REVIEW: ‘Everhood 2’ Has The Moves But No Rhythm

Everhood, the 2021 rhythm action game by Foreign Gnomes, was unique. It wasn’t scared to shake things up. It had fantastic music time and again for each of its fights and told a great story about what immortality could actually mean. Most importantly, it felt like a complete adventure for the broken doll we played as. So, to say Everhood 2 was a surprise is an understatement.

How could a sequel to such a satisfying experience elevate what was introduced in its predecessor? What new mechanics could be introduced that would make their inclusion feel better? In Everhood 2, the combat and music do precisely that. They raise the bar to new, memorable heights. But for every other aspect, the game tries too much that the whole experience feels diluted to a disappointing extreme.

Everhood 2 has you take control of a spirit. After the color of your soul is decided through a metaphysical personality quiz, you awaken to a strange world. Through the power of music, you quickly learn how to survive and, better yet, battle the threats this universe presents. Through the help of a mysterious raven, you begin a quest to become stronger in mind, body, and soul to take on the Dragon. And so begins your heroic quest to save the universe from different threats and find the reason for so many troubles here.

How you fight is taught very early as you learn how to harness different colors sent your way to charge attacks and damage your opponent. New RPG elements, like experience and equipment, are also quickly introduced. Through leveling, you slowly get more powerful with increased attack and health. At first, leveling feels pointless. You take a similar percentage of damage and deal what seems like a non-changing amount of damage to enemies as you get further along in the game.

The post-game shows that this is just not true. You are getting more powerful, which is only enhanced through equipping different weapons to quickly and efficiently destroy your enemies. Each enemy has a weakness to a specific color type, which really pushes for trial and error. How? Well, through Steam achievements and some fights getting harder and harder the longer they drag out.

While combat can feel unruly, the awesome soundtrack stands out.

There is a Steam achievement to one-shot every single enemy in the game. This includes bosses, too. You can do this as you first encounter a new foe, or you can wait until you unlock the arena, where you can fight every fight again as many times as you want. Plus, there’s a score mode and leaderboard that encourages landing large combos while ending the fight as fast as possible. The Arena is even better, with weekly challenges to fight three fights in a row to get the high score.

The best way to overcome these challenges, get those one-hit kills, or take out bosses before they get too difficult after being too long is learning which colors work best against which enemy. Once you know that, you can just restart the fight and then learn the most efficient way to build out a massive combo to overcome any challenge. Basically, mastering each fight and making what they throw at you your own.

Occasionally, throughout your journey in Everhood, you’ll find special soul weapons. Each represents a specific color type, where utilizing that special color in combat will deal additional damage. Each also comes with three unique attacks for the three different power levels and a weakened color. They can be changed on the fly during combat, too, so you can quickly adapt to any situation. And if an emey is weak to the blue moon attack, use the blue dual blades to deal devastating damage.

They’re also upgradeable with upgrade crystals. Each weapon level increases the damage of their attacks by 10 percent, unlocks new versions of attacks, and eventually removes that negative affinity. For the most part, they are distinct enough in terms of how they land hits. For one, it’ll give you a ranged attack to ensure it always hits the enemy. Another’s second-level attack heals you with each hit.

Yet, you could just brute force through the game with one weapon once you find the one you like. Switching weapons out to min-max damage in the end isn’t an absolute requirement to beat the game. Moreso, it feels like a way to award those who want to be as efficient as possible or get that high score in the arena where slight changes in strategy could make a difference.

And then there’s the accessories. These change how you earn extra lives through fighting. One, that’s more of a secret to find, gives you two lives and recharges after 200 seconds. Another only gives you one but comes back after 90 seconds. So whichever one you use comes down to whichever challenge you’re facing and what’ll help you survive the encounter.

Everhood combat wouldn’t be what it is without awesome soundtracks, and there are so many bangers in Everhood 2. Even the most random enemy, like fighting a horde of squirrels, will come with a beat you can’t get out of your head. Plus, the songs are made to be played on a loop, leading to encounters that end only if you win or die.

What really stands out with this approach is the level of risk/reward that comes from trying to survive a wave of notes to get another round at a specific color for even higher damage to dish out. One hit and your combo resets after all. If you can pull off surviving a wave while building up a massive combo, you’ll quickly get those one-hit-kill achievements if that’s your thing.

Everhood can’t capture the highs of its predecessor in combat or story.

But the story never seems to reach the highs of the over a hundred fights and scenarios. Instead of a clear throughline with a subtle message that slowly reveals itself as you progress, Everhood 2 is very in your face about each motif it tries to present. It switches these motifs way too often ever to let one stick. The game shifts gears as you feel like you’re getting a climactic and satisfying moment for the current storyline. Ultimately, this leads to you just asking so many questions or losing interest in ever paying attention to the story moving forward.

And this is no more apparent than the finale. In its final shift, you’re putting an end to an ultimate evil that really just appears out of nowhere. And without spoilers, the fight just ends in the most anticlimactic way possible. There’s no rhyme or reason for this.

Even the game itself feels like it’s in disbelief with how this is the way it ends. The credits roll, and the omnipotent presence that becomes a regular cast member in the final moments tells you as much. This presence shows off the post-game in a very fourth wall break moment. And then you’re just put back to just before the point of no return. That’s it.

Unlike committing to the fights that really do love to experiment with new mechanics or genres of music, the story is the opposite of that. Its experimentation with what story it wants to tell leads to a fragmented mess. There are even some moments that connect directly to Everhood that come very close to ruining the original experience. Are its connections implying that Everhood 2 is a prequel? Or is it implying that the first game’s conclusion never mattered?

That’s not to say there aren’t some great characters and storylines in Everhood 2. For example, there’s an area that you return to now and then where time jumps forward by a thousand years each time you come back. This time-bending location questions the power of a higher being and how legends and myths are made for a people, and it ends with an excellent reward, too.

Another is the mysterious hotel, where each time you visit, you will be given a different floor to visit. You’re just helping guests with their problems or hijinx—like an early visit ends with you fighting Rasputin, who drinks vodka to speed up the music and heal a little bit.

Everhood 2 just can’t seem to pull every aspect together.

The randomness and uncertainty of what you’ll expect with these are great one-offs. It’s a shame that the main story felt like it had to match these places instead of committing to something bigger. There are some games where a great story or fantastic gameplay can support the other if the other is lacking.

Everhood 2 just can’t seem to do that. In other words, how can you care about who you’re fighting and why the fight evolves when it’s trying to tell a story that you ultimately can’t connect with? At any moment after, everything you’ve done up to that point could just be moot or meaningless.

There are moments when the story works well. That’s when it enforces trial and error with certain fights by progressing, adding more story through failure. Some fights are obscenely difficult, and failure, instead of leading to a game-over screen, is a new beginning for growth and self-exploration.

The Dragon is the prime example of this, where you are encouraged to learn the minutia of how to fight or get great pieces of gear through smaller areas whose resolution is determined by the choices you make. Everhood 2 is at its best when the game lets you make it what you want it to be through reflections of your personality traits—turning itself into a mirror for introspection at who you are in this terrifying world.

Everhood 2 does two things well: the fights and the music. Everything else is a hodgepodge of ideas that don’t mesh well or are thrown at a wall to see what sticks. And no better example of this is its story. I still can barely tell you what happened. Compared to its predecessor, with a well-defined motif, Everhood 2 will give you whiplash from how often the story changes directions. That indecisiveness is ultimately its downfall, leaving you scratching your head and wondering, “Is that really how it ends?”

Everhood 2 is available March 4th on Nintendo Switch and Steam