Some games struggle to balance a couple mechanics or more than one genre and then you have games like Evoland that combine various mechanics and genres from the history of RPGs and somehow do it with ease and it just works. You at times have a real time battle system more like a hack and slash RPG but other times you have a turn based battle system more like JRPGs. The amazing part is that both are fun in their own way in the same game. You go from 2D with little in the way of graphics all the way up to a 3D world that is more like a really polished Ocarina of Time type of quality. You advance all this by finding various chests while you are completing objectives. You get upgrades to weapons; characters introduced to your party; explore various locations. You have some parts with random enemy encounters like Pokemon while other times you don’t and it is more scripted. If I can name one major flaw in the game it is that it doesn’t have enough time and content to flesh all of this out. Characters are introduced almost as quickly as they leave and you don’t get enough time to enjoy them or to have a proper story. Don’t get me wrong what story there is is enjoyable but there is little time for back story; lore; or really caring about much as it is over pretty quickly. Even the evolution in the game as you acquire new graphics and sounds happens so fats that you have everything by a third of the way through or less. A few minor gripes I had was that there is no objective listed anywhere so you have to remember or write it down. It is a short game mind you but a screen for current objectives would have been appreciated. Another gripe is you lose some of the weapons and skills you have once your out of certain areas for no reason. One skill specifically which lets you use a giant dragon to roast enemies is used for literally one mission and then the next mission was the final one and I wasn’t allowed to use it as it was part of the turn based system and the final fight is real time. Later in the game you get a mini map but it lacks much on it other than some dots that it doesn’t tell you what they are. A legend would have been nice. Enemies lack a health bar in both battle systems. The final boss fight was made a bit tedious as you can’t even pause during it even though I could pause at will at any other time in the game.
Now that the griping is done and my chest is cleared let me say that despite all that the game is heavily enjoyable. The turn based combat and real time are both fantastic. The story while shallow is fun as are the characters. The progression system, while short, is a unique experience. There is also some good comedic moments and references.
I played Evoland on Linux. It never crashed on me and I didn’t notice any spelling errors. The game works just fine with both mouse/keyboard and a game pad. I used the Logitech F310 myself with no issues. Alt-Tab didn’t work. There are no graphics options but due to the ever changing graphics in game I can understand why. The game does auto save at certain points but doesn’t tell you when so it’s best to use the save points scattered around the map. I would have preferred manual saving even if it would be an insult to the genre.
Disk Space Used: 881 MB
Input Used: Logitech F310
GPU Usage: 2-18 %
VRAM Usage: 443-552 MB
CPU Usage: 9-22 %
RAM Usage: 2.1-2.7 GB
If you love old school RPG then there will be a lot to love about Evoland. I beat the game, finishing 81.5% of the content in three hours and twenty one minutes. It feels rushed and lacks depth but the content you are given is a lot of fun. I paid $5.49 CAD for the Evoland Legendary Edition so you could say I paid $2.75 CAD for Evoland and that is great value for it as I would say it is worth about $10. Considering that is about half the value of the current price for the Legendary Edition then so long as the sequel is as good or better then it is a good price overall.
My Score: 7/10
My System:
AMD FX-6100 | 16GB DDR3-1600 CL9 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 20.3.4 | Samsung 870 QVO 1TB | Manjaro 20.2.1 | Mate 1.24.1 | Kernel 5.10.15-1-MANJARO