It’s more than just mixing up game genres, though! This is a tale of time travel, and each world looks a little different. You do not stick to any one style of game the entire time, and it does not hold your hand, not even a little bit. This game has quite literally something for just about everyone: A fighting game section, a Bullet Hell section (Galaga, Raiden Trad), platforming side-scrolling action, Professor Leyton and Lufia-esque puzzles! It also calls back to the Chrono Trigger style turn-based RPG there’s no way you can go wrong here. While at its core it is a top-down action RPG, a’la Secret of Mana there is much more going on here. This is a throwback, a shrine to the plethora of great games that came before. Instead, it’s more of a spiritual successor to it, and everything that has come before it. Evoland 2 is not a direct successor to Evoland, which was not a commercial success that I’m aware of. However I have long-since given up on the notion that the style of deep games with more simplistic art designs were ever coming back, save on cartridge and the occasional disc.

Some more than others, admittedly Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy IV, Chrono Trigger, all with their own merits and idiosyncracies. As a child of the 80s, I grew up with some pretty intense, deep, well-written roleplaying games.

Evoland 2 library puzzles