Forgot to stick my 3DS on charge to carry on with Mario + Luigi Superstar Saga at work, so I took my Switch and gave Evoland a go since it's been sat there metaphorically gathering dust since I bought it.
Fun concept, that's why I bought it. Start off the game like it's an old Game Boy game, find 'upgrades' to gradually make it play like a modern title. Fun.
In execution though, not great. It's like the game is racing through to get to a more modern game rather than letting me enjoy the older styles for any decent amount of time. It changes 'generation' about 4 times within the space of about 15 minutes initially, so I really didn't get a chance to really enjoy that novelty, nor did it do anything particularly clever with the game generations they were imitating outside of purposely stiff janky controls and knowingly poor game designs. That's the game in a nutshell, showing you something kinda cute then instantly rushing you to the next thing whilst doing nothing with its own interesting concept.
In terms of the gameplay, it just plays like a top down Zelda game in one half (probably a quarter), Final Fantasy VII specifically in the other half. It's actually kind of disappointing that they're just trying to ape these two specific titles when the games concept is open for such creativity. It's not so subtle they're basing nigh everything solely on those two games to the point of your main character is called Clink (Cloud + Link, spikey yellow hair and elf ears) your partner is a pink wearing magic user called Kaerith (Aerith), there's a guy with an airship called Sid (who's blatantly obviously based off the FF7 version) and you get a weapon that is visually just the classic buster sword Cloud has. The UI is FFV, the turn based battles are specifically FF7, half the characters are based on FF7...Just make a FF7 fan game at that point.
It's a cheap little indie game so I had my expectations set low anyway but it managed to soar far below them regardless and totally waste such a cool concept by just fan boying over Final Fantasy VIII. If I wanted to play Final Fantasy 7, I would.
