Evergrace

"Inspiration gone awry...."

In a stack of role playing games on the dusty shelf of some used game store, you can find a title such as Ever Grace. With nothing spectacular about it, and nothing really going for it, you may find that this title is something that is not even worthy of being a Play Station 2 game with all of the mechanical glitches that you find throughout. Playing as one of two different travelers, you must wander through an extensively huge land with little more than your wits and luck by your side. Considering that I’ve played this game for hours on end and come up with little more than a bad taste in my mouth, I’m rather interested as to know why this didn’t appear on other, older systems first!

The story line and the game play are intermixed through the game with you taking the role of one of two characters, either male or female in an attempt to stop evil in a mystical land. Although you may find that the story line is bland and the game play is both cheap and repetitive, you may see that the intricacies that the game attempts to provide are little more than a fill of annoyance and grief. With a weapons system that forces you to make due with some sort of material that you collect through the various battles and the fact that the game has an over abundance of Diablo thrown in, you may find that this is little more than a rip-off of other, more popular role playing games on the market!

With the collection of weapons and armor, you can customize your characters to become something akin to a God. Through the battles against the enemies, you have to work in a real time environment with enemies that can only be taken out with the use of weapons that have a specific element attached to them. Once you’ve gotten around this first obstacle, you have to take your weapons that you’ve been using and repair them every so often, regardless of whether or not you’ve used them in battle. This is the annoying factor that really does the game in, simply because it has little or nothing to do with the game progresses other than hindering you from continuing on.

Control is another factor that could use plenty or work in the way that the game handles with the different battles. Although you can move your character smoothly through the land, the battles require you to perform button presses and then work with a refill gauge that slows the action of the game down. Menus and otherwise can be quickly run through with a tutorial and anyone can pick up on what you have to do with the different items. While this may not seem like much of a problem, the fact that the action in the game is so slow in points may cause you to have a hard time learning what to do in the different situations that you come across!

Visually, Ever Grace fails as a Play Station 2 game simply on the fact that everything here has a jagged edge or it just doesn’t seem to match correctly in the game. Enemies and characters alike have a very bad way of clashing with little or no variation on either than you can see. The levels and stages all have a theme to them, but also suffer from the same bland and uninspired look that the game just seems to present at nearly every turn. All in all, the game looks more like an early attempt at a Play Station game with bitter results that ended up here on the PS2.

The audio that you find is little more than your standard adventure music with a little voice acting thrown in for good measure. With the music, you may have to listen to the same track over and over throughout the stages, occasionally breaking when you run into a boss character in the different mazes. While this isn’t a bad thing, it isn’t what you would expect for a PS2 game and can really drag the game on into a droning daze that simply follows you for hours. Voice acting is another gripe in which the words on the screen never collate with the voice and seems to be misplaced in the worst cases, leaving the ears to be slightly behind the eyes!

Ever Grace is a good game if you’re talking about Play Station capabilities. As a Play Station 2 game, it just doesn’t seem to have anything going for it, other than the fact that you can play as one of two different characters, each of which has the same quest to undertake. If you’re really into the role playing games, then you may find that this one is good, simply because of the sheer length that it has to offer. However, if you’re into the visual flare, audio mastery and control perfection that other, more widely known role playing games are known for, then you need to move on and leave this one for a weekend rental!

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 02/20/02, Updated 02/20/02