It's been a long time since I last played an RPG Maker horror game, so this was super nostalgic. Honestly I felt kinda... comforted playing Evil Tonight, as bizarre as that sounds. But after the novelty wore off I did feel a sense of dread while walking through the halls of San Paolo De Rosa.
A lot of the enemies are tough as shit, even moreso if you were playing day 1. Thankfully they did ease up and made enemies a bit easier to kill in a later patch, so if you're worried about difficulty, it's not tough as nails like it used to be, even in casual mode.
The main combat of the game is a little strange at first. You hold ZR to switch into "combat mode" and let go to enter exploration mode. Instead of getting the ability to manually aim, you always face towards the nearest enemy when pressing the button, but only in the four cardinal directions. That makes aiming pretty weird, but thankfully you have a knife always tied to B, so if an enemy comes at you from an unfavorable angle, you can swipe at 'em and reposition yourself. I didn't have an issue with the combat most of the time, but there were a few instances where it didn't work the way I wanted it to and I got screwed over. This wasn't a common thing, but definitely something worth mentioning.
There's a few challenges the hardcore fans can do to really extend the time spent playing, and boy lemme tell you, I am NOT doing those. "Beat the adventure without saving." NO. THANKS. Anyone who can do this though, hats off to you, shit sounds ludicrously difficult.
Exploring in Evil Tonight is kinda slow. You don't run particularly fast, and your walk speed is atrociously slow, so there's almost no reason to always hold the run button unless you get paranoid (like I did) and walk around with ZR held the whole time until you were absolutely sure there weren't any enemies to surprise you. Usually for completing a room, you find some sort of special object, like a key or an orb that lets you progress, but it doesn't tell you where you're supposed to use it, you just gotta remember or figure it out. I thankfully only got really stuck once, but was able to find out what I needed to do by combing through everywhere I had been before. Turns out I just needed to push a bookshelf in a room I had been in before. Oh yeah, there's also no map, which sounds really bad, but since the academy is relatively small and all the areas are visually distinct, I didn't have a huge issue remembering where all the rooms were off the top of my head, which I think is just good level design.
Speaking of the visuals, Evil Tonight feels like a particularly impressive GBA game to me. The pixel art is fantastic and all the areas are filled to the brim with life and detail... okay maybe not actual life, everything's pretty dead, but it certainly is active! Also the OST kicks ass, I was not expecting it to be this good, but it really is. ESPECIALLY the boss themes, my head was boppin' every time I entered a new fight.
The bosses you fight are all important to the story, which I was surprisingly invested in. It's certainly nothing groundbreaking, but I quite enjoyed it. I don't wanna get into spoilers, but the ending was very sweet. A complaint I can probably see people bring in up is the main character, Silvia. She starts the game pretty standoffish, self-centered, and is really only doing this for the money and the fame. However, she does learn her lesson (a little late by that point if you ask me) and becomes a better person for it. She's still full of herself by the end, but in kind of an endearing way. Also she likes mint chocolate ice cream, so she's cool in my book. The main draw isn't really Silvia though, I was way more intrigued by the mystery surrounding this academy, obviously I can't go into much detail without spoiling, but I think it pays off nicely.
Overall, Evil Tonight is a fun survival horror game that keeps you at the edge of your seat with every enemy you encounter... and every enemy you don't encounter.
A lot of the enemies are tough as shit, even moreso if you were playing day 1. Thankfully they did ease up and made enemies a bit easier to kill in a later patch, so if you're worried about difficulty, it's not tough as nails like it used to be, even in casual mode.
The main combat of the game is a little strange at first. You hold ZR to switch into "combat mode" and let go to enter exploration mode. Instead of getting the ability to manually aim, you always face towards the nearest enemy when pressing the button, but only in the four cardinal directions. That makes aiming pretty weird, but thankfully you have a knife always tied to B, so if an enemy comes at you from an unfavorable angle, you can swipe at 'em and reposition yourself. I didn't have an issue with the combat most of the time, but there were a few instances where it didn't work the way I wanted it to and I got screwed over. This wasn't a common thing, but definitely something worth mentioning.
There's a few challenges the hardcore fans can do to really extend the time spent playing, and boy lemme tell you, I am NOT doing those. "Beat the adventure without saving." NO. THANKS. Anyone who can do this though, hats off to you, shit sounds ludicrously difficult.
Exploring in Evil Tonight is kinda slow. You don't run particularly fast, and your walk speed is atrociously slow, so there's almost no reason to always hold the run button unless you get paranoid (like I did) and walk around with ZR held the whole time until you were absolutely sure there weren't any enemies to surprise you. Usually for completing a room, you find some sort of special object, like a key or an orb that lets you progress, but it doesn't tell you where you're supposed to use it, you just gotta remember or figure it out. I thankfully only got really stuck once, but was able to find out what I needed to do by combing through everywhere I had been before. Turns out I just needed to push a bookshelf in a room I had been in before. Oh yeah, there's also no map, which sounds really bad, but since the academy is relatively small and all the areas are visually distinct, I didn't have a huge issue remembering where all the rooms were off the top of my head, which I think is just good level design.
Speaking of the visuals, Evil Tonight feels like a particularly impressive GBA game to me. The pixel art is fantastic and all the areas are filled to the brim with life and detail... okay maybe not actual life, everything's pretty dead, but it certainly is active! Also the OST kicks ass, I was not expecting it to be this good, but it really is. ESPECIALLY the boss themes, my head was boppin' every time I entered a new fight.
The bosses you fight are all important to the story, which I was surprisingly invested in. It's certainly nothing groundbreaking, but I quite enjoyed it. I don't wanna get into spoilers, but the ending was very sweet. A complaint I can probably see people bring in up is the main character, Silvia. She starts the game pretty standoffish, self-centered, and is really only doing this for the money and the fame. However, she does learn her lesson (a little late by that point if you ask me) and becomes a better person for it. She's still full of herself by the end, but in kind of an endearing way. Also she likes mint chocolate ice cream, so she's cool in my book. The main draw isn't really Silvia though, I was way more intrigued by the mystery surrounding this academy, obviously I can't go into much detail without spoiling, but I think it pays off nicely.
Overall, Evil Tonight is a fun survival horror game that keeps you at the edge of your seat with every enemy you encounter... and every enemy you don't encounter.
Nagomikaze
1 year ago