."
Nano-Rant:
Previously discussed within my comments for Evoland Classic, I feel I must touch on this again as I find it to be an incredibly poor design choice. Secret passages hidden behind nondescript walls. There's a reason why all the great RPGs place tiny tell-tale signs of where a secret passage may lurk. Nobody wants to spend endless amounts of time attempting to enter every 16x16 tile hoping a secret may exist beyond. Except, the full game kicked it up a notch over the demonstration with one particularly nasty example.
While not a spot on definition of what I'm already driving at, it essentially falls under the same category. I spent forever trying to figure out how to get to a particular chest in Noria Mines, fully expecting it to fall victim to more invisible passageway bullshit that's already rampant throughout the rest of that particular dungeon. Nope. Turns out I had to fall down a hole, which I would have never expected because upon accidentally being swept into one of the holes by a menacing whirlwind, I quickly learned to tread carefully and beware the gaps in the floor. This harkens back to one of my biggest issues with Where's Waldo? where once the player learns that something is inherently bad the player will ignore it from there on out. You can't teach the player one thing and then suddenly play the old switcheroo. Sure, the game just places my character back at the beginning of the room - there's no real punishment from falling in one of these holes, but it's still equatable with failure. Why am I going to voluntarily place myself into a situation of failure? It makes no sense, even for the purpose of exploration. It's simply dickish design and nothing else.
Rating: 2.5 DVD Players out of 5
