Everlasting Journey

Alright, this is my first review, so I'm just hoping I can do a good enough job, and give good enough feedback.

Okay.

This game... is amazing. I had a lot of fun with about 95% of the game. So, the game starts out with you waking up in the basement of a bar in Raanan Village, completely hungover after a night of drunken brawling and other mischief during the town's big drinking festival. You are Sparrow, a lazy worker at a cleaning company, who leads a boring life - you really get a sense of how shitty your character's life is; your boss hates you, none of the people in the town really like you, and you have a terrible job cleaning up vomit, broken glass, and other debris in parts of the town.

STORYLINE:
Without giving away the plot, you end up taking a break of sorts from your job, and end up having a fateful meeting with a girl named Athesis, who's on the run from her crazy lover. Part of what I love about the game is the scale of it, and how PepsiOtaku slowly expands it - on your "quest" to get Athesis away from this crazy guy, you end up stumbling into bigger and bigger problems - avalanches, monkey hunts, food festivals, caves... of insanity, etc. The plot itself is very, very good. Very few parts of it seemed like filler to me... with the exception of a few bits - most notably a sequence involving a king's brother, who lives across a fucking mountain range as well as a swamp, with a high enemy encounter rate, and a bunch of dead ends, so you end up running into combat on accident quite a lot. The thing about that part of the game that pissed me off was maybe the fact that... well... you had to go through that area about five fucking times. Another part was probably the Gloomshade "gloomy" Forest, where if you entered the wrong part of the forest, it would plop you right back at the start of it - aaaaaaand, every part of the forest looked exactly the same, save for tree stumps or mushrooms "showing" the correct path to take. Overall, though, the story was very enjoyable, and even in parts where I got frustrated (more on that later...), I still wanted to see the story to completion!

- SPOILERS AHEAD-

CHARACTERS:
As for characters, PepsiOtaku did a FANTASTIC job. You become very attached to your crew by the end of the game, and you've had pretty important and memorable experiences with each of them. As for their personalities, I have mixed feelings. Sparrow, the main character, is someone I immediately thought was a cool character - he is much like the main character from a game I'm making, too, so I felt a kind of connection... haha. But really, he's funny, sarcastic, and aware of cliches, and in some instances, the fourth wall - which lead to funny moments in the game. What I don't like about him, though, is that he has depth and everything, but he doesn't really come into his own until later in the game. He sort of blindly follows Athesis's orders, and at the point in the game when she's kidnapped, THEN he has a goal, and he comes into his own. As for Athesis, she is also a likeable character (until the later bedroom scene.... >:( not cool!), but her friendship/relationship with Sparrow kind of never goes anywhere. Just before anything really happens, it abruptly stops, and only once Roger's airship flies in at the end do things start to... go back to normal, sort of.

Phillip and Floo were also awesome characters, and I actually had interesting experiences with these guys... (more on that later, too). Sueto was also a brilliant character, as well as useful in combat. Val, too, was a good character - I was skeptical at first because she arrived so late in the game, but she ended up being a memorable character. Miles was also a cool character when you first meet him. Of course, at the end of the game, I hated him with a passion. Paul was an awesome bad guy, I think. You really think nothing of him at the beginning, and by the end he's like your #1 enemy. Awesome. I also enjoyed one-upping Jerry throughout the story.

GRAPHICS:
Awesome! The graphics were one of the best features of the game, I think. I don't have much to say about them, because I don't think they need to be improved. Very very good looking. I also really liked the use of RTP in the game, especially the whole slew of new animations for Sparrow, who used RTP sprites.

SOUND:
Now, I've got sort of mixed feelings about the sound. Sort of. On one hand, the sound effects were very nice, and very fitting. On the other hand, the game uses the same battle song through almost the entire game. While I did like the song, the stats at the end of the game told me I'd fought almost 300 battles. Nearly all of those were random encounters, and the said battle song also plays when you win a battle. So.... that song played nearly 600 times for me. It got... just a bit old. However, the boss fights used different music - such as the Elite Guard fight, which had great music for me to listen to while I was pulling my hair out. (more on that later as well) Overall, the sounds and music were very nice, with the exception of that battle song.... over and over.

IMMERSION:
Alright, the game was immersive. For me at least... really immersive. I played it all the way through in one sitting. (Yes, it took like 10-12 hours) I wanted to see the story through all the way so bad! And, despite probably fucking up my body from not moving all day, I just had to beat the game! Excellent job with immersion - the world was huge, and by the end of the game, very easy to navigate. You learn lots about the world as you play: the "polar opposite" cities of Firam and Hiram, the Mines of Insanity that allegedly take days to pass through, the frozen tundra of Prita, etc. The part of the game when you and your buddies have passed through the Mines of Insanity, and are reminiscing on your adventure, I think is probably one of the best parts of the game.

GAMEPLAY:
Alright, as for the gameplay... this is probably the bit of the game that pissed me off the most. There are things PepsiOtaku did well, and some things he just... should consider fixing.

First of all... random encounters. I hate that shit now. I didn't know you could escape (the "Run Away" button at the main fight menu is grayed out) until the last half of the game (there's a second escape button in the "Fight" menu... yeah. It's not grayed out. GRRRR.) Also, while many of the items in the game were always stocked up in my inventory (Potion, Mortion, Eth, Ether, Phoenix Up), a lot of the other items that cured conditions just collected dust for most of the game, as well as the scrolls... until I realized how useful those actually were.

Now, I want to talk about many memorable (a.k.a. stressful) gameplay-related experiences I had.

Vortikyth Battle: This was the beginning of the boss fights that caused me major psychological stress. The Vortikyth battle I believe was the first one to start this. Having to kick his ass before his "Fire (All)" spell went off made me panic beyond belief. I lost my entire party immediately after his spell went off, so my next plan was to hit him with Tech attacks instead of regular attacks (Yes, I'm a lazy fuck who used AutoBattle up until that point). After dying two more times, I decided to buy some ice scrolls. Like... oh, what the hell, I have nothing to lose now. I spammed the hell out of them, and took out Vortikyth in no time! Unfortunately, after all that stress, the sequence afterward with Sparrow and Athesis (which I guess was changed from the earlier versions as a gag), ended with my man getting rejected! I didn't even get to celebrate my victory with pixel romance!

Elite Guard Battle: I'm sure anyone who's gotten to this part will agree with me on this one. This battle ruined my life. You have to fight these two mammoths in armor, basically, and they're resistant to like... almost fucking everything in your inventory. They can kill just about anyone in your party in two hits, and they each had like 5000-8000 health each (I don't exactly remember, I try to put that memory out of my mind). I fought them SO many times, and by the end, I was using Floo to wind gust the fuckers, Phillip to give everyone Mortions, Sueto to shoot fire at the guys, and my main bro Sparrow to hit both of them. It took me forever. FOR. EVER. I even resorted to stalking the halls below for an hour, racking up money and experience with random encounters, so I went from level 17 on all my guys, to level 20 on all of them before the fight.

Interestingly enough, the battles got easy for a while after this. I fought a whole slew of bosses without any real trouble (Thanks to my A-Team) until...

Phillip and Floo: I had the stupid idea to put Val and Sueto on my team near the end of the game. I figured the fire/ice/lightning trio would kick ass. And it did - we mowed through that castle like no one's business (well, we had a BIT of trouble with the Butcher). However, once Phillip and Floo needed to go in, that's when I realized "Fuck, I'm stuck with the slowest guy in the game, and the weakest guy in the game." This was a bad situation. I had to fight three sets of guards, as well as a fourth set with a super powerful leader guy. Really, Phillip's the slowest guy ever. I could have about 3 turns with Floo before Phillip cooled down. The downside was that Floo was also the weakest guy in the game. I had a horribly unbalanced team - as I had no idea I'd need to fight that many soldiers. Floo kept getting killed, and I'd have to waste a turn with Phillip reviving Floo - although more often than not Commander Adolf would use a berserk spell on me before I could get a turn, subsequently wasting ALL my turns after that. I eventually got the battle figured out, though - using Phillip as a damage sponge, and Floo as my "defender/healer."

As for the final battle, WELL DONE PEPSIOTAKU. Now THAT was fun. Figuring out Paul's weaknesses and main distraction was very challenging and fun. Man... that was just a cool fight. Well played. After that fight, I put the past behind me and realized that I really enjoyed the game.

FINAL VERDICT:
So, despite all that emotional trauma, the game was excellent. I enjoyed it very much, and I now just look at those boss battles as character-building exercises for players... haha. But really, the boss battles were my main complaint about the game, because the battle system itself, while not groundbreaking or original(which is totally fine), was very tight. It's just... those boss battles.... and random encounters... :(

So, here's my verdict.

STORY/IMMERSION: 9.5/10
Aside from some frustrating things in the story (namely Duke, Gloomshade Forest, and the bedroom scene), the story and immersion factor was excellent. Really. It was just fantastic.

CHARACTERS: 9/10
I liked all the characters in the game - I'm not sure if I should list this under gameplay, but it was infuriating how weak Floo was. I understand that he's like the magic-oriented guy of the group, but his standard attacks pack a pretty mean punch - it just doesn't make sense why his health won't even reach past 100 until the end of the game! As for Phillip... just make his cooldown faster. Please! He was a useless character (in battle, I loved him in the story, though) until near the end of the game. Early on, I just used him as a healer, until he got his emergem.

SOUND: 8/10
I enjoyed the music and sound effects, and even liked that battle music when I wasn't letting it drive me crazy. However, some of the music didn't seem fitting in the location it would play, and there were quite a few instances when sounds were recycled (like the "Anger" spell sound playing whenever a monster roared....)

GRAPHICS: 10/10
I can't praise the graphics enough. Everything fit well in the game, and everything looked extremely polished and pretty. Especially those dang FaceSets - I use RM2k more often than RM2k3, and as far as I remember, the FaceSets in Everlasting Journey are different than RTP ones. They looked really nice!

GAMEPLAY: 7/10
I feel shitty for giving gameplay such a mediocre rating, especially when everything else in the game was so well executed and great. But the random encounters and boss battles really caused a lot of stress. The one thing, however, I did like about the boss battles, was that "Shop on the Go!" lady that you find before them. That was good - typically, the items you find for sale give you hints to what the boss ahead is weak to. If you can't afford the items, though, there's usually the chance to rack up gold and XP with random encounters nearby, which not only brings my score for gameplay up a bit, but it also makes me wonder if the random encounters are so bad after all... maybe they're more acceptable when you start nearing the Shop on the Go person.


OVERALL: 4.5/5
Despite the occasional bit of frustrating gameplay, Everlasting Journey is a fantastic game full of memorable characters, cool treasures, immersive towns and countries, a funny, adventurous storyline, and a number of movie references and RPG cliches as well! I really enjoyed it, and I cannot wait until the next chapter of Everlasting Journey!

(This was my first review, so I hope I did alright!)