evergrace

My love for this series holds no bounds and has a special place in my heart.

From the art, to the music, to the graphics, I love everything about this series.

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When I first laid my eyes upon these games, it reminded me of the games I liked to play when I was a kid. Not once did I play these games but I have relatives who did play Evergrace and forgot about it. One of my fondest memories involving Evergrace was me playing it on my 21st birthday surrounded by 4 generations of my family with one of them taking a picture of Darius to show to her sister. As a joke, my brother and I refer to Darius as Qon'Darius and he's our cousin since literally everyone in our immediate family headcanons him as being half Black. Though I don't play Evergrace regularly the same can't be said about Forever Kingdom. That game I prefer to boot up from time to time just to listen to the music, even though I own the vinyl pressing of both soundtracks.

The biggest aspect that drew me into this series initially was the music. To this day, it is the most unique video game soundtrack I have ever heard. Some of the tracks have a dreamlike sound to it like 'Awakened in the Forgotten Valley' to being mind numbing like 'Sunbeams Streaming Through The Trees On The Hill'. These songs set up the experience greatly and make traversing so interesting. I still can't believe just how well these tracks work in the locations it plays. The music that plays in the Human Research Lab in Evergrace, AI Crest, makes the location seem even more mysterious. To me, it sounds like water trickling down, if that makes sense. The music utilizing vocal sampling makes it more unique to me and I like hearing how the samples are used across songs since some of them are the same.

Aside from the music, the other thing that got me invested in this series is the artwork/character design. For Evergrace specifically, all the characters have earthy color schemes. This can be seen best in Sharline's design. Her hair is red with orange highlights and is adorned with small barrettes with a long braid on the left side. She wears the huntress uniform which is dominated by orange and purple. Gold accents her hair and her dress. In all honesty, this might be my favorite design in the game. Even now, I'm not over just how effective it is.

This can be said about Darius' design too. The base of his outfit is black and gray but the same cannot be said about his scarves that are draped haphazardly on his frame. The scarves have the colors red, brown, gold, and orange. Somewhere in the chaos is what might be a blue and white shirt though I'm not sure if it's one of his scarves. The designs are different too and contrast nicely against Sharline's design.

Ruyan's design also gives me the same amount of satisfaction, though I'm not the biggest fan of the tripp shorts he was given in the game. His walnut brown shirt sometimes appears to be golden yellow depending on the art and in game screenshots. To me, the texture of his shirt reminds me of dried straw. Interestingly the fabric on his wrists and his boots is similar to what Darius has. He also wears what I believe to be a prayer necklace but I'm not too sure. Despite me dragging on his shorts, his design is my favorite along with Karmyla.

Where the games truly begin to fail is in presentation and gameplay. Both games have their fair share of spelling and translation errors with the most notable one being Karmyla's manual descrption being, "An attractive and long-haired lady who accumpanies Darsul". Not only does Karmyla not have long hair but she and her sister were tricked to go along with Darsul's plan. In fact, her English descriptor mainly focuses on her beauty.

The games were rushed and it's best seen in Evergrace. The PS1 build was shown off in 1999 and the game wouldn't release until 2000 for the PS2 since it was scrapped. Evergrace is known for being desolate which makes navigation very difficult and frustrating. The worst case of this is the Underground Shrine in Evergrace. Every room is identical to the last and the tiny map doesn't help either. The enemies in each of these rooms are the same as well and it's very easy to get lost. Forever Kingdom doesn't really have this problem since the majority of the locations have things that can be identified...except for the Buried Cavern. This area is dark with enemies that can inflict poison if you're not careful. Since you can only hold 9 of everything, you will be tested here. If my memory serves me right, there's only 2 save points in the entire area. The sand worm enemy that you have to fight after hitting all the columns can hit you beyond the doors and can cause 1 hit KOs. Compared to Underground Shrine, Buried Cavern is easier since the map is larger than the one in Evergrace. Doesn't make it any easier though.

The voice acting is mediocre as well but it's not as bad as some say. I personally like Sharline's valley girl accent and vocal fry. Darius sounding annoyed in both games is very endearing since he's shown to be caring. Karmyla's flat delivery is something but it didn't stop me from feeling sad when she died. It may make some of the scenes funnier but it doesn't make the games borderline unplayable. Despite all these problems the games have, I still enjoy them which is very clear.