Ever Oasis (Nintendo 3DS) Review

Tethu (or Tethi, if choosing a female avatar) is a seedling, a child of the Great Tree. He lives with his brother in an oasis in the desert, in a world that is covered with nothing but sand, where oases are the last havens where life can truly thrive. His brother is an oasis chief, meaning he runs the place and is the only one to be able to communicate with the water spirit that keeps the oasis alive. Such spirits, however, have become increasingly rare because the evil power behind the desertification of this world, Chaos, relentlessly attacks and invades the oases with Chaos plants and monsters, making them disappear altogether. This is what soon happens to Tethu's oasis, his brother seemingly sacrificing himself to spirit him away to save him from the powerful Chaos monster that took over their oasis. He soon finds a lonely water spirit, Esna, who sensed the other remaining water spirit disappearing with Tethu's oasis. Being a seedling that received training from his brother to become an oasis chief himself one day, Esna and Tethu team up to create their own, last oasis, hoping to grow it so big that the forces of Chaos could never destroy it like the others and, hopefully, being so large that it could destroy Chaos itself once and for all.

 Managing the oasis is at the centre of the experience. It is comprised of the water spring itself where Esna dwells, the hero's hut right beside it, a small garden where fruit and other seeds can eventually be grown, a small market-like sand path where Bloom Booths can be grown, which act like shops tended to by oasis residents, and an entrance plaza where other miscellaneous booths are progressively added to streamline certain functionalities of the game itself. The primary goal, in the initial stages, is to gather new residents. Some of them will just wander into the oasis on their own, being only visitors at this point, until Tethu speaks to them or does something for them that will prompt them to stay there. As more characters come to settle, the latter can be levelled up and expanded as a result, allowing for more booths to be opened. There are several races that come wandering in, the main one being Noots who are entirely neutral creatures that do nothing but spend money in booths. These are non-specific, silent, non-playable characters devoid of any personality. Booths are, in turn, run exclusively by other seedlings, each being unique and selling a different type of item.

Other seedlings are playable characters that join Tethu in the action RPG exploring sequences. Last, but by no means least, there are three races of desert dwellers that can also be turned into permanent residents of the oasis - Drauks, Serkahs, and Lagoras - who are all mostly characters used in the action RPG sequences and do not run booths at all.

The purpose of Bloom booths, which the hero has to keep supplied with the types of resources they need to craft their wares, is simply to attract Noots, earning the game's currency: Dewadems. Dewadems can be used to fertilise plants, invested into building new booths for new residents as they join the party, or used to synthesise new items at the hero's house, be it consumables or pieces of equipment. However, another purpose of booths is to attract new residents that have a particular taste or interest for the types of wares that booths sell. How would the player know what people who are not there yet are going to be attracted by, though? By talking to those who are already there, as they hear rumours about other people out there in the vast world and feed Tethu information on where to find them or what they heard these unknowns like. If all of this sounds overly convoluted, it is all slowly and masterfully introduced at a slow pace over the first couple of hours. Indeed, at first, Tethu won't be free to go out and explore as he likes but, rather, will be assigned initial tasks to fulfil, which will progressively introduce the player to the game's mechanics of expanding the oasis and, after having accomplished those, the game opens up more, leaving the player free to explore more possibilities in the order that they choose.

That's when Tethu will be allowed to go outside, into the desert, exploring caves and dungeons, looking for more people, as well as resources to bring back to the oasis and give them to booth owners so that they will be able to keep selling things. As each booth owner is given more materials, this fills a sort of experience gauge that, when full, will trigger a side-quest to level up that booth so that it can sell more things, in turn increasing its earnings. The exploration parts play like expected from an action RPG, with weak and strong attacks being performed by the active character and combos (a series of timed weak or strong attacks performed in timing) unlocking as characters level up. However, these exploration segments also play a lot like a Zelda outing, with a lot of mild puzzle solving, usually involving each of the playable character's unique skills.

Some of them have the ability to jump with their pole and activate switches, while others can use certain flowers to jump and glide to higher ledges, Deku Scrub-style, while others still can roll into a ball and get inside narrow spaces to reach otherwise inaccessible rooms. The list just goes on. Some characters have unique skills but others share theirs with other playable characters, meaning that there's a bit of redundancy. However with a little over 60 playable characters to be found within the world of Ever Oasis, the possibilities are quite plentiful indeed, which is awesome.

Soon enough, however, the ultimate goal of the game, which is to grow the oasis to such a powerful level that it will be able to repel Chaos definitively, will become clearer. To achieve this, Tethu will have to explore farther into the vast world, finding three powerful artefacts called Lumite Crystals that need to be retrieved from dungeon-like places and brought back to the oasis to increase Esna's powers. These dungeons play almost exactly like classic Zelda dungeons, with a map, keys to open certain doors, chests appearing on the map, puzzles and, at the end of the dungeon, a boss battle and a warp point afterwards to go back to the entrance. Grezzo's involvement with Nintendo's flagship adventure series in the past has clearly had a powerful influence on the development of Ever Oasis. With that being said, though, because skills are in this case character based rather than item based, it still feels fresh enough that it doesn't feel like a complete rip-off, either. It still plays different and, if anything, there's a hint of a Metroid influence in there, too, in that unless Tethu meets certain seedlings or desert dwellers with specific skills, certain areas will seem unreachable at first until, only later, these can be reached using the right playable character's skill.

Otherwise, the game overall fells very accessible with combat mechanics kept simple enough that they are easy to master. Tethu and his companions start off with very little HP until the Rainbow meter gets activated early on in the game's events. The Rainbow meter is an indication of the oasis residents' happiness, which is then affected by whether or not the active booths are offering residents the type of items that they like and, in the case of seedlings, how high Tethu can manage to keep their stock.

The Rainbow meter offers a great HP bonus whenever the active party sets out in the desert, but also prevents chaos plants from growing inside the oasis, so keeping everyone happy is important to avoid rendering the action RPG sequences a pain where one or two hits from a simple enemy would be enough to kill any character.

As the game progresses and basic mechanics are assimilated, some more seedlings will join that carry out business in the entrance plaza instead of Bloom Booths, which will streamline certain basic tasks rendering them a lot less tedious as the oasis keeps growing, like the ability to send a certain seedling to restock a booth with resources you assign it, or assigning a seedling without a booth to gardening duties, or even sending out a party of desert dwellers (not seedlings) out into certain dungeons that house certain types of specific resources so they bring those back for Tethu, freeing him of farming duties that would otherwise be required by the basically compulsory restocking business.

 Ever Oasis is packed full of these kind of useful functions that build up as the player progresses through the story and this is done in a rather non-intrusive way that has to be commended. It's a very pleasant adventure that despite the many things to do, never feels like a chore because of how well it has been designed, and it's truly so pretty to look at, too! Grezzo has had several 3DS games to sink its teeth into over the years, so its grasp of the hardware really shows. It's not the most technically impressive 3DS title ever, but it runs well without a hitch even on the basic 3DS models with stereoscopic 3D turned on, and it does enough in terms of sheer artistic design to be deemed attractive without being overly technically complicated. The seedlings' design looking almost exactly like Nendoroid figures is really cute and the fact that each of the several dozens of playable characters has its unique visual aspect is also quite impressive in and of itself for a game of this calibre. Humour is also reasonably present in the writing, and it all adds up to create an adventure that may sound convoluted at times and unlike anything else out there just from reading about it, but one that is assuredly not hard at all to understand as things go, making this a perfect entry level RPG for younger players to sink their teeth into. It may be missing certain things that keep it somewhat humble and not overly ambitious for the hardware, like the lack of proper voice acting, but the quality of what is already found inside certainly make this a masterpiece.