The first hour or so of Evoland is fun. Its premise -- explore a world where the graphics and game mechanics continuously evolve via treasure chest unlocks -- is a good one, and one that I don't see enough in gaming. It's nice to see the world shift around you, as you go from a monochrome, GameBoy-esque scene with only one usable button to a 3D world with prerendered graphics, and the sense of generational progress really applies to my sense of nostalgia.

If only they taken that idea and run with it.

About halfway through the game, when you go to 3D, the tone of the game noticably changes. The focus of the game is no longer on constantly evolving graphics and game mechanics; instead, the game tries to be a straight-faced clone of Zelda and Final Fantasy at the same time. If well-executed, this would also be a welcome development, but the game from this point onward has no depth; sure, there are Zelda-like dungeons, Final Fantasy-like random encounters and a story going on, but the dungeons have fairly basic level design, the random encounters occur WAY too frequently (one every five-six steps in the overworld), the combat draws from a miniscule pool of enemies, and the story is so shallow that I couldn't bring myself to care about anything. The first hour was great, but from there the game got very dull, very quickly.

The first hour or so of Evoland is fun. Its premise -- explore a world where the graphics and game mechanics continuously evolve via treasure chest unlocks -- is a good one, and one that I don't see enough in gaming. It's nice to see the world shift around you, as you go from a monochrome, GameBoy-esque scene with only one usable button to a 3D world with prerendered graphics, and the sense of generational progress really applies to my sense of nostalgia. If only they taken that idea and run with it. About halfway through the game, when you go to 3D, the tone of the game noticably changes. The focus of the game is no longer on constantly evolving graphics and game mechanics; instead, the game tries to be a straight-faced clone of Zelda and Final Fantasy at the same time. If well-executed, this would also be a welcome development, but the game from this point onward has no depth; sure, there are Zelda-like dungeons, Final Fantasy-like random encounters and a story going on, but the dungeons have fairly basic level design, the random encounters occur WAY too frequently (one every five-six steps in the overworld), the combat draws from a miniscule pool of enemies, and the story is so shallow that I couldn't bring myself to care about anything. The first hour was great, but from there the game got very dull, very quickly.