1 ever oasis - trying the adventuresome demo!

Dear Readers,

Let's try the Ever Oasis demo! I'm hearing nice things about this, so why not give it a shot?

Wow the title screen just loads immediately. Good text font size as well. Two major pluses so far :)

I was a little cold on this title at first because of the big bobble-headed characters. I feel like I've seen enough of them with the likes of Animal Crossing and some other 3DS RPGs. City simulation gameplay I'm not typically keen on either.

As for things that are encouraging me to try this game out, there's the generally warm reception from online game fans and reviewers; there's of course the demo; and then there are the credentials: Grezzo, who made the fantastic 3DS versions of the N64 Zeldas and Koichi Ishii, who created the Mana series. The first Mana game, Mystic Quest/Final Fantasy Adventure for the Game Boy, is my favourite Squaresoft game. He gets some recognition for this, yet there's something very low-key about his celebrity. He has a nice little message in the instruction manual about building relationships with others in the game and in real life as you face challenges.

So in this demo, the oasis is already somewhat established and you know Esna and everything. Evia is arriving and Lili, Pami, Sasha, Roto, Saeed and Miura are already here.

Evia has a cute little cat smile face :3 She gives me a fetch quest and Miura volunteers to help and joins my party.

We go out the oasis town to Qarr Dunes. There's no weapon cooldown or stamina from what I can see, which is a major major plus for me :) Unfortunately, the game doesn't use the Circle Pad Pro... even though it really should for camera control. It has options for normal and inverted control for camera axes if you're using a New Nintendo 3DS. If you don't have one of those, you can always just use the shoulder button to centre and lock-on.

 It's got the standard dodge roll that many games of this type have. Again, no stamina limit :)

I complete the fetch quest for Evia and she gives me another one when Roto comes along and volunteers as well. This time it's in Ostraka Ruins, so it's a bit further away.

Fought some simple squirrel like enemies and then snake enemies called Sharkobras. Miura specialises in fighting against these enemies.

Later on in the ruins, Roto talks about his ability to turn into a round ball seed thing, which helps us to open doors from the other side. Miura pitches in with other abilities like flipping over bits of broken urns and mining ore. This happens a lot with other characters and you switch between them to take control and use their abilities.

There's a brief loading time between rooms...

After fighting a few more Sharkobras buried in sand, the Razertooth, a bigger version of those squirrelly things, attacks like a boss. After defeating it, we auto warp back to the oasis, Super Mario 64 style... Hmm... better keep that in mind when exploring. In this room there's a digging ability needed from another character we've yet to meet.

After finishing Evia's quest, she asks to move to the oasis. I help build her shop in a spot on the grid — not too complicated as there was only one spot available — and as a result the oasis gets stronger. I head back to Esna and the oasis levels up.

Then the epilogue of the demo tells of various story features like Chaos attacking and more mysterious characters and enemies to meet. Bit too many "fade to white" transitions here!

So yeah, a nice game with lots of friendly and helpful characters. Again, I really appreciate that there's no weapon cooldown, but there are weapon swinging animations that would affect combos. That's a minor enough thing though. I just like that you can keep attacking!

Between the good combat and adventuring aspects, it's like a nice cross between Monster Hunter and some good aspects of Zelda.

There is a lot more to this game though. This demo mostly went through the exploring and adventure aspects rather than the city, business and farm simulation aspects I've seen in reviews. There might be some opportunity for those in the demo, though it's not the main objective. I didn't hang around in the oasis much during this session.