Evenicle is an odd amalgamation of a game. On the surface, it's a harem anime with the small twist that those involved in the harem actually want to have sex and deepen their relationship with the main character. Below the surface, it's a game about human desires and how they're both helpful and harmful to the human condition, providing a (mostly) thoughtful look on the nature of desire and the role it plays in human society. Beyond that? It also touches on some sensitive subject material that it does not handle well.

At it's core, Evenicle is a JRPG that takes a lot of influence from the Dragon Warrior series. Combat is turn-based with a turn-order bar displaying who is going to take their actions when, and in combat you only see the monsters and the attack-effects of your characters instead of their models. Instead of mana, your actions expend a resource called BP, which charges one point every turn and carries between battles. Skills can be equipped and switched out with a point based system, and you gain more points to use more skills as you level up.

Perhaps most surprising is the lack of any real healing in the game. The healing items you get are essentially limited to full-heal elixirs and the more you have in your inventory, the more they cost in the shops. You don't get any healing abilities until about a third of the way through the game, and even then it's a one time use per battle and costs a significant amount of BP, making it far more efficient to simply damage race all of your opponents.

Ultimately though, the combat is dirt simple with very little in the way of surprises. At most I could say there were two bosses (both optional) that required a bit of thought and smart use of skills to overcome, but the random encounters rarely amounted to more than using auto-attack, and most of the story and mid-bosses fell quickly so long as you came into the fight with full BP and unleashed everything from the start.

That said, an RPG is almost always held up by its cast of characters and story, and Evenicle starts from a pretty interesting place.

The main character, Aster, lives in a world with rules enforced by a divine power that allow you to marry and have sex with one, and only one person. However, on the island where Aster grew up, he was taken care of by two women who both want to marry him. As that isn't possible, the only way he can make that dream a reality is to become a knight, which will allow him to take multiple wives depending on how many promotions he receives.

Along the way, he get embroiled in a complicated plot about a secret society working to overthrow the established governments of the world and has encounters with a colorful cast of villains, but amusingly enough, Aster's first and usually only thought on his mind is accomplishing enough so he can marry more girls. That's not to say the story is shallow or uninteresting, because it's neither, but it's often of little consequence to Aster himself.

At his core, Aster is a shameless and blatant pervert and makes no secret of his goals. However, because of the world he's in, his type is actually a bit of a rarity, thus making his attitude seem charming and sweet towards the girl's he's courting rather than creepy as he would normally be the case in a traditional harem anime.

The characters he meets along the way and those who join his party are nicely varied even as they fall into traditional harem-anime stereotypes. You have a tomboy type, a shut-in smart person type, a princess type, and a 'we swear she's of legal age' loli type. The party dynamics are fun and interesting and the characters all play off of each other pretty well. The fact that they're openly interested in sex and don't hesitate to engage in it with the main character is kind of refreshing in a sense, considering how often the harem genre tends to be all fluff and no substance.

But what about the sex itself?

Unsurprisingly, in a 35+ hour game, there is a lot of sex. The art style of the erotic scenes range from passable to great, and with ten different romantic options to pursue, you're more than likely to find a character and scene combination that works for you. Most of the scenes are fairly similar though, both in their dialogue and their pacing, and I found myself skipping parts that got tedious and repetitive. There were, however, some outliers.

One of the core 'rules' of the world is that anyone who kills or has sex with more than one person gets a black ring on their finger and is branded an outlaw. As an outlaw you can't have children, you can't harvest or cook food, and anything you try to 'gather' will produce nothing. Naturally, outlaws make up the majority of the villain’s foot soldiers, but the world quickly shows the 'flaw' in this outlaw rule right at the start when an outlaw gang kidnaps a village girl, drugs and rapes her, forcing a black ring on her finger before Aster manages to save her.

On the one hand, it's an effective way to set up the central conflict of this world. On the other hand, it's also the first scene you see in this game, and it's far from the only one. Six times you're basically forced to sit through these rape/gangbang scenes. They're not preventable in-universe and you can't really skip past them, either. Two of those six times result in a rather grueling and bloody death for the one being raped, and all of this is in incredibly sharp contrast to the otherwise lighthearted and erotic theme that the game sets for itself.

The ability to stomach such things like rape, blood/gore, hard vore, and castration (thankfully not visibly shown) is going to vary from person to person, but all of them were a very sharp departure from the game's normal tone and really affected my enjoyment of the game itself, leaving a bad taste in my mouth even after I'd finished it.

To be minutely fair, they do try to take the subject of rape seriously, showing the paranoia and trauma of the victims in the aftermath, and in a way, the black rings the victims acquire can even be considered symbolic of how real world victims can be ostracized by society just as much as the perpetrators, but they don't do enough with it to justify the gratuity of the scenes themselves, and more than a few are simply there for shock value rather than being significant contributions to the story or the world.
The vast majority of the scenes are romantic, lighthearted, and (mostly) consensual, and Aster himself always takes the view that sex should be enjoyable for both parties, but that does make the times where things veer into darker territory feel all the more out of place.

Unlocking all of the scenes in the game is a surprisingly easy task. When it comes to going back and finding things you've missed, Evenicle is generous and resets all of the flags you could have bypassed the first time through so you can get them once the game has finished, making multiple playthroughs unnecessary. Moving at a steady pace, completing everything in the game took about 45 hours, so I would say that it's worth the AA pricing. There aren't any real choices in the game so to speak of and the few choices you do get tend to be pretty blatantly 'right' or 'wrong' and picking the 'wrong' one ends the game prematurely before bringing you back to the choice.

In conclusion, Evenicle is a stock and standard RPG propped up by a clever story and engaging characters with some tasteful sex sprinkled throughout, and brought down by some deeply uncomfortable sex scenes, poor handling of sensitive subject material, and a rather shallow combat system that was more of a chore than entertaining in its own right. While I didn't regret the purchase, I doubt I'll be returning to the game anytime soon.

Evenicle is an odd amalgamation of a game. On the surface, it's a harem anime with the small twist that those involved in the harem actually want to have sex and deepen their relationship with the main character. Below the surface, it's a game about human desires and how they're both helpful and harmful to the human condition, providing a (mostly) thoughtful look on the nature of desire and the role it plays in human society. Beyond that? It also touches on some sensitive subject material that it does not handle well. At it's core, Evenicle is a JRPG that takes a lot of influence from the Dragon Warrior series. Combat is turn-based with a turn-order bar displaying who is going to take their actions when, and in combat you only see the monsters and the attack-effects of your characters instead of their models. Instead of mana, your actions expend a resource called BP, which charges one point every turn and carries between battles. Skills can be equipped and switched out with a point based system, and you gain more points to use more skills as you level up. Perhaps most surprising is the lack of any real healing in the game. The healing items you get are essentially limited to full-heal elixirs and the more you have in your inventory, the more they cost in the shops. You don't get any healing abilities until about a third of the way through the game, and even then it's a one time use per battle and costs a significant amount of BP, making it far more efficient to simply damage race all of your opponents. Ultimately though, the combat is dirt simple with very little in the way of surprises. At most I could say there were two bosses (both optional) that required a bit of thought and smart use of skills to overcome, but the random encounters rarely amounted to more than using auto-attack, and most of the story and mid-bosses fell quickly so long as you came into the fight with full BP and unleashed everything from the start. That said, an RPG is almost always held up by its cast of characters and story, and Evenicle starts from a pretty interesting place. The main character, Aster, lives in a world with rules enforced by a divine power that allow you to marry and have sex with one, and only one person. However, on the island where Aster grew up, he was taken care of by two women who both want to marry him. As that isn't possible, the only way he can make that dream a reality is to become a knight, which will allow him to take multiple wives depending on how many promotions he receives. Along the way, he get embroiled in a complicated plot about a secret society working to overthrow the established governments of the world and has encounters with a colorful cast of villains, but amusingly enough, Aster's first and usually only thought on his mind is accomplishing enough so he can marry more girls. That's not to say the story is shallow or uninteresting, because it's neither, but it's often of little consequence to Aster himself. At his core, Aster is a shameless and blatant pervert and makes no secret of his goals. However, because of the world he's in, his type is actually a bit of a rarity, thus making his attitude seem charming and sweet towards the girl's he's courting rather than creepy as he would normally be the case in a traditional harem anime. The characters he meets along the way and those who join his party are nicely varied even as they fall into traditional harem-anime stereotypes. You have a tomboy type, a shut-in smart person type, a princess type, and a 'we swear she's of legal age' loli type. The party dynamics are fun and interesting and the characters all play off of each other pretty well. The fact that they're openly interested in sex and don't hesitate to engage in it with the main character is kind of refreshing in a sense, considering how often the harem genre tends to be all fluff and no substance. But what about the sex itself? Unsurprisingly, in a 35+ hour game, there is a lot of sex. The art style of the erotic scenes range from passable to great, and with ten different romantic options to pursue, you're more than likely to find a character and scene combination that works for you. Most of the scenes are fairly similar though, both in their dialogue and their pacing, and I found myself skipping parts that got tedious and repetitive. There were, however, some outliers. One of the core 'rules' of the world is that anyone who kills or has sex with more than one person gets a black ring on their finger and is branded an outlaw. As an outlaw you can't have children, you can't harvest or cook food, and anything you try to 'gather' will produce nothing. Naturally, outlaws make up the majority of the villain’s foot soldiers, but the world quickly shows the 'flaw' in this outlaw rule right at the start when an outlaw gang kidnaps a village girl, drugs and rapes her, forcing a black ring on her finger before Aster manages to save her. On the one hand, it's an effective way to set up the central conflict of this world. On the other hand, it's also the first scene you see in this game, and it's far from the only one. Six times you're basically forced to sit through these rape/gangbang scenes. They're not preventable in-universe and you can't really skip past them, either. Two of those six times result in a rather grueling and bloody death for the one being raped, and all of this is in incredibly sharp contrast to the otherwise lighthearted and erotic theme that the game sets for itself. The ability to stomach such things like rape, blood/gore, hard vore, and castration (thankfully not visibly shown) is going to vary from person to person, but all of them were a very sharp departure from the game's normal tone and really affected my enjoyment of the game itself, leaving a bad taste in my mouth even after I'd finished it. To be minutely fair, they do try to take the subject of rape seriously, showing the paranoia and trauma of the victims in the aftermath, and in a way, the black rings the victims acquire can even be considered symbolic of how real world victims can be ostracized by society just as much as the perpetrators, but they don't do enough with it to justify the gratuity of the scenes themselves, and more than a few are simply there for shock value rather than being significant contributions to the story or the world. The vast majority of the scenes are romantic, lighthearted, and (mostly) consensual, and Aster himself always takes the view that sex should be enjoyable for both parties, but that does make the times where things veer into darker territory feel all the more out of place. Unlocking all of the scenes in the game is a surprisingly easy task. When it comes to going back and finding things you've missed, Evenicle is generous and resets all of the flags you could have bypassed the first time through so you can get them once the game has finished, making multiple playthroughs unnecessary. Moving at a steady pace, completing everything in the game took about 45 hours, so I would say that it's worth the AA pricing. There aren't any real choices in the game so to speak of and the few choices you do get tend to be pretty blatantly 'right' or 'wrong' and picking the 'wrong' one ends the game prematurely before bringing you back to the choice. In conclusion, Evenicle is a stock and standard RPG propped up by a clever story and engaging characters with some tasteful sex sprinkled throughout, and brought down by some deeply uncomfortable sex scenes, poor handling of sensitive subject material, and a rather shallow combat system that was more of a chore than entertaining in its own right. While I didn't regret the purchase, I doubt I'll be returning to the game anytime soon.