Ever Oasis : Nintendo 3DS Review

Oh, man. I gotta say, I love, love this game. It's already one of my new favorite games on the Nintendo 3DS platform. Ever Oasis takes place in the harsh, unforgiving climate of the desert, but you can help! You're a Seedling, a being that can grow new life in this wasteland.

What's more is you're one of the mighty children of the Great Tree, and as such you're the only beings that can commune with the Water Spirit to create an Oasis! These safe havens are the saving grace of everyone who lives in the desert, and the only place where you can be protected from the chaos creatures that plague the rest of the world. So, as you can imagine, your Oasis is a busy place, and travelers come from all over to trade at your village and to hopefully become full time residents!

Ever Oasis is part adventure RPG, part puzzle game, and it's also part community building game! In the beginning your little Oasis is just a seed that you, and Esna, the water spirit plant. As the chief of the Oasis, it's your responsibility to grow the Oasis into a thriving ecosystem. This means that you'll need to recruit new residents, and upgrade the Oasis to make it more attractive to those that would want to live there.

Your house is right next to the spirit shrine, and you'll be able to do some important stuff here like sleep, save your game and change your equipment. Ever Oasis has a night and day cycle, and the monsters you encounter will change when night falls. If you'd like to advance your game to the next morning you can do so by sleeping in the hammock.

Occasionally you might have to do something at a specific time, but more often than not it doesn't seem to matter when you're adventuring. Although, the shops will be closed when it gets late, and you won't be able to talk to the shopkeepers

The second floor of your house also has something interesting! Here you can use the Synthesis Tree to synthesize items assuming you have the right ingredients to do so. You'll be able to make al kinds of weapons, accessories, or healing potions here for you to use.

Sometimes you'll be able to buy or trade for some of these items outright, but it's often cheaper to make them yourself at home! Occasionally you'll get new recipes as a reward for completing objectives. When you do they'll be available here, and you'll be provided with a list of the ingredients you need to make them.

As you travel throughout the world you'll meet lots of different tribes and characters. Many of these new friends can be recruited to join your Oasis village. Most of the time you'll be required to complete some task or mission before they show up, but sometimes travelers will just appear randomly or after you've added certain things to your village.

These characters show up in the morning right after you've woken up typically. Each of these travelers will have different abilities or skills that they can add to your Oasis whether in the form of trade or special attack skills that can help you out in battle or help you get through dungeons.

Sometimes your current residents will help you out by telling you rumors they've heard about things travelers are looking to buy or where you might find these desert dwellers. These typically lead to potential new residents for your Oasis, and if you make the effort to follow up on these requests you can grow your village and acquire new skills to use. Once you get enough residents you'll be able to upgrade your Oasis and make it bigger!

When you recruit a resident they will often want to open a shop, though not all of them will. If you have adequate space and enough cash on hand you can build the shop of their choosing to add to your town. These range from things like food, drinks, clothing, toys and other goods that your shopkeepers will sell to those that visit your Oasis.

While the shopkeeper does the sales it'll be up to you to make sure your shops stay stocked up on raw materials. Each shop has specific things that they need to run, and you'll be responsible for finding them. If your shops run out of stock it can lower the overall happiness level of your Oasis. The health of your Oasis is directly tied to your health level when you venture out into dungeons.

Your shopkeepers will be so grateful to set up shop in your town that they'll also give you a split of the profits! You'll need to manually collect this when you see the teardrop shaped sign for dewadems over each shop. Use your green gust attack to harvest the money.

After you get a few shops going you might find it can get to be a handful to keep up with them. Never fear, soon some handy short cuts will arise to help you collect all the materials needed to keep your economy thriving.

A lot of this will happen via trading with merchants where you'll have the opportunity to turn one item you've found on your journey into multiple items you may need for your shop. For example, you can trade a Lucky Furball for five Leapard Fur Balls that you'll need for several of your shops to operate. There are many trading opportunities like this throughout the game to make your job as a shop manager easier so be on the look out for them!

The more shops you have in your Oasis the more people that will want to visit your village! Some potential residents will only show up if you have a particular shop that they're interested in. In addition, sometimes one of your shopkeepers will have a special request. If you can satisfy the request for them then you can upgrade their shops! Once upgraded a shop will typically add upgraded items for sale at a higher price, and the shop will be able to hold more stock.

While I've heard some people say they thought shop upkeep was repetitive I very much enjoy these types of tasks. I suppose it's up to the individual what they like most about a game, but I enjoy building my Oasis and caring for it. If that's not your cup of tea then don't worry. You'll be spending the majority of your time out adventuring anyway. The game is pretty good at making it so you can manage your shops without spending a ton of time on it if you don't want to.

In addition to the travelers who can become residents there will also be some other visitors that just stop by, namely Noots and merchants. None of these characters will join your town, but they will help you by buying stuff from your shops or bringing new goods you can buy to town. The merchants will rotate between different settlements (including yours), so stock up on things you need while they're there. The Noots are also pretty adorable!

You also have the option of holding festivals at your Oasis! These events are dual purpose in that not only will it bring a lot of money into your village, but they can also attract new residents. Some characters that would otherwise not show up in your village may visit if you host a particular festival that they are interested in coming to.

In order to host a festival your Oasis will have to be a certain size and level, and you'll need to fill the appropriate stamp card to put on the event. You can get these cards from certain merchants, and you'll receive stamps from your shopkeepers when you deliver enough stock to them. After your festival is through be prepared to restock your shops. Many of them will sell out after the event!

While it's possible to trade or find many of the items you need for your shops, some of them will need to be grown. You'll need to buy seeds from travelling merchants and grow them in your Oasis garden. If you "tend the garden" by paying 30 dewadems the plants will be ready to harvest the next day. I pretty much always do this so I can quickly stock up on vegetables for my shops. In the future you can assign people to tend the gardens, but I tend to do it myself, because it's quicker to grow things.

The combat system features a swapping set up, and it functions pretty well! I've played other games with this setup that were very clumsy, but combat in Ever Oasis is quite smooth. You'll have three party members, and if you press up you'll be able to quickly swap between them. This can be handy for using different weapon types. The other two you're not currently using will act as NPCs. Their skill level is passable for NPCs, but you should make sure you're using the targeting feature to keep them focused on a particular enemy.

If you stop to heal, revive someone, or do anything else they are likely to follow you and then just stand there looking stupid while they pull the enemies over to you. As long as they're locked on to a target though they perform pretty well, much better than a lot of games I've played. In addition, the L button (used for target locking) can also tell you about an enemy's weakness. Every monster will have some type of weapon they're weaker to, and you can use this to your advantage in battles.

You can dodge with the B button, and you'll need to actually use it to avoid being clobbered all the time. After progressing your characters some they can learn new skills! Sometimes these will be more powerful attacks or buffing type of skills that will raise your party member's abilities.

You'll also be able to learn powerful combo attacks that you can execute on enemies. For your seedling party members you'll be able to craft armor and accessories for them, but if your preferred party members are from other settlements or tribes you can't for some reason. They will still level up and get stronger, but you'll play no part in their weapons or equipment. That being said many of them are great fighters, and they make good additions to your team.

If one of your party member's hit points go to zero they will become incapacitated, but as long as you have at least one remaining party member who is alive you can revive your fallen allies. This can also happen without you doing anything, but it's faster if you help. If you go over to their body you can mash the A button repeatedly to get them back up, and they'll revive with a small amount of health. Watch out though, this is a good way to take a lot of damage if you don't pay attention.

As you progress through the story you'll be sent on longer missions into the game's dungeons. These are found through the numerous cave entrances located on your desert map. Inside you'll find new friends to join your Oasis, enemies to defeat, and you'll also find sweet, sweet loot! Typically materials that can either be traded or used to craft things with. The dungeons always feature fun puzzles which you'll have to figure out in order to complete them.

Earlier I mentioned that each of your Oasis residents had special skills. This is where you will be using those. Many of the puzzles in the dungeons will require a particular resident in order for you to pass this area. In fact, you may find many areas you'll have to come back to in order to get certain treasure chests, because you don't yet have a resident with the skills to open a certain door or to unblock a passage way to the item in question!

Since your party can only consist of three members you may find that you'll actually have to go back to town to get the person with the correct skill for that part of the dungeon! That part of the game seems a tad annoying to me, but it is easy to do. You have something called an "aqua gate" where you can teleport back to the Oasis whenever you want. You then can quickly swap for the party member that you need. This will allow you to get any treasure laying around or get through the dungeon. While the process is relatively painless it does irritate me a little to stop halfway through a dungeon to do it.

You can also use the aqua gate to bookmark your place in that area, and then come back to complete it later if you need to get back to the Oasis and take care of things or to quickly save your game, because real life is calling. Keep in mind that if you use your aqua gate somewhere else or you accept a resident request that is marked to a specific location your bookmarked aqua gate will be overwritten.

Sometimes the characters with the skills you need to get past certain dungeon obstacles are not your best fighters. If you're nearing the end of the dungeon and you find your team is less than stellar it's easy to use the aqua gate to swap them out for stronger party members once you get close to the dungeon exit, and then zap yourself right back to where you were. Sometimes using the aqua gate feels like cheating, but I can see why it's needed.

In addition to the aqua gate you also have two other modes of transportation. Once you complete an area you'll be able to teleport back there whenever you wish using the warp gate in your Oasis or in any other game area. The difference between the aqua gate and the warp point being that warp points are permanent, and they won't ever be erased like the aqua gate. This is useful for visiting other settlements who have merchants that are not in your Oasis at the moment. If you're running low on important shop goods, and your merchant is nowhere to be found you can zip around and find them somewhere else.

You also have fast travel. This method only works inside the Oasis. Fast travel just saves you a little running around. You can teleport to any area of your Oasis with this for collecting money from your shops, going to your house, the spirit shrine, ect.

Some of your residents can't open shops, and you may be wondering exactly what they're good for. Many of them are great party members in battle, but they also have other options! The non-seedling tribe members can also go on expeditions for you to bring back items to the Oasis!

You'll be able to send out teams to different areas to obtain items that you might not have time to get yourself. Many times these items are needed to run your shops or useful items that can be traded for goods you need. This is a great feature, and I'm glad they included. It really makes keeping up with shop inventory easier.

In closing, I really love this game. I think it's worth every penny, and it's a lot of fun. I actually really enjoy managing and growing the shops. The dungeons are fun, the game is beautifully done, the story is great, and it's an excellent addition to anyone's Nintendo 3DS library. Having to swap out party members mid-dungeon is my only real complaint, even though it's pretty easy to do.

Also, be sure to save often in this game. This is one of the few modern titles that does not auto-save or even ask you to save at all. If you play for three hours, and your battery dies you'll be doing all of that over again. More than once I have run across the house to get to the charger as the light started blinking, but alas. It was an attempt in vain. I've just started playing with it plugged in just in case.

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