Forever Kingdom

released on Jun 21, 2001

Darius, whose family was murdered when he was young, goes on a journey to avenge his family. His best friend Ruyan and an girl named Faeana who suffers from amnesia joins him on his journey. The player controls one party member out of 3 to engage enemies. The game again features the coordination rating system and a variety of fun equipment which was welcomed in the original Evergrace.


Released on

Genres

RPG


More Info on IGDB


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As soulful as Evergrace but with a lot more digestible plot and a bit more action mechanics, though I prefer the story of Evergrace more. Stringing combos of palmira actions is pretty enjoyable, but the execution of it can be quite wacky at times. A number of systems in this game are wacky, such as the defense system and hilariously grindy upgrade system, but the soul gauge along with unique character abilities and equipment conditions are quite endearing and ambitious for its time.

The art direction is warm and nostalgic, and the character designs are very cool, continuing the unique style Evergrace is known for. The soundtrack is simply incredible; Kota Hoshino truly refined the sound of Evergrace and made an ost of earworms from start to finish. Overall, love this game just as much as Evergrace and hope that one day From can work with the artists of this game on a new project channeling the vibes felt only in this series.

fromsoftwares second game developed by their b-team based at the tokyo metropolitan matsuzawa hospital

Can't remember when I started playing, but I'm not very far. Anyway this game is at least as charming as evergrace but in a totally different way. I love it and I'm excited to continue.

Forever Kingdom manages to be worse than Evergrace. This game is just awful. By far the worst From Software game I have played.

Two individual stories from Evergrace is replaced with three characters you can swap between at will (with a single shared health pool). This actually doesn't matter much other than that each character has a magic attack assigned that you can execute at will. Each character has individual equipment, so you could conceivably specialize them for fighting certain enemies, but I didn't find this to be that feasible without a ton of grinding.

Combat is astoundingly bad, even worse feeling than Evergrace.
Camera control is just as awkward and unwieldy, with only the ability to center the camera behind you while you run around monsters avoiding their attacks and setting up your own.
Every attack has extreme, vulnerable windup and extreme, committed recovery and every hit you take knocks you back and onto the ground for a tedious stand up animation. Your attacks can be chained into combos, but the timing is severely punishing and you are just as likely to get knocked out of your combo by the enemy anyway. Additionally, enemies do ludicrous amounts of damage with 1-2 hit kills being very common even if you are wearing the correct armor. There was never a point where I enjoyed anything about the combat and was simply frustrated for my entire playtime.

The narrative is more straightforward and actually makes sense. The characters and motivations are more clear and some of the world is explored here. It is kind of a bummer that the game is so unplayable, because I wouldn't mind seeing where it goes, even though it is pretty simple and predictable (at least as far as I played).

There are some beautiful scenes and the game looks much better than Evergrace.
The paper doll system returns, and it seems like they did away with the related puzzle mechanics for the most part. This game is just keys/locks and (really awful) combat. The actual level design is uneventful fields and repetitive dungeon mazes.

Evergrace is bad, but tolerable. Forever Kingdom throws what was tolerable out the window in favor of one of the worst feeling action combat systems I have used.
Even though the narrative has its legs under it this time, don't play this game.

Somehow FromSoft increased the vibes and aesthetic threefold from the first Evergrace (although they also made it a decent bit different so you might not personally agree with that) and improved almost every aspect of the gameplay and were way more ambitious and innovated a dozen gameplay systems and made this game a double prequel and did all this shit while also having a far more cohesive and comprehendible plot and story than the first game, probably because it was written by Mie Takase, the person who also wrote the Evergrace prequel novel, which this game itself is a prequel to. She's a published author who also worked (or still works?) on the Kirby novels. Yes, that Kirby.

This doesn't count as a review I think but I dunno what to say because I'm dumb and stupid. Basically this game is good, fuck the haters, plus the ost bangs so fucking hard dude how does it bang so hard PLEASE

It's also a dumb game sometimes. Actually a lot of times. Your party having a shared health pool and some attacks doing more than half of your HP upon hitting one character leads to points in the game where you just die instantly, which isn't fun, but I'm a cheater and used a lot of save states, so I don't care. This game would probably be a lot more infuriating if you decided to play by its rules, but I didn't and feel no remorse for not doing so.

Good game/10. The soul levels are off the charts, even compared to the first Evergrace.

also play the game in japanese byeeee

To beat the final bosses, I had to grind cash to upgrade an electrical attack. This electric attack would clip through the floor and damage the bosses even during their "invlun" states.

A fitting sequel to Evergrace that's slightly less inept. The new character designs are fantastic. The voice acting is still "Josh from QA, we need you to voice a main character". The shared health bar doesn't have enough impact to warrant its inclusion, which is preferable to it being actively detrimental to gameplay. There are actual cutscenes and setpieces, and while nothing comes close to the credits of Evergrace, it has its moments. The soundtrack is a minor step down from Evergrace, but most people who praise that game's OST remember the CD print, and not the in game soundtrack that sounds closer to Forever Kingdom's.

Couldn't recommend this game to anyone, even people who sat through the first game. The game's sheer ambition and confidence, even if it totally fails, prevents me from rating the game any lower.