A great mix of adventure and town management isn't just a desert mirage.
At the start of many adventures lies a town in need of help -- even as the threat of a larger crisis looms on the horizon. Ever Oasis manages to up the stakes by casting you as the leader of a settlement that needs both your management and your heroism. Your actions in your oasis matter just as much as those in dungeon battles, seamlessly blending this RPG adventure with town management in a fun way. Even when quests teetered on being too repetitive, the satisfaction of building my Oasis and leveling up my characters, simultaneously, made every task worthwhile.
As the Child of the Great Tree you wield the power to create a life-sustaining oasis for desert-dwelling folk. After witnessing the destruction of your older brother’s oasis by Chaos incarnate, it’s up to you and the water spirit, Esna, to create the last oasis as a beacon of hope and bastion against the increasing darkness that plagues the desert and its creatures. As you build up your town, you’ll gain access to shops, crafting recipes, and more. The town’s transformation from sandy dunes to lush paradise is not only fulfilling, but gorgeous to watch. The routine goes something like this: Attract potential villagers, fulfill requests so they stay, build their booths and stock their merchandise, and finally: collect the profits. The endearing nature of my villagers and abundance of things to do made this routine fun instead of tedious.
Helping Hands
However, the forces of Chaos can’t be beat just by being a good town chief - and it’s also your job to delve into dungeons below the sands and solve the problem of the encroaching Chaos, not to mention finding more materials to keep your oasis running smoothly. Everything you do in the desert benefits your oasis, as you find more items, shop materials, and rescue potential villagers. Back at home, the size and happiness of your town will increase your health pool, and upgrading booths will give residents new abilities. It’s a clever way to get you to respect the needs of your people.
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The forces of Chaos can’t be beat just by being a good town chief.
Characters also accompany you on your adventures and gain levels just like you - learning new abilities and attacks along the way. Among the desert dunes you'll find Seedlings like yourself, as well as the lizard-like Drauk, and scorpion-like Serkah tribe that wield oversized cactus hammers. In combat, they follow your lead fairly competently -- or you can swap between them at will to perform special attacks. Different weapons also perform better or worse depending on the enemy type. I was a bit sad to find that I couldn't change weapons or equipment except in town, which got frustrating. Still, having my residents fight alongside me instead of just shopkeeping made me all the more fond of them.
When outside of town, things get more Zelda-like. You traverse multiple overworld areas to battle chaos-infused monsters in great varieties, and explore small caves and puzzling dungeons below the desert. Enemies range from adorable (but deadly) takes on flying squirrels or peacocks to strange monsters born of chaos and wrath. While contending with enemies, you'll also be navigating twisting passages and caves. Some of the early dungeons aren’t very complicated, but I especially enjoyed the clever puzzles of later dungeons -- like using balloon-like cacti to bounce across gaps before they popped, or trying to find a way to get to enemies spewing projectiles. Despite all being set in the desert, these dungeons managed to be diverse and fun to explore: From boneyards full of glowing skeletons of giant creatures, to ancient tombs full of hieroglyphs and moving platforms. Like Zelda, caves and dungeons require tools to progress. But instead of plundering the important tools to navigate these places, your tools come from your residents.
All of the inhabitants of your oasis come with different abilities and weapons. Some, like mining or drop bonuses, are great for exploration. Others, like specialized weapons being able to use flower beds in different ways, are essential to getting through certain areas -- but you can only bring two people. While I enjoyed swapping out my party regularly to see how each of my villagers would use their skills, the amount of optional treasure that required a change in my party nagged me relentlessly. Many caves and larger dungeons alike would require a specific skill like the Paraflower to cross, but also hide mining or digging spots in the area as well. Some place a chest just out of reach unless you have the right person on your team. Thankfully, almost all the dungeons can be completed with just two or three skills, and the act of getting back to town to form a new party is relatively quick.
The Needs of the Many
Improving your oasis has its own rewards. Just building a booth may entice someone else to visit your oasis, and the store they want to open may in turn make someone stick around to create vast and cleverly-connected web. The more villagers you have, the bigger your oasis will grow, allowing for bigger gardens to harvest and longer roads to accommodate more booths. That said, I wasn’t a fan of the ability to only activate one side quest at a time. Even though I could see what was needed for inactive quests, many items would only appear if that particular quest was active, which was odd considering how streamlined a lot of your oasis-related jobs became as time progressed. Quests to entice residents would remain on my to-do list, but requests from villagers looking to upgrading their shop would disappear outright if I took on another task, forcing me to track them down again.
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having my residents fight alongside me instead of just shopkeeping made me all the more fond of them.
Outside of dungeons there is no shortage of side quests to undertake, resulting in rewards for your party and your town by both those looking for a reason to stay and shopkeepers needing help. On a simple quest to find someone’s belongings, I can multitask: I level up my party and keep them happy while they learn new skills; kill monsters for materials needed to stock shops and craft weapons; and bring miners or diggers to find even more treasures or collectibles. There are even optional and customizable labyrinths to explore that provide more to do well after my 30-hour adventure ended, which allow you to use collectible slabs to dictate which enemies you'll face and how hard they'll be. Even when my oasis was almost too big to handle, clever introductions of ways to streamline management - like sending teams to garden or explore areas to bring back materials, or stocking shops without visiting every individual merchant - not only kept things efficient, but made me feel like a great leader.
The Verdict
It’s no easy task, but Ever Oasis has managed to make me care as much about preserving my town as I do about saving the world. Despite the few odd design choices, there’s a wonderful blend of adventure and town-building where every task you tackle finds multiple ways to reward you.
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