"This Evoluton is Worlds From Fun"

When Evolution Worlds was first announced for the Gamecube, I must admit I was quite happy. I'm a huge fan of RPGs, and the Cube was devoid of the genre at the time. Little did I know that this game would be one of the larger disappointments of my gaming lifetime. While there is some good, it is mostly hidden under the bad.

so you live First off, the story is dull. You play Mag Launcher. Your parents are dead or something, with your butler Gre and a girl name Linear that showed up on your doorstep when you were two. Basically, the story revolves around you all teaming up, along with 3 other characters, to do missions for a museum. The story also involves some sort of ultimate Cyframe (Cyframes are the weapons in the game), but the story is so hard to follow and filled up with pointless dialogue and movie-type footage that you probably won't care. It is possible that the story improves, but you’ll have to deal with 30+ hours of the game play first

Now, to the next worse part would be the dungeons. Mag and Linear go on most of the missions, and you get to choose your third partner. Each mission you get from the museum takes you to a dungeon, where you must avoid traps, fight enemies, and find treasure. To the games credit, I did enjoy the turn based combat system and the humorous animations, but only about the first million times. You’ll fight an insane amount of repetitive battles in this game. I think there are about 10 dungeons in the whole game, which doesn't seem like much, but each dungeon consists of 10 or more ''floors,'' which are full of enemies and such. I believe the final dungeon has about 60+ floors, though I may be wrong. In order to be able to compete, you almost have to fight all the enemies in the dungeon. Completing one dungeon can easily take hours to do, and all you'll do if fight the same battles over, and over, and over again. Again, giving the game some slack, the boss fights were great. Most of the bosses had nice, original moves and battles, and were greatly appreciated when you finally reached them after grueling hours.

Your weapons are Cyframes. You can either upgrade individual “parts” or add new parts to them. A big flaw in this is that parts can only be added by using Upgrade Kits, which after playing through half the game, I had found one of, and there are tons of upgrades possible. Also, money can be tight, as you get a minimal amount from clearing dungeons, and if you use any third partner other than Gre, they take a share of the money. Cyframe upgrades can get very expensive, making your weapon development go at an even slower pace than the dungeons.

This game is basically any RPG (Even a Final Fantasy) that has had all the interesting parts ripped out, very little story, and repetitive environments and battles. So, if you can stand a stupid story that is hard to follow (or care about), and can stand fighting the same 10 enemies over and over for hours to complete a dungeon, by all means get this game. I thought that upgrading and building Cyframes was great. There is a nice RPG locked into this horrid shell somewhere. Who knows, maybe some people got the story better than I did. The game just got too boring for me to take. I would imagine there is very little replay value, considering the fact that I couldn't even make it through once...

If your still interested, then I suggest renting the game beforehand, as this game is geared toward the hardest of hardcore RPG fans (and they might even not like it). Or better yet, save yourself the money and put it toward a better RPG game, as there easily better games out there. I give it 4/10.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 01/11/04