Played an undub, which I'm usually averse to but really helped here since the english VO really muddles the intent behind what's being said.

The play is really unpolished, but charmingly so, and I love the weird emphasis on playing dress-up.

The real selling point here, though, is atmosphere. It doesn't always work—area like the Human Research Lab and the lava level are as generic as any other video game lab or lava level—but when Hoshino's esoteric score and the haunting greens and oranges click it really creates something special. I found myself wandering the overworld and the castle for hours just to soak it all in. And the story they're trying to tell (which is difficult to parse without digging into supplementary material—very little if anything is explained and unlike the souls games there's not much in game pointing to possible solutions) is actually pretty interesting, a twisty character study told from the perspective of confused observers.

The game is short and not terribly difficult, so if the aesthetics work for you I think it's definitely worth a shot. At the very least I won't be forgetting it anytime soon.

So I'm just going based off of my memory here from playing this 20+ years ago... my pre-teen self despised this game with every fiber of his being. All I remember is the gameplay being atrocious, and the game being unbelievably ugly. I especially HATED the stamina/power meter going down as you ran which tied into your attack strength output... I never did get very far in this game though as I opted to play almost any other game I owned instead of this.

Color me shocked as I look and see this was one of From Software's early games... that is a crazy revelation to me. Since now when I think back on it... I see very early pre-Souls like design here. How far From Software has come since these days is honestly incredible...

Excellent game, much better than I expected. Really wish I played this before now, but that's the point of going through our backlogs right?

Atmosphere is top notch, which I expect from From Software. The music was so chill, and often crazy in interesting ways. The weapon/armor/art system was cool, interesting seeing a game like this not involve leveling.

It's definitely an interesting adventure full of way different environments from each other, lot of cool 'puzzles' and a story that had me scratching my head, in a good way.

Hated most of the bosses, and often the gameplay was too simple, even for 2000 era From Software. Nothing debilitating but definitely why I might take a break before trying the sequel.

Worth a look if you enjoy video games.

Among the Fromsoft titles of the early 2000s, Evergrace holds a special place in my heart. The feverish atmosphere, the unique character designs, the unorthodox but soulful soundtrack by Kota Hoshino, it all comes together for the one of the most unique experiences in the Pre-souls Fromsoft catalogue. Of course the game is far FAR from perfect, the gameplay is more or less average, and the story fails to tell itself, requiring the player to 100% to even understand it. Clearly this title was a rushed launch title for the PS2, but it's still quite enjoyable in the way it came out. It's pretty amazing how the director of Evergrace Yuzo Kojima would go on to produce Elden Ring, and honestly playing through Evergrace you can see its influence not only in ER's imagery but also in gameplay mechanics found throughout the souls games. If you're a Fromsoft fan interested in their pre-Souls era, I recommend Evergrace as a place to start!

Cool game.

What the hell is that translation though........

Not writing more about it because I'm not sure if I love or hate this.

Cool game though.

EDIT: nevermind this is peak

after beating it fully, I can acknowledge its a deeply flawed game, but it's just so compelling. I like the music, the character design, and the game's world so much I can't help but love Evergrace. I also don't think the games that clunky, and I personally enjoyed the gameplay although I definitely can see why people say its really unrewarding and how it feels bad to play, but the games controls and mechanics just clicked with me personally.
TLDR; Evergrace is a deeply flawed but beautiful game, and I loved it despite its flaws.

The soundtrack, as anyone will tell you, is an otherworldly masterpiece. I heard the main menu theme and immediately decided I needed to play this game. It just kinda sinks itself into your soul and makes you feel weird things.

Storywise it's that classic FromSoftware joint where your character stumbles into a dangerous and dying world where they have to survive, explore, and discover the tragic backstory at the bottom of all of it. Never gets old.

Gameplaywise it's much more forgiving than your average FromSoft game, but it's also more generic. You will cheese your way through pretty basic combat and do color coded puzzles to progress and upgrade your weapons etc etc. Not really a problem though since the soundtrack and the atmosphere are what we're here for anyway, and aside from an overly esoteric puzzle or 2 you shouldn't face too many roadblocks in beating it.

It tries to do a lot of cool things, and... I don't know if many of them land, to be honest. I don't mind the "clunky" controls a lot to be honest; my two main issues are the lack of transparency about why your attacks aren't working against certain kinds of enemies, and the long backtrack to the item shop to try another weapon at random. I assume a lot of the storytelling got cut because of the localization and the whole PS1 development ordeal, but what is there is pretty interesting to me (plan on reading the novelization some time). The interaction between the amount of health left and the stamina regeneration rate was pretty fun to mess around with even if pretty basic. The "doll system" that makes your equipment show up on your character is still really cool to me, but I wish the clothing puzzles (and the elemental ones) weren't so obtuse half the time. Soundtrack is like an acquired taste and I'm all for it.

Nesse fatídico porém clássico RPG da hoje em dia consagrada FromSoftware, controlamos dois personagens, Darius e Sharline, mesmo separados ambos seguem o mesmo caminho em busca de saber o que aconteceu com eles, e apesar de divididos, seguem o mesmo objetivo: tentar entender o que aconteceu com eles e voltarem para seu mundo original. Por já ter uma certa bagagem com os jogos da From, sinto que pude aproveitar bem mais esse jogo, com claramente vários elementos que seriam utilizados posteriormente pela empresa, principalmente em Dark Souls. É fácil pegar as nuances e sutilezas que seriam polidas e trabalhadas nos títulos posteriores da mesma. Incrivelmente difícil e cansativo, mas com um twist interessante, extremamente divertido e com um mistério um tanto quanto convidativo na trama. Não consigo recomendar pra todos, mas é com certeza um ponto gigante fora da curva dos clássicos do PS2.

Evergrace is pretty disappointing. Almost everything about it feels unfinished or simply bad. I believe this game was initially being created for the PS1 and shifted to be a PS2 launch title late in development -- it definitely shows.

The combat is chunky and measured, like a 3rd person version of King's Field, but enemy movement is much faster and controlling your character's facing is much more awkward. Enemy windup is usually instantaneous and many enemies instantly and infinitely block attacks from the front, so you end up just running around them waiting for an opening. You can see From reaching towards Demon's Souls here, but with none of the precision or responsiveness. Additionally, no lock-on, bad character control, and camera control that only consists of swinging the camera (sort of, unreliably) behind you makes the game an extreme chore to play throughout.
Evergrace indexes hard on enemy resistances, to the point that enemies heal when struck with many of your weapons. You end up swapping weapons around to try to find a weakness, which is more tedious than fun. There also isn't super good UX to support the system -- I didn't have a clear idea of how to read my character and weapon stats until the very end of the game.
One interesting system is how stamina works in Evergrace. As in King's Field, your weapon does more damage if you let your stamina build to 100%. The difference is that your stamina bar is also your health bar, so as you take damage and the bar gets smaller, it takes less time for it to fill to max (though the maximum damage you do remains the same). If you are very low on health you can attack much more quickly at maximum power, creating a risk/reward sort of play that makes you feel a bit like a berserker in a very unique way even though it isn't very thematically relevant to the game.
Weapons and armor also grant you magic abilities (more as you level up your equipment), but they require and use a full stamina bar and usually delay stamina regeneration when you use them, so they usually end up just being a liability in combat, despite some interesting options and flashy effects.

Visuals here are very rough. You can see some inspired designs and concept art for the game reveals some truly unique characters and beautiful environments, but none of that is visible in game. Models are low poly, animations are stiff and often broken, and environments are often repetitive and uninteresting.
One cool aspect is a fully realized paper doll system, where the two characters you can play as will change their models for each of the pieces of armor you equip. The creativity here is obvious, with strange helmets and unique weapons and armor.
The dress-up system feeds directly into the other aspect of the gameplay, which is the puzzles. Most of these involve putting on a specific piece or specific color of gear in order to get through a door, activate an elevator, or trigger some switch. Rough translations and obscure requirements make these puzzles harder than they should be and nothing about them is actually very interesting or fun, unfortunately.

Nothing in this game makes any sense narratively. Events and characters seem arbitrary and are unexplained in a way that feels simply unwritten or unconsidered rather than mysterious and intriguing. This feels like a jumble of stuff thrown together at random, with no identifiable throughline or understandable consequences.
It isn't even that Evergrace is purposefully obscure (a technique From utilizes expertly in future games) -- it has so much to say in character dialog and cinematic events. Characters talk about events and each other without explaining or illuminating any of it or giving the player any way to understand how they are connected or what is going on. A lot of what happens seems to hint at an interesting world and place, but there is just nothing here to deliver any of it.
Doing some research into the story can give you an idea of what is going on in the game, but none of that exists for you to find while playing.

You can see some Souls DNA in the gameplay here and there are whispers of an interesting world, but none of the systems really come together. Evergrace is simply a mess to play or try to understand.
There isn't much reason to revisit this one, unfortunately.