2/5 ★ – RoyMaster4's review of Everhood 2.

This is difficult to write about; Everhood 2 is a mixed bag of fantastic combat mechanics, but medicore-to-bad everything else. First, the good: the combat is improved from the original, where now you can infinitely charge up a meter by constantly absorbing the same element, creating intense high-risk, high-reward scenarios. Enemy patterns *usually* help encourage this behavior, though a couple fights feel particularly unfair in how they can stop your combo without much agency. Still, the core combat is clearly the Everhood 2's strength, and the game knows it. The combat isn't all good, though; due to the new experience system and mob encounters being a thing, there end up being a lot of repeated fights that bring the game down to a slog at certain points. The music is fine; though I can't seem to remember much of the music in this game, as opposed to the original having a lot of memorable tracks. Perhaps this is due to the nature of being focused on combat for the whole game as opposed to the first game having a lot of time to flesh out the music? In the original Everhood, the nuanced story and the memorable characters were a big highlight. Unfortunately for Everhood 2, it seems the developers forgot that was a core part of the experience, and as such there seems to be little-to-no meaning behind anything you do. There are a couple repeating characters, but their stories never feel like they really matter and they never once got a chuckle out of me. But above all, what tanks the score for me is the ending. It's difficult to talk about without going into spoilers, but imagine if you walked into the Elite 4 in a Pokemon game and after the first battle, the 2nd member told you how much they like to battle online against random players and told you to go do that instead, resetting you back to outside the Elite 4. It's a slap in the face that undermines the whole experience. It's really disappointing considering how much I loved the first game that this turned out the way it did. I might revisit Everhood 2 to replay some battles or mess with the workshop, but anything beyond that isn't worth a second look.