izigame.me

Everhood 1 is one of my favorite games of all time. But you know what the worst part of Everhood 1 was? Having to repeat some of the fights again in the second half of the game. Everhood 2 asks the daring question: what if we made the worst part of Everhood 1 the entire game?

The unique, high-quality battles against a charismatic cast? Gone. Instead, Everhood 2 is filled with repetitive encounters, where the same enemies appear again and again. Enter an area? Expect to fight identical battles against the same foes multiple times. In the mines, you fight three hyenas and sharks. Later, they return. Then, near the end of the game, you fight yet another hyena and shark—again. That is five separate battles against the same recycled enemies. And this is just two enemy types; the entire game is structured like this. At one point, the game even forces you to sit still for ten minutes, fighting the same enemy six times in a row. And no, they are not interesting enemies.

Would Everhood 1 have been better if you had to fight three Automated Terror Machines on your way to the club? No. And Everhood 2 is not better for this design choice either. This is absolutely a case where less would have been more. If the game had simply removed random encounters and made each enemy a single, meaningful fight with increased health, it would have dramatically improved the experience. The world and exploration are strong enough to carry the game. It did not need this relentless padding.

And then there is the combat system. Mechanically, it is deeper than Everhood 1 and has a higher skill ceiling. But is it more fun? I would argue no - significantly less so.

Everhood 1 was simple: absorb two attacks of the same color, counter, and slowly chip away at the enemy. In Everhood 2, the most efficient strategy is to absorb 14, 15, or 16 attacks in a row to reach a full-power strike. In some cases, you will want to absorb 30 to 40 attacks just to land a devastating one-hit KO. This can feel satisfying in short bursts, but over time, I realized something: I was no longer paying attention to the battles.

I was so hyper-focused on playing perfectly for minutes at a time that I stopped absorbing the experience itself. I was not watching animations, reading dialogue, or even engaging with the music. I was just grinding out perfect sequences to make the most of the system.

To tell the truth, my favorite part of Everhood 1 was before you got your arm back. Just dodging. It was pure immersion. You, the enemy, and the music. But in Everhood 2, this feeling is constantly interrupted by the need to execute long, fragile attack chains. One of the most interesting boss battles, Lucy, can literally be ended in a single hit before the fight even begins on hard mode.

It is not just that playing perfectly is hard. It is that the punishment for failure is severe and deeply frustrating.
- Absorb the wrong color once? Chain reset.
- Get hit a single time? All stored energy gone.

This turns every battle tedious. Even easier fights become drawn-out slogs because a single mistake sets you back massively.

Would it not have been better if getting hit halved your stored energy instead of deleting it? Or if absorbing the wrong color just didn't work, instead of punishing you? I just finished one of the final bosses, and my only thought was, "That was really annoying to absorb attacks against." Even when I beat a hard boss without dying, if I lost my chain a few times, it was still frustrating. I want to emphasize, this system is flawed in a way that even winning can feel bad.

And then there is the music. When it hits, it hits. But it is hard to ignore that Chris Nordgren stepped back from composing the majority of the soundtrack, and Cazok took over. Unfortunately, I do not think a single Cazok track makes it into my top five Everhood songs. His work often feels generic in a way that Chris’ compositions never did. The result is a step down overall.

The story is where the cracks really start to show. Comparing Everhood 2's story to Everhood 1 almost feels unfair—because Everhood 1 was phenomenal. It was charming, heartfelt, and filled with characters I cared about. It had emotional weight. It made me almost tear up at its highlights.

Everhood 2’s story is an incoherent mess. I can't even begin to give you a synopsis.

Good storytelling is driven by cause and effect. Everhood 1 followed this perfectly:
- The Blue Thief steals your arm, therefore you chase him.
- However, he is working for Gold Pig, who betrays you, therefore you go after him.

Everhood 2? Nothing connects.
- Events happen in no particular order.
- Characters show up, disappear, then show up again without reason.
- There is no real conflict, no meaningful relationships, and no character arcs.
- Villains appear out of nowhere and vanish just as fast.
- I thought a character died, only for them to return without a single acknowledgment.

And then the game just ends. No real resolution, no emotional payoff—just nonsense for the sake of nonsense.

SPOILERS: There is a particularly egregious moment where you return to the world of Everhood 1. I would not have minded revisiting a single area or a single fight. But the entire world? Undoing the entire ending of Everhood 1? It feels borderline disrespectful.

Honestly, it feels like Everhood 2 is the first game, and Everhood 1 is the sequel that fixed everything. Everhood 1 learned from all the mistakes that Everhood 2 made. There is not a single moment in Everhood 2 that comes close to fighting Zigg for the first time, battling the Dev Gnomes, the emotional weight of killing Blue Thief and then fighting Rasta Beast, or discovering the Light Being.

Maybe the biggest issue with Everhood 2 is not that it is a bad game. It is that it will always live in the shadow of its better, older brother.