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chuckroThis is a fan translation of Okunen Monogatari ~ Harukanaru Eden, which was originally released in English as E.V.O. The Search for Eden. I’ve played it several times before. The general gist is that you’re a mysterious representative lifeform, and it has been decreed that you must use the mysterious timestream to evolve over the course of several ages, passing through various forms to earn your place in “Eden.” And you’re going to need to kill and eat a lot of other contenders on your way there.
This game occupies my brain in a similar way to a lot of the more weird and adventurous jrpgs of the SNES era. It’s really a sidescrolling platformer with rpg elements, but the emphasis on grinding and the strange time-travel/world-creation plot makes it feel very much like a jrpg.
Things I had forgotten: How plodding and useless the most basic forms are. The fact you don’t carry-over EP from era to era, which makes the massive boss EP boosts almost useless. (The game has a LOT of grinding if you want the best forms, and you often need the best forms to take on the bosses.) The platforming and hitboxes are pretty wonky—there are plenty of times it seems like something should connect but doesn’t, and vice-versa.
The majority of the areas are just straight lines (and most of the remainder are straight lines with a few platforms to jump on). “Here’s an area with a new animal. Kill a bunch of them for meat.” There are only a few areas that actually have a maze/dungeon quality to them, and they’re very heavily back-loaded in the game. You can, in theory, evolve into a final dinosaur form less than halfway through the game, opt not to evolve into a bird or a mammal, and then generally ignore the evolution mechanic for the rest of the game. If you evolve into a human, there’s no going back: You can then only switch between “tall human” and “short human” to restore your HP.
The retranslation hack changed the font so that more words can be squished in, which allows them to make the dialogue more detailed, and generally more sensical. I mean, it’s a goofy concept, but the original translation made it much goofier. This clarified the plot and gave a little more personality to the various creatures you meet, so it’s clearer what’s going on and that the crystals (and the “whisper” aliens that introduced them) are the antagonists, even if you’re also using them. It’s actually kinda weird, given that this world is presented as a competition, that Gaia has her thumb so heavily on the scales for you. Winner gets to start civilization, after all!
Overall: This game is an Enix game of its era, featuring a pseudo-religious plot about the evolution of life guided by a godlike being, with systems that are interesting but not necessarily great. The retranslation makes the plot and types of creatures much clearer, and I’d call it an improvement.
This game occupies my brain in a similar way to a lot of the more weird and adventurous jrpgs of the SNES era. It’s really a sidescrolling platformer with rpg elements, but the emphasis on grinding and the strange time-travel/world-creation plot makes it feel very much like a jrpg.
Things I had forgotten: How plodding and useless the most basic forms are. The fact you don’t carry-over EP from era to era, which makes the massive boss EP boosts almost useless. (The game has a LOT of grinding if you want the best forms, and you often need the best forms to take on the bosses.) The platforming and hitboxes are pretty wonky—there are plenty of times it seems like something should connect but doesn’t, and vice-versa.
The majority of the areas are just straight lines (and most of the remainder are straight lines with a few platforms to jump on). “Here’s an area with a new animal. Kill a bunch of them for meat.” There are only a few areas that actually have a maze/dungeon quality to them, and they’re very heavily back-loaded in the game. You can, in theory, evolve into a final dinosaur form less than halfway through the game, opt not to evolve into a bird or a mammal, and then generally ignore the evolution mechanic for the rest of the game. If you evolve into a human, there’s no going back: You can then only switch between “tall human” and “short human” to restore your HP.
The retranslation hack changed the font so that more words can be squished in, which allows them to make the dialogue more detailed, and generally more sensical. I mean, it’s a goofy concept, but the original translation made it much goofier. This clarified the plot and gave a little more personality to the various creatures you meet, so it’s clearer what’s going on and that the crystals (and the “whisper” aliens that introduced them) are the antagonists, even if you’re also using them. It’s actually kinda weird, given that this world is presented as a competition, that Gaia has her thumb so heavily on the scales for you. Winner gets to start civilization, after all!
Overall: This game is an Enix game of its era, featuring a pseudo-religious plot about the evolution of life guided by a godlike being, with systems that are interesting but not necessarily great. The retranslation makes the plot and types of creatures much clearer, and I’d call it an improvement.
