onsdag 6 september 2017

Ever Oasis

Finally

As mentioned I waited for the game Ever Oasis to play and now I got my hands on it at Friday, and finished it on Tuesday. A bit under 30 hours, not 100 %, but finished the main story and Oasis on level 23 and my seedling at level 22. I played the demo when that got out for around 30 minutes and found it a rather fun action-rpg. Basically you're Tethu, a seedling and brother to your home oasis chief who teaches you all about being a good chief... well, in this game. I guess there would be some problems if the chief have to bribe the resident as well as being used by the residents to get their things. But all is not well as out of nowhere a black dragon attacks. Your brother stands between you and the monster and he sends you away before the battle. You switch to Esna, the last water spirit living in the desert that feels the destruction of the last oasis and then you land right near her. You form a pact to create the greatest oasis ever and stop the spread of Chaos.

The story doesn't get more engaging than that... well almost, one of the first companions you meet is the Drauk... let's call her M since I can't pronounce or even spell the name. The Drauks are some spear wielding lizards that are either warriors or obsessed with fashion (and I think my auto-correct guessed the origin of the name correct since it want's to spell it drakes). She looks for her little sister that's gone missing but decide to stick around with you. Other people you meet is Lev the Sekhmet (a scorpion person I believe) and Sol (a rabbit person, Langoras I believe they are called which I know is very close to another word for rabbit thanks to Zero Escape). So game is divided in to parts, one part is running around fighting monsters and collecting resources to help in the oasis portion of the game where you let the seedlings build booths to generate dewdrops that work as currency. You stock up their resources and when they profited enough you can do certain quest to level the booth up. You also can take care of a garden where you put in seeds to gather even more resources. Seedlings that doesn't have a booth you can put to work there. So resource grinding is one of the more important gameplay in this game. I should really hate this, but it feels rather good.

It never felt it was in the way of the story in like Xenoblade Chronicles where I need this specific thing that forces me to grind the same monster for hours until it decides to drop it (or you buy it after grinding some other points in X). And fighting the monster are rather fun... one on one... or rather three on one. Is it more monsters the slow camera really doesn't help in avoiding attacks which are fairly telegraphed, but that doesn't help if you can't see the monster as you are focused on someone else in front of you. Then it can go down quickly. Another aspect of the game is that you need to solve puzzles in the world to progress like in Zelda (which probably is helped by that the company behind the game are the same that did the Zelda 3D remakes on the 3DS), but you need certain characters for it so you switch in and out of the oasis to get the right combinations (between all the residents of the oasis). I get why, but it can get a bit annoying and actually takes away some of the difficulty since you heal every time you get to the oasis and yet I understand why it's there since the game would be horrendous if you had to backtrack all the time. Examples are that the spear wielding Drauk can use the spear to activate switches and lift certain objects while the Sekhmet have hammers to activate other types of switches and break rocks while the rabbits can cut open spider webs and yet active other switches and then we have personal skills like digging, mining, pellet, paraflower, flow wall and the likes. Then the seedlings can have weapons like magic staffs that can in certain areas light and darkens room, the crossbows to attack flying enemies and activate switches from afar. Really wish your main seedling could learn or equip some of the skills since it's rather irritating having set up a team to traverse the dungeon and have to stop each room to return and get in the digger which you must switch out since there ain't a combo of characters to match it in since you are limited to 3 characters so you can't even take one of each tribe (so best would be 5 people, one of each race plus an extra seedling). You know this game would be rather fun as a multiplayer game.

So thats the gameplay. The story continues with you growing the oasis until it gets overrun by chaos. To combat this you are guided by the great sage Thoth to find the lumite crystal guarded by a... guardian. You get it and get rid of the chaos for now. Knowing it will return you search for the next lucite crystal and then the next. After that you are confronted by the embodiment of Chaos... who have taken your brothers body as his vessel. He allowed you to gather the lucite crystals in order to create the black lucite to use it to conquer the desert. So you need to get the eye of truth to read the heiroglyphs and get three coloured slabs so you can power up the lumites again, get them to the Sage so you can make White Lucite and in doing so can enter the whole he created in your oasis to confront him, well not until you defeat M's little sister that decided to team up with chaos. At least she is explained, but the other two henchmen isn't explained at all. Well, you defeat him and as he escapes Esna sacrifice herself to call forth rain and sunshine to destroy him and make the desert grow again. Your character sees the spirit of Esna and your brother before they disappear and then it follows with a teaser for  continuing story. IF that implies more story, another game or that you can max out the game with your file I don't know. It felt rather short to be honest, but I don't mind with all the games in my backlog. But what I really wish is that this company would team up with Camelot and make the damn Golden Sun-sequel I want.

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