New from developer Grezzo and published by Nintendo, Ever Oasis joins the 3DS library to answer the age old question “what happens if you combine Monster Hunter with Animal Crossing?”. While this may not be a question players may not have thought to ask, Ever Oasis offers a fun, unique experience that people will be happy got answered.
The art style of Ever Oasis is very cute and colorful. The locations are beautiful and vast. The desert is a beautiful gold, shining color that changes colors throughout the day. The caves have beautiful dark blue and purple tones with bright colors splashed throughout depending on the items and materials you can collect. There is bright waters and flora in your Oasis and overall the palette is beautiful and the actual structures have beautiful shapes and designs that will definitely catch your eye and keep you exploring. The characters are in a super deformed, child like style and come in a variety of colors and fashions. From the seedlings to the merchant s to the Noots, you will not get bored of these characters whose personalities are just as unique as their designs. Overall, this is a very pretty game to look at.
Ever Oasis’ gameplay revolves around the idea of you maintaining your oasis and fighting enemies to keep the peace for your residents and keep everyone happy. Some of the people that come into your Oasis want to sell goods, some want to buy goods, and some want to help you in your journey of exploration and peace. Esna, your water spirit guide, will assist you and give you advice along the way, and there are friendly merchants who also will help give you helpful tips and even gear or potions. You decide who you need for a quest you want to go on and travel to various caves and locations to reach your goals. You will need different classes in your party to solve various puzzles that will roadblock you from completing your quest. These classes have skills that include being able to become a cannon ball, break boulders, fly above canyons and fit through small holes to get into a room that is locked. Part of the strategy is finding out who you will need. Completing quests not only helps you continue the story of your seedling and Esna and obtain more villagers, but exploring in general helps you obtain more materials and more materials means expanding your Oasis and creating a more lovely place for your residents Materials also are required to stock your merchant’s stores which mean more shoppers which make your merchant residents happy.
The Monster Hunter aspect comes in when you have to fight the Chaos and other various enemies. You will enter a battle and the fighting is in real time and use various buttons and combinations of buttons to execute attacks and target your enemy. You will need certain types of weapons that the enemy is weak against and collect materials they drop, much like Monster Hunter. You will sometimes need special materials for certain quests or items. The battle mechanics are not entirely new or revolutionary, but it is fun enough and pretty smooth in execution. If you have played Monster Hunter or a similar type of game you will pick this up pretty quickly and even if you haven’t, the mechanics are not hard to learn. It is the puzzle solving aspect of the gameplay that kept me more entertained than the battles in the end, but the battles were still well done.
Ever Oasis is a very charming, fun game with creative aesthetics, characters and filled with a lot of content to discover and explore. If you like Animal Crossing and like the gameplay of Monster Hunter you will find a fun combination in Ever Oasis. Get lost in the visuals, expand your Oasis and bring peace to a chaotic world on the 3DS.
