I can't remember exactly but I think when I reviewed El Viento I said something like I probably wasn't going to play this. Well I guess I played it. This was an early game for the Mega CD that would later get a Genesis release for the US similar to Heavy Nova and Sol-Feace. I was suprised I didn't fully hate it.

I first gotta get it out of the way, this game is hilarious. Like there's something about this game that's really funny. Like you got these serious cutscenes going on and then you're actually playing and Earnest just having the most odd and somewhat clunky movement I've seen. His sprite is multijointed I think and it's just so weirdly animated. Even some of the enemies have this quirk.

He also swings the whip weirdly like he doesn't even know how to use the damn thing. Oddly though despite all that and even though there is some annoyances like having no i-frames, I actually didn't hate my time here. Don't get me wrong it's worse then El Viento which is a shame and it doesn't really have any creative level design but yet I was having a decent time.

I do kind of wish a lot of the game wasn't just sitting in the right spot and spamming the whip button. It even feels like that sometimes with bosses. The game also has a story but I couldn't understand any of it because I'm stupid and don't know Japanese still. So if I was missing a good story then I'm sad. Annet was naked in one scene and I was like wtf. Apparently the cutscenes were done by Animation Studio Mad House. At least that's what the credits said.

I don't really have much more to say but yeah it's probably not worth coming back to nowadays. It's a pretty cheap game to buy though if you're curious. Maybe if Annet was on the cover it would be pricier. There is still one more game in this series and I'll probably give it a look sometime, hopefully it's as good as El Viento this time.

(BTW does anyone else think the text logo looks like the US logo for Mega Man 1's title screen? I swear it looks similar!)

EDIT: Hi, it's me a day after writing this but I actually found out someone on Youtube had subtitled all of the cutscenes and the story was alright it seems. It's nothing mindblowing but some of it seems rushed to me. You're not missing too much though.

Fairly standard platformer bogged down by controls and overall feel. Our friend Earnest here is composed of various sprites pieced together rather than just one, and as a result he looks rather uncanny, constantly gets stuck on things, and is generally a major chore to maneuver around. He has like, a half crouch and a full crouch, and you have to hold down longer for him to do the latter, which really takes a moment and often won't be much help if you have to duck under anything. You also have to hold up just as long to get him standing fully upright again. You can roll around while crouching as well, but there's no real use to it and once again it's a real hassle to get out of. Basically, you'll feel like a clumsy oaf trying to move this man around and it just really isn't fun at all. Attacking is fine though, I guess? There's not really much else of note, I suppose bosses are really easy except the big fish near the end of the game who is completely full of shit.

It might be more fun to watch another friend play this and continuously stumble around. That could make for an entertaining afternoon, I'd imagine.

My second experience with this Annet + Earnest trilogy.

I love El Viento, because I think it's genuinely an amazing, wonderful action-platformer that is a ton of fun. I love Earnest Evans, because it's hilarious and weird and awkward and clunky at every step of the way. The ragdoll sprites, the "QWOP before QWOP" vibe, and the way the silly gameplay contrasts with the badass music and tone, really makes for an amusingly surreal experience. I would not seriously recommend that anyone try to play through this... but at the very least, it's fun to mess around with. (and also doable to beat if you know what you're doing)

Hopefully someday an English patch can be released for this.

(edit - did a 1CC on 2023-08-24)

El Viento is kind of a kusoge classic to me - a striking contrast between high concept OVA ideas and low budget design. It fails at moments, but it's conjoined by any semblance of intentionality to its gameplay. Earnest Evans is kind of what you get if you made the on-paper ideas even wilder while putting drastically less effort into the systems that hold it together. I imagine there was some young overzealous creator who was just screaming "Yeah dude it's gonna be so epic he's gonna steal an idol and run away from boulders, trees will fall down on him, he battles on a train while biplanes gun him down" and all the while there's this jaded-ass 40-year-old programmer in the corner banging his head on the table.

Yeah Earnest Evans sucks to play, it's bad. You've seen those videos of Earnest Evans flailing around like a Drawn to Life character. It plays as miserably as it looks. There was no attempt to make these levels flow, and they just put faith that players would ragdoll through a stroke of luck to beat it. But it's also funny and briskly paced enough for it to still be entertaining. It's not hard to imagine a much more functional version of this game, and like, watching Earnest's dead corpse ricochet everywhere deadpan is a sincere dry humor that feels lost in the awkward split of self-serious AAA games and deepfried-ironic indies.