E.V.O.: Search for Eden

I played E.V.O.: Search for Eden

This is a 1993 SNES game developed by Almanic and published by Enix, released in Japan and America, but not Europe.

I played it via emulator.

I'm gonna talk about pretty much the entire game, from start to finish. :D

E.V.O. is a very unusual sidescrolling action game.

You play as a creature chosen by Gaia, the sprit of the planet earth, to evolve and travel through time in order to reach Eden.

Apparently this is some kind of trial set up by Sol, the sun, father of Gaia. The creature who can evolve and pass every trial will marry Gaia, and live together in Eden for eternity.

...There's also some kind of plot going on about mysterious crystals that are affecting the evolution of the planet's species in unexpected ways.

The game starts in 500,000,000 BC, Chapter 1: "The World Before Land". You begin as a little fish. 

You can swim around the water, and you can bite enemy fish.

When you defeat an enemy, it drops meat. It looks like a cartoon hunk of meat on the bone. 

Eating meat heals you a bit, and gives you "Evolution points".

At any time, you can open your menu and see your options for evolution.

You can evolve a body part by spending Evo points.

Body parts are evolved in a modular fashion. It's kind of like upgrading parts of a robot or a car... except here, it's evolution. 

There are eight sections in the evolution menu:

Jaws, Horn(s), Neck, Body, Hands & Feet, Dorsal Fin, Tail, Back of the head.

Each upgrade costs an amount of evolution points, normally the better ones cost more.

When you buy an upgrade, it is immediately applied - apparently your body can evolve immediately due to a "mysterious time stream". That's what it says every time you buy an upgrade.

Upgrading Jaws increases bite power. Upgrading Body gives you more defense. Upgrading your various fins (some of which are in the Hands & Feet menu) gives you more agility and HP.

And some options are mutually-exclusive - for example, if you upgrade your "Horn" to get a swordfish nose, it forcibly downgrades your Jaw to its basic form... I suppose you gotta choose between stabbing or biting. If you want the strong jaw back, you do have to buy it again...

Annoyingly, the game doesn't do anything to inform you about what each upgrade will do. You just have to buy it, and then check your stats menu to see if any of the numbers look higher. ...Generally, you want to go for the more expensive options, but there are a few upgrades here and there with unique properties - for example, the angler lure from the Horn menu will attract enemies towards you.

The upgrades are certainly useful for increasing your survivability. In order to complete this chapter, you need to solve a maze full of tough enemy fish, dash through a path of volcanic rocks that rain down, and defeat the boss of the chapter, a big shark. 

You'd be hard-pressed doing all of this without evolving into the best possible fish. So... you'd best get to grinding out those evolution points! Find a good spot to repeatedly kill enemies that yield lots of Evo points, and then just... grind 'em out. And if you keep getting bested by the high-point-yield enemies, maybe you could start by grinding on the weaker enemies first, and then come back to the stronger guys once you have a better jaw or something.

For better or for worse... this is basically the gist of the gameplay in E.V.O. You travel through a series of several very straightforward levels, you come across an insurmountable obstacle (usually a boss), and then you need to figure out which of the previous areas had the easiest grinding spot, so you can farm points to evolve your parts for better stats. And once you get 'em, you can continue. ...

To be honest, as awful and grindy as this sounds... I don't actually mind it too much. It's kind of an interesting task, figuring out how to grab Evo points as efficiently as possible, and learning which upgrades help you in what ways. And it's rather chill, just kinda hanging out in these areas for a while, rather than speeding through everything.

Though I certainly do have some complaints, but I will save them for the end... Let's continue.

...

So after beating the shark, Gaia intervenes and transports you ahead in time through a magical portal.

You arrive in 300,000,000 BC, Chapter 2: "Early Creatures of Land". 

Gaia gives you a new amphibian body, which has its own set of new upgrades to aim for.

You start the amphibian phase as a blank slate - all of your accumulated Evo points are gone, and none of your fish upgrades carry over or have any bearing on you for the amphibian phase.

...to be honest, it was a little bit disappointing to see that nothing I did in the fish era carried over at all. Chapter 2 is a fresh slate. 

Again, we can upgrade our Jaw, but now some of our body upgrades will increase our jumping power too. There is a new way of attacking enemies, in this new era - jumping on top of them, like in a platformer. We can upgrade jumping height, speed, and attack power by evolving various fins, gills, and tails.

The different methods of attack actually do have their own separate attack stats. The stat menu shows: "Biting", "Strength", "Kick", "Strike", and "Horn". Though even now, some of these are still not applicable... kicking, for example, isn't introduced until later.

The levels in this game are accessed via a world map screen, with each new level unlocking once you complete the previous one. And you have the ability to return to previous levels whenever you like. (for the most part).

The vast majority of levels in this game are....... extremely simple. Often consisting of nothing more than a flat straight line, with some enemies roaming about.

These areas are normally named after what kind of enemy you can find within. In the amphibian era, there is a level called "Land of timid Ikustega" full of weak ichthyostega enemies and nothing else. And immediately afterwards is "Land of bull Ikustega", where you see a bunch of tougher ichthyostega creatures. 

If you ignore the enemies, these types of levels take about 10 seconds to complete. It's literally, literally just a flat straight line. And not even a particularly long one either.

...I suppose the idea wasn't to make each level feel like a "videogame level", despite the Mario-esque world map presentation... but rather to make it feel more like an ecosystem, where each type of animal inhabits their own little part of the world, and you visit them in turn as you make your way through. I can definitely appreciate the intent, but....... I would have appreciated it more if these levels had some actual level design in them too. :/

Soon after, there is a fight against Boss Ikustega, which is pretty tough if you don't grind for Evo points to get some better jaws, skin, and gills. So, better hop to it! Go grind some better body parts.

The controls in this game are a bit on the janky side - there seems to be a bit of a delay when you jump, and it's not always obvious how far your bite extends in front of you. It's difficult to avoid taking damage in this game, which can be especially dangerous, since there is no invulnerability period after getting hit. You can take multiple quick hits in succession and die before you realise it. When you die, you don't lose progress, but you do lose half of your Evo points, so it does mean you gotta grind even more.

You don't get any healing items or anything (in fact, this game doesn't have an inventory at all), but you do have one way to heal - whenever you evolve, you also get all your HP back. So you can be fighting a boss, and when you're low on health, you can just evolve a horn or something cheap to restore health. Some upgrades do give you the option to spend points to remove them too, so you'll never be left without any available upgrades to use for healing. ...You can just keep evolving and un-evolving a horn to heal during fights as much as you want.

 ...it can get expensive to do this, but hey, that's what all that grinding was for, right? If you still can't beat a boss after upgrading every possible body part to maximum, you still have the option to grind more points to use for healing like this.

....to be honest, I do wish there was just a more direct "spend points to regain health" button in the game. Having to heal indirectly like this isn't exactly intuitive. ...Though it is kind of funny. It's not an oversight either, as the instruction booklet specifically mentions that evolving restores health.7

After that boss, you need to cross a desert full of sandworms. Having good jumping skill is useful here, because you want to be off the ground as often as you can. I do like how the environments, despite being extremely short and simple, still occasionally encourage you to make use of your upgraded body parts for different purposes. 

...

After fighting a big killer bee as the last boss for this chapter, Gaia again intervenes, transporting us into the next era.

It is now 200,000,000 BC, Chapter 3: "The Age of Dinosaurs".

Again, we are given a clean slate to work with. A brand new dinosaur body! ...And again, none of our amphibian upgrades carry over to this chapter.

...So, okay, there is actually a way for the previous evolutions to get another chance to shine.

This might be a good time to mention the coloured crystals. I'll get back to talking about the dinosaur era in a sec.

There are four types of crystals you can find in specific spots throughout the game. You can eat them to receive their effects. They do not come back once eaten.

Yellow crystals give you some advice. This is mostly for tutorial kinda things.

Blue crystals give a large amount of Evo points.

Red crystals temporarily transform you into a unique form that isn't normally possible to evolve into. The transformation lasts only a few minutes or so, so it's kind of like a temporary powerup. There are only about... four? or so of these in the game, two of which are quite well hidden. So this doesn't come up much.

and Green crystals....... let you recall a previously-saved configuration.

So. okay. At any time, you can pause the game, and save your current self into a logbook. There are 50 slots in this logbook, which is plenty to work with.

When you eat a green crystal, it adds a one-time-use option to the pause menu, "Review of Evolution", which lets you temporarily transform back into any one of your saved creatures. Once the timer runs out, you return to normal.

You can hold one green crystal at a time - eating another one will just waste it forever. You can't farm these, they are only located in a few specific spots throughout the game.

So... if you made sure to save your fully-upgraded fish or amphibians to the logbook, then yes, with the power of a green crystal, it is possible to play as your old evolutions again, albeit only as a temporary powerup. But sometimes that's all you need to get a head-start in collecting enough Evo points to upgrade your current form, especially if your old fish or amphibian can easily defeat a boss that your current dinosaur can't.

And it's even possible to save the rare red crystal transformations to the log book, if you want to use their power again. That's pretty cool.

And.... the fact that the logbook data is saved completely separately to the main save files means that you can enhance repeat playthroughs by using green crystals to temporarily turn into lategame creatures early. It's almost like a new game plus of sorts.

It's... actually a really cool system. Though to be honest, I did not fully understand how green crystals worked for the majority of my playthrough, so I didn't really use them much. But I very much appreciate this feature now that I know about it.

...

So anyway... Dinosaur chapter.

This chapter is rather similar to the previous one, with plenty of simple flat levels full of enemies to grind on. Though instead of ichthyostegas and bees, we now contend against various different types of dinosaurs. And just like "Ikustega", they all have names that vaguely sound like what they're called, but not really. Such as "Syrocosaurus" for styracosaurus, and "Tyrosaurus" for T-rexes. ... I wonder if these weird names come from SNES technical limitations, awkward localisation from Japanese, or are they like this just to add a bit of a fantasy flair? ...Or perhaps combination of all three?

Your dino body now gets the option to evolve a longer neck. This does improve your jaw reach, but it also makes it awkward to eat things off the ground. In fact, you pretty much just can't eat things that are on the floor at all if you choose to evolve a longer neck. In order to compensate for this, whenever you kill an enemy, the meat will levitate upwards until it reaches the same elevation as your head, so you can still get your Evo points. ...this is a bit of a clumsy solution tbh, but I guess it makes sense.

We also get the option to evolve into a dino who stands upright on two legs. Pretty cool, but it still suffers the same problem of being unable to eat off the ground..

Halfway through this chapter, we can find an optional level called Mt. Brave. You can climb up the mountain, and once you reach the top, there is a ledge, where you can bravely jump off. If you do so, you will suddenly evolve into a bird in mid-air.

The bird form is like a pteranodon, and it actually has access to pretty much the same upgrade list as the regular dinosaur. But... because it counts as a new form, you lose all your Evo points and have to start from scratch the moment you evolve.

This means that if you invested a lot of Evo points into your current dino form and don't particularly want to grind points all over again, it's probably best to stay as a dino. The added ability to fly as a bird is fun, but because the levels are so simple, it doesn't really help very often. (though there is a secret level that can only be accessed by flying). 

That being said, if you managed to reach Mt Brave without investing too much time into upgrading the dino beforehand, it probably is a good idea to opt for the bird form, since the bird has a strong kick attack the dino lacks, and the added maneuverability from being able to fly can be pretty helpful. It's all a matter of whether you're bothered by the extra grinding, I suppose.

In the Jaws section of the evolution menu, the best jaw is the T-rex jaw, which can be used by both the bird and the dino. There is a hawk-like beaked face available too, but it's just.... not as good as the T-rex one. If you want the best upgrades, your bird is gonna look a bit mismatched. I do kind of wish they made a special case where the bird-like face gets extra damage if you're in bird form or something like that, because there's no real reason to keep the bird face once you can afford the T-rex jaw upgrade. A bit of a shame. 

...

At the end of this chapter, we fight a herd of Tyrosauruses, but the action is interrupted by an asteroid shower. The famous extinction event that killed all the dinosaurs is upon us, and Gaia rescues us with a time portal, just in time.

It is now 65,000,000 BC, Chapter 4: "Ice Age".

Unlike the previous three chapters, you don't immediately get your current body replaced with a new one. So you can keep your dino body or bird body. But as soon as the chapter begins, you enter the "Cave of Judgement", and the ghost of the Syrocosaurus from before will judge whether you are worthy to receive a new type of body for this era... one of a mammal. ...I don't know if there is some kind of event I need to trigger beforehand in order to be considered worthy, but indeed, I was allowed to upgrade if I wanted to.

Unlike the transition from fish to amphibian, or the transition from amphibian to dino, the mammal upgrade is completely optional. It will reset all your points, but the mammal form does have some distinct advantages. For starters, mammals won't slip on the icy floors of the ice age, so it is already immediately advantageous to upgrade. And mammals also have a wide array of forms they can take - you start as a little lion cub creature, but you can mix-and-match parts from bunnies, horses, and rhinos, in order to create a creature with distinct attributes. Horse body has the best kicks, bunny body has the best jumps, rhino body has the best defense.

The Ice Age has one particularly difficult maze to solve - Fort Bird-man. A temple built by evolved birds who wield spears and swords. This is a bizarrely harsh spike in difficulty. Up until this point, the levels have been fairly straightforward, with a couple of small mazes here and there, but nothing too challenging. But now we have Fort Bird-man, which is an extremely confusing maze full of teleporters. It's confusing because the environments don't have distinct enough landmarks to easily tell where each teleporter sends you, and to make things worse, if you jump back in the same teleporter you came from, it goes somewhere else entirely! And in fact, the only way to reach the end is to immediately re-enter the same teleporter you just came from, once you arrive at the correct one.

 ... ... I eventually gave up and found a map online. I'm sorry, but I was starting to get really frustrated.

I'm not sure what's up with this ridiculous difficulty spike, nothing else in the game is quite like it, and I honestly find it rather unfitting.

Especially considering how all the previous levels in this game have mostly been flat straight lines.

...

Well, once you clear the Fort and defeat the boss of the Ice Age, a yeti, Gaia once again intervenes and transports us to the final chapter. 26,000,000 BC, Chapter 5: "Early Man".

This time, the small regular stages are full of more recognisable animals, such as grizzly bears, mooses, and alligators.

This chapter allows you to keep whichever bird, dino, or mammal you have, but there is now one new option, available only if you are a mammal.

There is now the option in the Body menu for the evolution into a "Ramothecus". ...which is another bizarrely misspelled name for... ramapithecus. Which is an early form of ape. ... I had to look up so many words for this review lol.

...anyway. This option is actually greyed-out and inaccessible. Because... it's apparently a bit of a secret.

So...despite this chapter taking place after the extinction event, you can still find some surviving dinosaurs, apparently being kept around by the strange evolutionary power of the mysterious crystals. (in fact, there were also still dinosaurs in the Ice Age chapter too...)

If you find a small patch of hidden stegosauruses, they will teach you the secret. You apparently need to have a cat's face on a bunny's body, and then the secret of the Ramothecus evolution will become available.

If you ever choose to evolve into the Ramothecus, you become locked-in to the ape evolution and can no longer return to four-legged animals. At this point your only evolution option is "evolve further". If you keep evolving further... you become a human man! A caveman. Initially holding a club, but if you "evolve further" one last time, the club will evolve into an axe. somehow.

Once you become a man, there are no further evolution possibilities. The only choice in your menu becomes to increase height and decrease height, which is good because at least you can still use that to heal when you need to. But being a human man is the end of the evolutionary line.

To be quite honest.... the human man evolution kind of sucks. His axe is as strong as the T-rex jaw's bite, which is pretty good, but other than that, he doesn't have much going for him. He can't kick, his jumping is average, his defense is okay, and his tackle is mid-tier. ... and most stupidly of all, he also can't eat things from the floor. And not for any sensible reason like the long-necked dinos. They should have let him.... use his hands? to pick things? from the floooor??? 

It would have been really cool if the developers went all-out to make the final secret human man evolution something wondrous to behold, but they really didn't. There really is no gameplay benefit to evolving into a man. The only reason you'd do it is because it "feels right" as part of the story of evolution, in order to reach the "end" of the upgrade chain. But for actually playing the game and beating the bosses, being the man is kind of a huge detriment. He's just not very good. :( And once you've got him, you're stuck with him.

anyway. uh. there's a part of this chapter where you have to save the whales from the "Rogons", evolved shark-people, who use laser guns and ride atop other sharks. They are bitter because the whales evolved to leave the ocean, became mammals, and then sought to return back to the ocean as if they owned the place... ... ... I think the story's gone a bit off the deep end here, haha. Not complaining though. This is great stuff. :D 

The final boss is Bolbox, a gigantic single-cell organism who claims to be the strongest creature in the world. It has absorbed the power of the crystals and intends to go to Eden itself. ... This boss is really difficult because it is a boss rush of six enemies in a row, some of which are really tough unless you know what you're doing. Hopefully you've got enough Evo points to make use of healing mid-battle, especially if you're stuck playing as the human man.

Once Bolbox is defeated, the player meets Gaia and is accepted into Eden. They are granted the intelligence to create civilisations for the future. 

It is then revealed that the strange crystals originated from Mars. A couple of Martians were trying to help Earth evolve by sending them these magical crystals, but they now realise that it is probably better to allow earth's creatures to evolve naturally.

It's an interesting ending that.....kinda explains what's going on, but not really.

And so that's the whole game!

...

My overall thoughts on the game....

Well, I do like it. I really do like it. The concept is very unusual and interesting, and the gameplay is fun enough. I really do like the diversity in the creatures you come across, and the game taking place through different eras of prehistory is honestly really cool, and something I haven't seen very much of in games.

The vague nonsensical story about the crystals that contain magical evolutionary power is a fun premise, although I do think it kind of gets in the way of the core concept of having the game be about evolution through the ages. ...I mean, if you can still find dinosaurs after the extinction event, it kind of undermines the whole thing, wouldn't you say?

Despite mentioning the grinding so much, I actually don't think that's the game's biggest problem.

I think the biggest problem is the level design. If they had made the levels take longer and be more involved, giving them more platforms, hidden alcoves, dead-ends, treasures to find, etc... then there would be a lot more going on than just the enemy grinding. Instead of the main gameplay being to figure out the best grinding spot, they could have made it so you naturally kill a bunch of enemies as you explore, which would certainly reduce a lot of the tedium. And having more exploration-focused level design would also make that awful Fort Bird-man less of a weird outlier. ...

I also take issue with some of the game's music. It's not bad music at all, but a lot of areas have very short repetitive tracks. They wouldn't be a problem ordinarily, but since the game expects you to grind so much, hearing the same repetitive music over and over certainly doesn't help the feeling of tedium.

...Since I don't mind the grinding too much, I did enjoy the game overall. Though some people may have different levels of tolerance for this kind of stuff.

So yeah. That's E.V.O.: Search for Eden. A very unusual action game for the SNES, and one I very much enjoyed playing! It has its issues, but it is definitely unique and charming enough to be worth a playthrough. And it's not all that long either! Good game. :D