Game #1181: Ever Oasis

 Ever workin', never restin'.

 Often considered the 3DS' swan song, Ever Oasis was the last game released on the console that received mainstream advertising. And even after its release, it's still considered one of the 3DS' hidden gems. Something I vehemently disagree with.

 The game is sort of an action RPG, in which you play as a Seedling, chief of his own Oasis. Your job is to clear the Chaos, dark evil entities, that are turning the world into a desert. But you must also get people to live in your Oasis, help them with their quests, farm, craft better weapons and... a lot of busy work.

 And first impressions weren't good, as the first hours felt like a never ending tutorial. Everything made a new tutorial window pop up. And there was no way to fast-forward it. Thankfully, about 5 hours in the tutorials stop and you can play without having to sit through them. That said, I'm sure they are gonna make new playthroughs unbearable. It doesn't help that your movement speed is ridiculously slow, thankfully you can quick travel back to your Oasis, or between different parts of your Oasis.

 The main gameplay loop is fairly simple. A new day begins, go to the Garden, plant seeds/reap your fruits, then go through your town to take money from stores or restock them with whatever item they are missing, then check on the visitor, accept his quest, fulfill it and get your new resident. In between, you have to go out to get materials for your stores and to create better equipment, you also have to progress on the main story, oh, and sometimes, when a resident's store is ready to level up, you have to do a small sidequest. And, by the by, you can only have one sidequest active at any time, so you'd better prioritize getting new residents, unless you want to wait until they visit again. And you need to restock stores because that's how you earn money, to build up more stores and to craft weapons, but also because many abilities and perks only activate when your Oasis' happiness meter is full.

 To be fair, you can unlock a few features to make it easier on your. You can have Seedling villagers who aren't busy managing a store, since there isn't enough room for every store, to garden for you. It's not as efficient as farming yourself, but you can also give them seeds to plant something specific. You can also restock your stores in bulk from an NPC, but if you want to take the money or get a stamp you need to get to the store yourself. Later on, you can send other villagers on expeditions... but A) You might need them in a dungeon B) It takes a few days and C) there's no guarantee that they'll actually find the item you wanted.

 The more I played, the more al these tasks just started getting on my nerves. Every day stores are ready to restock, and you'll run out of items, but you also want to play the game, so you send expeditions, but you have to wait for them to arrive and they might not even get the items, and if your happiness gauge isn't full you don't get the perks and... and.... Yeah... It's not my kind of game.

 On the other hand, I actually enjoyed the combat. It's pretty simple, you can take up to two other villagers with you, and play as them at any moment. There are various weapon types to use, and as you level up you can do more stuff with each weapon type. Seedlings can equip Swords, Bolas, Crossbows and Wands, Scorpion people use hammers, Snake people use lances and Rabbit-people fight with double swords. Then you get a weak and strong attack as well as a dodge, and sufficiently levelled-up characters can use special abilities with the R button. While your walking speed is slow, movement in combat feels fast, and you have to be on your toes, as enemies can take out huge chunks of your health bar. That said, you can revive fallen allies, and if everyone wipes out, you get a free one-time revive that refreshes when you return to the oasis. That said, enemies by the end of the game I felt could take too much damage, they weren't hard, but it simply took too long to take them out. At least until I unlocked the four-hit combo.

 If only things stopped there... Dungeons are filled with puzzles, and to be honest, I enjoyed them... when I wasn't returning to town. For you see, at any one moment you might need someone with a hammer, someone with a lance, a Seedling with the Parachute ability, a Seedling with the Leaf Wall ability or a Seedling with the ball ability. You might also need a seedling with a Wand or one with a crossbow. You can only have up to two allies.... And if you could swap your weapon in a dungeon that might alleviate some of the weapon-necessities, but you can't. The game tries to make it easy on you, just press Aqua Gate -> Loading Screen -> Talk to the guy in front of you -> change your party -> Return to the portal -> Loading Screen -> Carry on, but when you have to do this ALL the time just to clear a damn dungeon... it's not much fun.

 When I finished the game, I was surprised to discover it took me 20 hours. It became so monotonous and repetitive that it felt way, WAY longer, I also felt the presentation was rather lazy, it being another cutesy game with super deformed character models, basically. much like every other JRPG on the system. Mind you, I did like all the different races and how they looked, and at a technical level, the graphics are completely sound, but it just so happens to be yet another cutesy JRPG on a console full of them.

 I wish I could've liked Ever Oasis a bit more, since the game looked pretty neat back when it was first announced, and the fact it was pretty much the last big game release on the 3DS gave it this mysterious aura. But while the game is fun at times, it's also very, very tedious, in no small part due to design choices that are quite puzzling to say the least.

 6.0