RPG fan-fiction.
Evoland is a love letter to older adventure games and RPGs -- but this letter isn't thoughtful, or emotive, or even enticing. Evoland's metaphorical letter is cloying and shallow. It smacks of desperation, of a naive desire to be best friends with those older games; of a deep-seated infatuation with their outward appearances, while completely misunderstanding their deeper significance. It's a few steps away from an "I WANT TO WEAR YOUR SKIN, HA HA HA," kind of letter.
It starts innocently enough, with a DLC Quest-style demake approach that incrementally introduces key game mechanics. This, at least, is interesting insomuch as it demonstrates abstract game concepts in the absence of fundamentals like music and health points.
But, it isn't long until Evoland "evolves" into what will become its two primary game modes: top-down Zelda-inspired wilderness and dungeon navigation, and Final Fantasy-inspired overworld traversal with random turn-based battles. "But wait," your inner voice might be wondering, "aren't those radically different approaches to statistics, inventory, combat, and pretty much everything else?" They sure are. And there are a smattering of other such "inspirations" in here as well, including a Diablo level and a 3D action-based fight. As much as Evoland may have wanted to frame these game modes as different perspectives on the same core game, the inconsistencies are just too wild to see them as even remotely related to one another.
So the game is left with a wide variety of mechanics, all directly inspired by popular and historic games. None of them are implemented very well; that is to say, if split off into individual games, none of them would even be worth mentioning. The Zelda-style gameplay suffers from poor hit detection and dull level design. The Final Fantasy-style sections are plagued by uninteresting monsters, a dearth of combat options, and an absurdly high random-encounter rate. And the others similarly outstay their welcomes, descending into tedium well before their levels are up. It's hard to call any of this stuff "gameplay" at all, until near the end, where there are actually a couple of fire-arrow puzzles to solve.
And all that would be fine if Evoland successfully parodied its inspirations, or reveled in genuine nostalgia. But its references are both too narrow, and too simple, to accomplish anything meaningful. Nearly half the campaign could be considered a poor fan-sequel for Final Fantasy VII specifically, with practically everything else in the game world directly attributable to Final Fantasy VIII, or The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, or Diablo II (or maybe Torchlight instead). But even with such a narrow focus on source material, Evoland almost always stops short of outright parody or satire. "Hey, that's Cloud's sword." "Hey, that guy's name is Cid." These aren't jokes. These are just facts.
The funniest the game gets is in its Diablo-alike section, where random (and pointless) loot drops fill equipment slots with attributes that don't exist in Evoland, or in any other game. But this is the only memorable highlight.
Un-funny, non-compelling, poorly-executed, stale-by-design. And with its ancient approach to save points, Evoland even manages to make itself as frustrating as its progenitors, while nonetheless lacking the attributes that made them fun to play.
At about three hours - excluding backtracking for meaningless collectibles - Evoland is at least two hours too long.
Better than: Caster
Not as good as: DLC Quest
If you do decide to play Evoland: don't make the same mistake I did, and assume that the game is on its last legs as you're growing tired of it. Just stop. It's not worth pressing on to find out how wrong you are.
Progress: Finished the story.