It is charming. Have you heard that before? People use charming to describe something cute. Well this game is charming. The whole darn game is charming. Yes the character design is cute, it’s so much more than cute though, it’s charming. This game got to me. It made me feel emotions. The ending made me cry.

I have to say the best example of how good a game is how much you play it. I played Ever Oasis every waking hour for at least three days, I’m still playing it at a less intense level now I’ve completed the main story. I also ended up sleeping only about 6 hours every night so I could wake up and play it more. This game is addictive. I don’t know if I’ve ever been so gung ho about a game. I’ve been throwing dewadems and materials about frantically in an urge to upgrade my bloom booths. I’ve been hosting festivals as soon as I’ve got the stamps to do it.

Festivals encourage everyone to sell more goods, which allows me to upgrade the bloom booths to attract more visitors to my town, then I can complete their requirements to make them residents so I can grow more bloom booths. I’m usually a lot more conservative about resources and plan and save for longer, but I couldn’t help jumping into this game.

Now I love RPGs and there were a few features in this game that I super appreciated because of their absence in other games I love.

1, You can pick up items while enemies are attacking you or you’re running away.

2, You don’t have to delete items from your inventory to pick up new items, admittedly you can only have 99 of each item but that’s fine, you’re constantly restocking anyway.

3, Your end game world is all beautiful so you don’t save the world and then go back to a dark desolate chaos filled landscape. This was really valuable to me as I like pottering around at the end and working towards completing the game and it’s so much nicer to do it in a beautiful complete oasis instead of a chaos filled nightmare. The end game of this game is great as well, it gives you more residents to unlock and level up with harder challenges.

There was one sad moment in the game not related to story and that was when I realised that my oasis wasn’t going to expand anymore. I had to choose which bloom booths to keep out and which ones to temporarily remove. I so desperately wanted to keep them all out.

You can get different clothes and turbans to wear and make in the game. My favourite has to be an orange turban with pumpkin pants, but then again I’m naturally halloweeny.

You can also change your weapons between a bow, a sword, a magic wand, and a boomerang type spinner. Each weapon type does extra damage against a certain enemy type. I suppose you could use this to your advantage when going out on specific quests but I got attached to my sword.

I did have a problem with restocking items that you’d find in labyrinths. I’m constantly out of all types of papyrus and even though silver sand is not in a labyrinth it’s still hard to restock. When utilised properly the garden system can get you a lot of items you need. You can also send non seedling residents out on quests to forage or hunt for a lot of items. The joy of this game is combining exploring, hunting, foraging, restocking, organising quests, fulfilling wishes, upgrading your oasis, and keeping everyone happy. How happy everyone is is directly linked to how much health you have so balancing these things is important.

I love water, and mermaids, nymphs, etc, so I just loved every minute of the story with Esna.

The water effects on the 3DS are so beautiful. The relationship between you and her and your joint efforts to build something together and bring everyone an escape from chaos is just a magical story to experience.

It’s charming okay.

Ever Oasis, tier one – complete!

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