Review for Ever Oasis. Nintendo 3DS game, the video game was released on 13/06/2017
Thanks to the Nintendo Direct presented to us from time to time, we get announcements of upcoming games, often unexpected, complete with trailers and detailed explanations. Ever Oasis was presented at E3 2016, during a Direct that showed us an interesting Action-style RPG with management components. The trailer that promised fights in an open-world environment, colorful and captivating graphics, cute and well-characterized characters, and a management of resources to build and improve their oasis has brought a certain hype to all those who love this type of titles, especially for lovers of what was Fantasy Life. However, with the game in hand, can we really say that this promise has been kept?
It's time to become Oasis Chief
The story of Ever Oasis tells of a desert where once the Bulbini, nice little creatures with a bulb in their heart, made luxuriant oases grow thanks to the power of water. These oases served not only to make close-knit communities live together, but also to keep all the inhabitants safe from the threat of Chaos. This evil entity in fact spreads mysteriously, claiming victims, but is kept away from the beneficial energy of the oases and their rainbows of happiness. The protagonist of the story is Tethu (the name we can change as we like, as well as its appearance in a fairly limited customization), Bulbino brother of an important Oasis Chief called Nour. The latter cares a lot about us and our talent as future Oasis Chief, so he will give us various tasks that will serve as tutorials for the actual game.
But one bad day, the plants of chaos start growing inside the oasis, bringing everything to ruin, so Nour will turn us into a bulb to save our lives. Thus, we will return to our original form only through contact with a source of water, the only one left in the desert, where the last spirit of the Esna water also lives. Together the two, aware of the fact that the other oases no longer exist because of the Chaos, they will decide to build the largest and most protected oasis that has ever existed. Will they succeed in their enterprise?
Action disguised as management
Once you become Oasis Chief, you will need to do our best to make the community grow as much as possible. As soon as the oasis is created, an intrigued visitor Bulb will immediately come and ask us for a hand with a small quest, which once resolved will convince him to become a real resident. The Bulbini who decide to move to the city are able to open cute shops called Bulbotteghe, which we will have to supply personally with materials but who in exchange will share their earnings with us. And from here, every day of the game, we will attract new visitors including new Bulbini that we will have to convince to stay in the Oasis, and the Pingufi that instead they will only come to buy goods in the Bulbotteghe every day. The more we make merchants happy by giving them materials, the more visitors we will attract, and consequently, the more we will be able to level up the oasis so as to enlarge it more and more in a truly profitable vicious circle.
We will then spend days observing the trend of the economy, talking to visitors, using our wind magic to generate small tornadoes so as to sweep away the sand and drop the fruits from the trees to obtain materials. But can we enjoy our life from Capo Oasi? Of course it won't be all that simple.
To obtain many materials and find Bulbini and members of other races scattered around the desert in search of a place to live, we will have to take courage and venture out of the oasis. Once you leave the community, the game turns into an action RPG, in which, armed with a sword, we will be able to explore the desert and enter dungeons, attacking enemies using weak, strong attacks, and an evergreen dodge. The difficulty is not particularly demanding, also thanks to the magical barrier that gives us a large amount of extra life points depending on how many the inhabitants of the oasis are happy at the moment.
Once some customers are invited to live with us, we will have the possibility to choose two to accompany us on our travels, helped by the fact that each character has a particular ability to solve some puzzles, and different weapons effective against various types of monsters. Our day will therefore probably be lived in various steps that we will get used to very soon, such as talking to new visitors, discovering their needs, supplying the shops use the Flower Synthesizer in our home to craft new weapons and items, and finally go out into the oasis to obtain materials, save new characters, accumulate experience and explore dungeons. When night falls we will go home to sleep (since monsters are much stronger at night and it is not recommended to stay in the desert).
Between the mechanics described and the visual impact, for sure the effect seems to be perfect, however the defects begin to surface once the surface is scratched a little. Ever Oasis's biggest flaw is its fake management nature, as the visitors who will come to the Oasis and the things to do to be successful and empower our community are all scripted things. Basically it doesn't matter who will play or how many times we start a new game: the visitors will always be the same, they will always come at the same time, and they will always open the same shops. With such a disappointing administrative part we did not expect a carelessness in the fighting section, where often the cameras will take on a life of their own making us die of frustration (especially when we have to fight aerial enemies).
Even the weapons, despite a beautiful graphic change depending on the equipment worn, do not have particular properties that can make us choose one or the other in a strategic way, but will only enhance the attack value, always forcing us to choose the most powerful available at the moment. Let's not talk about the artificial intelligence of teammates, who will often start attacking in a suicidal way: fortunately at any time we will have the possibility to control each of the three party members as we wish, but keeping someone from doing nonsense is quite challenging.
Regarding the technical field, we have nothing to complain about, given the colorful, pleasant graphics, and with a decidedly inspired and appreciable character design. It must be said, however, that the dubbing is completely missing and that the musical tracks are few and decidedly repetitive.
In conclusion
Ever Oasis was billed as a flagship title, and masquerades as one when in reality, scratching beneath the surface, it's short and full of flaws. Surely it can be a purchase suitable for newbies to the genre and involves with nice characters and with unlikely features, as well as with its mechanics that will give us the impression of being in control of events when in reality it is not so. For everyone else, Ever Oasis will present itself only as a hybrid that tries to do two different things, but fails in both areas: short and extremely repetitive.
► Ever Oasis is an RPG type game developed by Grezzo and published by Nintendo for Nintendo 3DS, the video game was released on 13/06/2017
