I loved my time with the original Everhood, a blend of a typical indie RPG with guitar-hero-like battle mechanics that sought to cover the nature of existence, euthanasia and other broad topics to make for a psychedelic, thought provoking adventure that had great characters, great music and fun gameplay. Now comes Everhood 2, a direct sequel that follows on from the events of the original game but sets itself in a different part of the original world. Does it hold up to the legacy of the original title? Time to strap in and find out!
The story of Everhood 2 is a bit more disconnected and scatterbrained than the original, almost intentionally. It gives you a singular goal, you must defeat the Mind Dragon, but in order to power yourself up enough to be able to take on such a foe you need to go to different worlds in order to take on random adventures to level up and get stronger, allowing you to then take on the Mind Dragon. The adventures range from helping a vegetable kingdom overthrow their tyrant king, to visiting a multiversal hotel that has guests that request you visit them, and other various types of adventures. It’s all a bit of a silly romp, and then the later parts of the game look into different parts of the human condition, nihilism and the state of the universe which is certainly quite a change of pace. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the random adventures that I went on and while they weren’t connected at all it gave a vibe similar to something like Yume-Nikki, with everything being disconnected but experiencing a singular story. I have more to say about it later, but suffice it to say, the story initially is fun to experience, though I feel the original Everhood had a better narrative and characters overall.
The presentation of Everhood 2 does certainly live up to the original as the game is a spectacle of wild colours, psychedelic visuals and varied locales. Every battle you face is individually created to match with the sound and visuals to create a cacophony of interesting gameplay segments that have you eagerly awaiting the next boss battle. Each of the locations too feel varied, but disconnected, giving a real feeling of a scattered world and some even work to change the entire visual structure of the game as a whole, such as one area that suddenly becomes a Tron-esque 3D wireframe adventure zone. The music too is also very enjoyable, with maybe not quite so many memorable tracks as the original, but still as a game that ties its music into the battle mechanics you can certain tell that the composer did an excellent job. I also like the sound design, from the satisfying twangs of a strong attack hitting an enemy, to all the silly sound effects made by certain characters giving them all unique additions to their personalities, it all comes together to make a striking experience that is a feast for both the eyes and the ears.
Gameplay-wise this title is very similar to the original, with your character wandering a world and getting into battle with random enemies and bosses. The fighting system is similar to guitar-hero with you being on a note board and having to dodge attacks sent by enemies like dealing with notes in a song. The big difference between this and the original however is the larger emphasis on RPG mechanics, with things like focusing on pure combat of sending notes back to the enemy rather than choosing to play pacifist, different weapons to unlock with unique attacks and bonuses and even gaining exp to level up and get stronger. It’s an odd choice to take such a unique game as the original Everhood and decide to add conventional RPG mechanics as the unique addition to the sequel, but I feel as though it does make it feel a bit more complete of an experience and while the game doesn’t go too crazy with the different builds you can make I could definitely see this being expanded to interesting battle mechanics in further content updates or mods. Still, aside from that, it’s still the Everhood you know and love, vibe to the beat, make sure you have good reaction times and see how good of a Guitar Hero player you can be without the actual guitar.
Now it’s time for the kicker. Despite all the things I have said about the game and all the praise I have given it, I must admit, I chose not to fully finish the game. That’s not to say that I didn’t play it to completion until credits rolled, I did, but the game spat in my face at the near end to the point that I just did not want to continue playing. To explain this as best I can without spoiling, the end of the game becomes a bit of a slog, and then as this game has multiple endings, in order to get the true ending you need access to 2 items that you pick up throughout your journey. Thing is, these items are permanently missable and becomes of the scattered and cryptic style of the game you are never told where to get these items and that they are even important. As such, because of the ending I got, I was told to start the game from the beginning again to get these items, but once again were never told where to get them or anything of that sort. It was such a slap in the face, and really made me feel bad about the ending I actually got, that I decided to just stop playing the game and look up the true ending online. The actual true ending however is in some ways worse, and makes you wonder why you bothered to go through all that effort. I unfortunately can’t say too much else without spoiling, but suffice it to say this ending experience almost single handedly ruined my time with the game, which is a damn shame as I was really enjoying myself up to this point. This is, shockingly, a game where I would actively recommend that you use a guide to make sure you don’t miss these very missable items, which is an indication of bad game design and something that I never would normally recommend.
So my final verdict? Well, this game was more about the journey than the destination. As a game, it was fun, unique, varied and provided a killer soundtrack to boot. But as a sequel to Everhood? I think ultimately it just ended up being an inferior experience overall. The ending experience was so detrimental to me that I actively do not wish to go back and experience the game again, and that is a damn shame. For the price you get the game at, you could do a whole lot worse, but if you haven’t experienced this universe before I think you should just check out the original. So much potential… a damn shame, but at least the adventure was fun I suppose.