Ever Oasis is quite good

[A Black Falcon]

(This is definitely not a review, I'm still early in the game. I just want to write about it because it's good!)

So, of the games I've gotten in the past few weeks, the one I've played the most of is probably this one, Ever Oasis for 3DS. Published by Nintendo, produced by Koichi Ishii, creator of the Mana franchise, and his studio Grezzo, the team behind the two N64-to-3DS Zelda ports of OoT and MM, this game should have been a much bigger deal than it seems to be. The quality is there, but the people aren't, unfortunately. Apparently most people don't care about the 3DS anymore, Pokemon perhaps excepted, so this really good 2017 release and new IP got overlooked. The game has gotten mixed but some good reviews -- the game got an 8.9 from IGN, for example -- but I haven't seen it talked about nearly as much as it should. New IPs are hard to sell indeed; with the Mana name I'm sure this would have gotten more attention.

Anyway, Ever Oasis is a third-person action-RPG with two elements, adventuring in an Arabian desert-themed environment and building the town in your oasis. You are a special Seedling, and can partner with an oasis water spirit to build a small town around the waterhole in this dry expanse. Your goal is to try to stop the monsters which have destroyed all of the other oasises, including the one you are from.

Now, in the games' box and packaging, they only show and mention the male playable character, but in the actual game you can play as either a male or female character. I have no idea why they hid the female character option, but it's there. You can't customize your character choice beyond choosing your gender, and both characters are cute little semi-human things, but it works in the games' nice, cartoony art style.

Indeed, the graphics in general here are really nice, particularly in 3D. This game fully supports 3d, and as someone who always uses their 3DS with the 3d slider set to maximum, that's awesome. The 3d effect is really nice and adds to the already good graphics.

As for the gameplay, the Zelda influence is clear. You wander around, attack enemies with your weapon, and such. Enemies and plants will drop materials, which you can use to fulfill quests for people in your town, to build new buildings in town, and more. There are also dungeon areas underneath the overworld, as you might expect. By doing quests for visitors in your town you can get them to stay permanently, so that encourages you to explore. This isn't really a crafting game though, I don't think, you just collect stuff and return it to people. I believe the world is semi-randomized, and dungeons certainly are, so this isn't quite on Zelda's level as dungeons probably will feel similar due to the random generation. There are puzzles

As you progress you will get more party members too, and you can switch between them. Each one has a different weapon and ability too. I haven't gotten to that part yet, but it is in the demo.

So yeah, I'm still fairly early in this game but I'm quite liking it and I hope that more people play the game, it's well worth it. The 3DS is still a great system and while next year might not have much releasing for it (we'll see), 2017 was a good year for the platform and it's got some pretty good games, this one included.