Death is an event horizon. On one side there’s life, and everyone alive knows how that goes, and inevitably there’s death but it’s only seen through life’s perspective. The body stops and becomes fertilizer for the next generation, and unless someone is lucky with immediate medical care, it’s a one-way transition with no coming back. If there’s anything after death that information isn’t coming back to the world of the living, so maybe there’s pearly gates, maybe a river with a ferryman needing a couple pennies for the fare or maybe it’s every bit as strange asEverhood 2.
Turns Out It’s More Eternal Quest Than Eternal Rest
Everhood 2is the story of a soul ambling through the worlds after death, bouncing from one story or scenario to another on a quest to…something. Beat a dragon, sacrifice the senses while paddling a rowboat from one island to the next or possibly just figure out the lay of the land while slowly making sense of an initially-senseless chain of events. One minute you’re saving up to get past a bouncer, the next you’re helping a vegetable kingdom at war. Become the savior of little alien guys and see their future play out over the centuries or debug a game cartridge by walking along the circuitry. Every story is different from the others but slowly a cast of central characters reveals itself, including a raven guide, manic wolfman, mysterious cat and several others. It’s a weird afterlife, but at least it’s never dull.
Review: Everhood
Everhood is likely to be one of the most surprising, smart and moving games to surface in 2021.
As an RPG, though,Everhood 2has its share of ornery creatures and bosses looking to get in the way of a wandering soul’s journey. Like the originalEverhood, every fight is waged with musical combat, where the attacker sits at the top of a note track, usually five lanes wide and sends colored pips down the lane for you to either dodge or absorb. Dodging is simple enough, left or right changes lanes automatically, but there’s also a jump button for when you’ve got a good reason to stay in the current lane, such as picking up the next note in the pattern.
As an RPG, though,Everhood 2has its share of ornery creatures and bosses looking to get in the way of a wandering soul’s journey.
The colors in the notes are there for building a chain, with the first one starting the combo and each additional color note absorbed without taking a hit or collecting the wrong color by mistake adding to the strengh of your next attack. Attacks come in three levels, with a weak but quick hit only taking three of the same color while the next two tiers up take significantly more but are proportionally effective as well. There’s no actual limit to the amount of notes you can use in a combo, although in full disclaimer I didn’t actually test to see if it tops out at 99. A thirty-combo is frequently enough to one-hit the monsters, and that’s not taking into account they’ve got a color attack they’re weak against if you can figure it out and are good enough to chain it.
The Importance of Getting it Right the First Time
The one-hit kill is more a bragging right than anything else, but there’s an achievement for doing it to each monster in the game. This is because they’ve all got their own unique note patterns and music, some of which loops after thirty seconds and while for the bigger monsters it plays far longer. Or at least it feels longer while trying to learn the pattern, where to dodge the wrong-colored notes and when to leap in to swing at the ones in to build up the chain. The note tracks can get crowded as well, with some notes being translucent crescents that can’t be absorbed, while others have shields sticking up that can’t be jumped over.
Topping it off, monsters aren’t random but rather a one-chance-only affair, gone and done with once defeated and not respawning. If you want to chase after perfection you may always hit pause and restart the fight, which can be incredibly tempting when you can feel you underestimate the power needed to earn the insta-kill. That can also be a trap, though, and sometimes it’s just better to put a few decent hits together rather than aim for a goal that ends up being more work to earn than it’s actually worth.
The one-chance doesn’t apply to all monsters, seeing as the same type can appear multiple times in an area, but it is a theme for many parts ofEverhood 2. Certain events only give one chance to do them perfectly, such as playing as a side-character protecting the wandering spirit and if they go down the spirit has to take over the fight. There’s even a feature with an elevator where in addition to keys granted as a normal part of the plot to get to certain floors, codes are given out by characters that, if you don’t write them down on the spot, are gone forever. Text isn’t auto-scrolling and will hang around while you jot it down, but I ended up creating a note on my phone consisting of a series of six-digit codes once I realized that the first one I’d passed over wasn’t coming back.
Closing Comments:
Everhood 2is a game that’s all over the place, with different stories, changing art styles, a unique combat system and a main plot that somehow makes more sense as it’s getting weirder. While the central hook may be the combat system it shares equal time with everything surrounding it, even if the music-based combat and the weirdness of the story and settings feel like two separate games most of the time. It’s also a game that demands patience, seeing as its plot can feel like a series of non-sequiturs until various story strands start connecting, but while it never makes perfect sense it’s still fun to see which bits of the weirdness pay off and which bits of pretentiousness eventually have the wind taken out of their sails. The post-death world takes a bit of getting used to, but it’s got an underlying almost-logic holding things together, and when that’s not enough then dancing through the combat will see a wandering soul eventually find its way home.
Everhood 2
AN UNCONVENTIONAL ARPG where you battle enemies through musical encounters.Enter the world of Everhood.Discover the color of your soul and what lies beyond the river of death in a strange land. Accompany a mysterious celestial Raven who has deemed you worthy of slaying the Mind Dragon.FeaturesMaster the music-based battles with over 100 songs!Voyage through a transcendental journey across 8-10 hoursEnter a wild universe with mind-bending visualsConquer the unconquerableCustom Battle Editor SupportMake funny friends!
