I'm not sure if this is the best or worst timing for Escape From Ever After: Onboarding (“Escape” from here on out) with the influx of amazing RPGs coming out. In the past couple of months, we received 2 excellent RPG remakes from Nintendo: Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. I love turn based RPGS, as someone who has lived in the golden age of RPGs (SNES era), I'm happy to see this style of RPG start to become popular and seeing a resurgence in the eyes of the gaming market. However, is this Paper Mario inspired fairytale a page turner, or will it be a better use as a table straightener?
NOTE: The game reviewed was the 1.1.6 version, As of writing, the current version is 1.1.10.
You play as Flynt, a legendary knight who gets into constant battle with Tinder, a fire breathing ruthless dragon who the townsfolk fear. One day Flynt enters Tinder’s castle to do battle once again, only to be met with a greater evil…..Capitalism! A Mega Corporation named “Ever After Incorporated” has taken over Tinder’s Castle and after an incident that throws you in the dungeon, you see the menacing Tinder is in the same cell as you and he has been downgraded, to put it lightly, to just being a cute dragon buddy with a restrictive collar. You then join forces and make a plan to escape and try to figure out how to destroy Ever After Inc from the inside out. Escape takes place during the prologue and a shortened chapter 1, so you will get an idea of where the story is going to go, but I'm excited to see how it will unfold and the worlds that this team will create.
The characters are what truly shine in this world, especially your companions. Tinder is a hot headed aggressive dragon that just wants their castle back. He is just a Super Mario RPG Bowser. A once powerful entity that is reduced to working with his greatest enemy and being really pissed about it. A hot head that is a great companion to the cool headed Flynt. Later on you meet another party member: Wolfgang, the naive positive focused traveling bard wolf. His outlook is a great juxtaposition to the rest of the gang who are more sarcastic and Flynt just isn't compelling enough in the time you have with this game. I suppose that is the point since he is the hero of his own story, so he is the generic good guy archetype, a charismatic smart mouth that has a positive attitude. The supplemental cast are unique as well, the Moon manager is the executive that tries to use corporate speak to tell you in a nice way that you are fired without benefits, HR is a skeleton witch, Customer service is a viking, and i'm sure we will see more in the full game.
But what's a story and characters without a world to explore it? Well one that is fun to explore, but frustrating to get around with. When you're exploring the world you'll be able to jump, throw your buckler and your companions will be able to use their unique abilities to interact with the environment. Dotted throughout the scenes are coins, which you collect to buy items, badges which give you different abilities and perks, sun gems that get you more unique items at certain shops, Ink bottles to give your magic abilities unique properties, and destructible environments that you can break with your buckler or one of your companions abilities to get any of the previous items. Once you finally get hired, you get your own office where you'll be able to set up furniture and decorate it to your liking with a surprising amount of decorations. But outside of the office, you'll also have to platform to get from place to place, which can be a bit of a pain since Flynt is very thin and his jump is very stiff. I did not feel comfortable jumping from platform to platform because I felt like I was always barely able to make it. Making the jump more floaty or increasing the area that Flynt can land in would really be appreciated. You also can engage with enemies while on the main world and can either attack them or avoid them. And speaking of combat, lets talk about the main gameplay aspect.
The combat system is quite a mixed bag. It follows the Paper Mario RPG formula of 2 party members entering into battle against a line of enemies that take turns doing actions. You can either Attack (either basic or use MP-Mocha Points for more powerful attacks), use a Synergy attack (Attacks you use Synergy Points on), do Tactics (Encourage/Research/Run Away) or use an Item. Outside of using an item or Encourage (spend a turn to increase SP), each action requires a contextual button press or minigame and is different for each action so you get a lot of variety. For example: Tinder’s basic attack requires you to hold down a button and release at a proper time to execute it or Flynt’s Buckler Barrage where you have to press a button every time his buckler returns back to him to continue the attack. This isn't a new concept, See Paper Mario or Sea of Stars, but it needs work in Escape. I had a lot of issues with trying to figure out the timing of my button presses to properly defend or attack. A lot of the time I felt I pressed at the right time but I still got the full force of an attack. This happened so frequently that I actually game overed 3 times during the 3 hours of playtime. Thankfully there are accessibility options here where you will automatically defend/attack on the context presses. I had to use the auto defend because I couldn't find the proper timing to defend but then it made the game a bit too easy since it's essentially just an auto +2 defense and increases your SP. Having a visual/audio cue to indicate when to press as an option would really help out or maybe giving the option to calibrate button presses would fix this issue. The Super Mario RPG remake did this super well with having a visual indicator for when to press the button and after you successfully do it a few times, it goes away. Hopefully some more features will be added in the full game but as it is now, just be prepared to be frustrated at some unfair fighting tactics by the enemy.
So what about presentation? Because it's a fairytale aesthetic, a lot of the npcs and worlds have a soft but vibrant color palette that can hurt the eyes a bit if you're playing in the dark. It's easy to spot where to go and there are lots of hidden spots in the world that are very well hidden. The backgrounds are fantastic and provide amazing vistas for establishing shots. Though this is very much a style over substance as I did notice some glitches when working Not much to say about the audio of this game, as it fits well with what it needs. The music is a mix of jazzy and whimsical that fit each area of the game well, but not very memorable as far as what I want to listen to after I play it. Sound effects are the same, it's got a very cartoony theme so you hear boingy bounces, high pitched coin pick ups. The only thing that can get grading is the “voices” they give for each character, they can be annoying but they at least fit each character well. But again, it's hard to come up with points to complain about here when it fits well with the style.
For a 2 person team, its impressive they were able to make this, but it will need to make some improvements. Better indication in combat would be very welcome, and some more forgiving platforming elements would make it more tolerable. I'm looking forward to the full game, but I say give it a shot if you wanna see the Paper Mario style of game, but wanna see really cute critters as your companions.
The full version of Escape From Ever After will be available on Nintendo Switch, Playstation 5, Xbox and PC(Steam) in Late 2024
Final Thoughts: A cute fairytale RPG that has potential in its interesting anti-mega corporation story and the humorous and entertaining characters. Fixes need to be brought to the combat to make it easier and platforming can be frustrating. Give it a shot since it's free!
Gameplay: 2 - I can see some promise, but the action button timings and platforming stiffness really make it frustrating to play.
Visuals: 4 - The style is nailed down & you can really get enveloped in this world. Glitches/clipping geometry do occasionally happen though & are noticeable.
Sound: 3 - Music fits well with each world and sound effects are appropriately placed. Nothing outwardly memorable.
Final Rating: 3 - It has potential and I hope they are able to address the issues with the combat and platforming before they release the final game.
