In Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, there’s an oft-quoted interplay during which the titular character, having fallen down the rabbit gap and turn into trapped in a dreamlike world, complains to the Cheshire Cat that she doesn’t need to be amongst mad individuals. “Oh, you possibly can’t assist that,” says the Cat. “We’re all mad right here.” The Cat’s statement, and this interplay as an entire, completely captures the sensation of Everhood 2, the most recent launch from International Gnomes.
In one of the best of the way, this Toby Fox-inspired RPG is as complicated and menacing as it’s fascinating and humorous, and whereas it probably received’t prime most individuals’s lists when discussing one of the best RPGs on the Change, it supplies a memorable and worthwhile journey that we’d counsel you check out.
The premise of Everhood 2 is… properly, it’s sophisticated. You start the narrative as a self-insert silent protagonist who awakens in a surreal world, guided on a quest by the cryptic knowledge of a mysterious creature named The Raven. It needs you to kill a dragon on its behalf, however you’re not but prepared for the struggle, so The Raven helps you navigate the unusual world of Everhood as you develop your energy and “uncover the colour of your soul”.
Very similar to the earlier recreation, there are a lot darker and extra severe themes that regularly come to the fore, however many of the narrative expertise for the 8-10 hours it lasts is an incomprehensible kaleidoscope of eventualities and conflicts that every go away you feeling extra baffled and intrigued than the final. Whether or not you’re liberating a contingent of alien slaves underneath the management of a pack of hyenas and sharks or serving to a small vegetable insurgency overthrow a kingdom, there may be virtually no rhyme or purpose to the sequence of occasions, and there may be completely no predicting what may occur subsequent.
In a lesser recreation, this loopy, meandering construction may run the chance of ruining your curiosity within the plot, however Everhood 2 avoids this by means of its comparatively lighthearted tone and brisk pacing. Though there’s all the time a refined, sinister vibe within the background, the characters have a humorous method of interacting with you that ensures there’s all the time one thing attention-grabbing to take care of. Everhood 2 is the type of recreation that occurs to you, and when you let go of making an attempt to know it, the weird journey by means of this goofy, gonzo world is like no different.
Gameplay loosely follows the usual JRPG template during which you go to cities, delve into loot- and enemy-filled dungeons, and have interaction in tense fight, the star of the present right here. It follows an attention-grabbing rhythm-based arrange during which you stand on a observe freeway (just like what was as soon as used within the Guitar Hero video games) and dodge coloured notes that fly at you from the enemy on the prime of the display screen.
You’ll be able to both leap over these notes or dodge to the facet, however merely avoiding them won’t grant you victory over your foes. A fast faucet of a button simply earlier than a observe is about to hit will make your character take in the observe, banking it in an vitality meter that may assist you to reply with a counterattack when you’ve snagged sufficient vitality.
Issues get slightly extra sophisticated, nevertheless, while you think about that taking any injury whereas holding on to vitality will trigger you to lose all of it. Additional, you possibly can solely retailer one coloration at a time, and should you mistakenly take in a in another way coloured observe, you’ll lose any saved vitality and drop all the way down to only one. You are able to do a small, medium, or giant assault relying on how a lot you could have, which creates an exhilarating danger/reward system for navigating fights. Do you retain stringing collectively a sequence of small assaults and simply poke the enemy to dying? Or do you belief your capability to stay untouched and attempt to construct up your vitality for way more damaging strikes?
The solutions to such questions dynamically shift not simply between battles, however usually inside encounters as foes change up their assault patterns with important shifts within the music. A minimum of on the bottom problem, this fight by no means feels downright punishing, nevertheless it exams your dexterity and strategic capabilities as you adapt your strategy within the thrilling dance with dying.
All that is properly and good, however our greatest criticism of Everhood 2 is its moderately restricted gameplay expertise as soon as the shock worth of its particular model of psychedelic insanity wears off. The sport’s strongest enchantment lies in its aesthetics and its capability to maintain you guessing, because the gameplay driving this wild journey feels comparatively shallow for an RPG.
Although the fight system is definitely attention-grabbing, the character development programs are fairly primary and there actually isn’t a lot in the way in which of drugs or celebration administration to offer you a lot company. And regardless of feeling prefer it incorporates a moderately expansive world at first, Everhood 2 quickly exhibits that it’s a comparatively linear expertise that doesn’t do a lot to reward exploration. To be clear, this relative shallowness doesn’t make it a nasty or unenjoyable recreation, nevertheless it feels prefer it falls wanting what it may be with slightly extra fleshing out.
For the visuals, Everhood 2 follows the identical graphical fashion seen in video games similar to Undertale, choosing an deliberately crude tackle 8-bit graphics. Typically it may be a bit tough to parse an surroundings and perceive what’s interactable inside, however this gentle confusion is ostensibly half its irreverent aesthetic. Once in a while, issues can even get decidedly extra trippy, and that is the place extra trendy results and even some photorealistic components come into play to maintain you off stability and intrigued.
In the meantime, the soundtrack does a superb job of matching the world’s mercurial nature by throwing quite a lot of completely different music genres at you each out and in of fight. Tracks embrace components of home, classical, rock, chiptune, pop, drum and bass, metallic, and extra, retaining you guessing over what you may hear subsequent while you encounter a brand new enemy sort. Total, it’s a fairly catchy and numerous soundtrack, and the fusion of gameplay and music is executed fairly properly.
Conclusion
Whereas we watch for the ultimate episodes of Deltarune to come back out hopefully someday earlier than the tip of this century, Everhood 2 acts as a becoming substitute for these searching for a subversive and unusual RPG that defies conventions. Its distinct combination of comedic storytelling, distinctive aesthetics, and rhythm-based fight gameplay all make this one simple to suggest, even when it will possibly really feel slightly shallow in locations. We’d counsel you add Everhood 2 to your library sooner or later; the expertise is definitely properly price it, though it’s greatest approached with an open thoughts.
