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.
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.