A Paper-Thin Adventure Stuffed With Content
RPG’s are a bit of me, it has to be said. As such, I was right at the front of the queue when Escape from Ever After was released, promising as it did to take not only fairy tales as the inspiration, but also the look and style of the Paper Mario games.
Coming from a whole host of people, namely HypeTrain Digital, Sleepy Castle Studio and Wing-It! Creative, the game page on the Xbox Store hints at a large game, with stories within stories. I girded my loins and jumped in, so come with me to a world of corporate greed, intrigue and fairy tales.
The Sly Exploitation of the Storybook Realm
Kicking off today with the story, it appears that all is not well within our beloved story books. You see, an evil corporation called Ever After Inc has decided that the world of the stories is ripe for exploitation, and so they have decided to invade. Well, invade is the wrong word: they have made their way into the worlds of books in a sly, insidious manner, offering jobs to fairy tale characters and getting them to come and work in office hell.
We play as Flynt Buckler, hero of a story and whose sworn objective is to defeat Tinder, the fire breathing dragon who terrifies the towns. On arriving at Tinder’s castle for their latest showdown, Flynt can’t help noticing that things are a bit different: the castle is an office, and Tinder is collared and locked in a dungeon. The only way to free the castle is to team up and get a job at Ever After Inc, and attempt to bring the company down from within. What can possibly go wrong?
2D Heroes in a 3D World
As I alluded to in the opening paragraph, Escape from Ever After is modelled, seemingly, on the Paper Mario games, and the graphics not only have a cute, well designed fairy tale kind of look, they are also 2D in a 3D world. Change direction from left to right, say, and Flynt and his team reveal themselves to be paper thin, literally.
The worlds of the various stories that we visit are very well designed and all look totally different, and the same can be said for the characters that we meet. Whether these be enemies, allies or even people we can recruit to our team, the design of the game as a whole is extremely well done. The only issue I’ve had with the graphics has been in Chapter 3, where we are on a boat: sometimes, when an enemy boat pulls up alongside, there is an unpleasant juddering effect that frankly hurts the eyes. It isn’t every time, which is odd, but when it does occur it isn’t fun.
Sound is equally well done, even if there is no voice acting: the exposition that we have to go through is achieved through the medium of text screens and a kind of mumbling in time with the speech on screen. Battle effects are very well done and convey what is happening cleverly, but a special mention has to go to the music in the game. This is very good indeed, especially when Wolfgang joins the team: his use of music can be a game changer in the literal sense. All in all, full marks for the presentation.
Pacing and Precision
Now, the gameplay itself is the last on the list, and here the news is pretty good as well. I say pretty good as there are some limitations to the way Escape from Ever After plays, given the graphical style the devs have chosen.
We are basically a 2D character in a 3D world, as mentioned above, and the issue comes when trying to move between planes of the screen (foreground to background, for instance) when narrow walkways are used. Trying to make our way over assault courses (don’t ask) is very tricky, and a large part of the difficulty is down to the way the camera follows us. By the end of the game, I was taking these sections in my stride, but when hurrying, it can be all too easy to fall.
Strategic Combat
Other than that, the rest of the game is very good, with a deceptive level of difficulty for something that is so steeped in cuteness. Yes, the turn based combat can get quite tricky, especially as there are button inputs to be timed perfectly: doing extra attacks or even blocking attacks from foes all rely on your timing. And a word of advice that I feel may aid – practice this as it is vital for later fights.
Other than that, the turn based battles follow the usual pattern if you’ve played a turn based game before: attack, defend, use Synergy attacks (team based attacks based on the trust between the characters, which is an interesting mechanic) or use items. All standard, but done here very well, all with a challenge that is real.
An Accomplished Time Sink
The rest of Escape from Ever After is spent wandering around solving puzzles and completing side quests to move the story along. Some of the puzzles are a bit tricky, although with a bit of lateral thinking they aren’t usually too bad. We have the power of wind, fire and other elements at our disposal, depending on which partner we choose to have active, and using the right power at the right time is usually key. All in all, the game is a lot of fun to play through, and while the subject material is pretty cute, the difficulty certainly isn’t. Good job there are various options to make the game easier (or so I’ve been told…).
Escape from Ever After is a very accomplished game that does a lot of things right. The platforming can be tricky until you are used to it, but you’ll mostly have a really good time playing through. Full of content and things to find and do, if you are looking for a time sink RPG, then Escape from Ever After could well be what you are after.
Important Links
Escape From Ever After Turns Fairytales Corporate – https://www.thexboxhub.com/escape-from-ever-after-turns-fairytales-corporate/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/escape-from-ever-after/9p08h8zqkpfd
