Video Game / Evoland 2

Evoland 2: A Slight Case of Spacetime Continuum Disorder (usually just referred to as Evoland 2) is a game released for Steam in 2015 by Shiro Games.

The game is a sequel to Evoland, expanding upon the first game's theme of "the evolution of video games" and incorporates a variety of gameplay styles, genres and references, while letting you travel back and forth between different eras, represented by different graphical styles.

The game starts with Kuro, a boy with no memory, waking up after being found by a girl named Fina. As they try finding out who Kuro is and recovering his memory, they find a demon who aims to destroy humanity. But while trying to stop him, they get sent back in time 50 years after accidentally activating a Magilith relic, and find themselves in the middle of a war between humans and demons. They eventually escape and get sent into the future, 50 years after their original time, to find large parts of the world wiped out during "The Great Disaster" 50 years ago - including Fina's village. Joined by demon prince Menos and researcher Velvet, they set out to find out what happened and prevent the disaster from happening, all while travelling between different eras...

The game also got ported to mobile platforms in 2018, and in 2019, the original Evoland and Evoland 2 got a Compilation Re-release known as Evoland: Legendary Edition, released for consoles and Steam.

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Evoland 2 contains examples of:

• 11th-Hour Superpower: Kuro gains the ability to slow down time...only a moment before the final boss battle.
• Abandoned Laboratory: Professor Giro's Laboratory. It houses a lot of organic lifeforms in tubes, hostile security units who are triggered by you stepping on girders, and the Weapon of Mass Destruction.
• Affectionate Parody: To video games in general, and Chrono Trigger and the Zelda series in particular.
• Anti-Frustration Feature: To help players deal with the different gameplay types, there are a lot of these, including:
  • Save Points liberally scattered throughout the game (including before all boss fights) that heal you to full health.
  • Regenerating MP during the JRPG section (there are no items to restore MP in the game and only one section uses MP)
  • Party members killed in battle are restored automatically when you win and health-restoring hearts are relatively easy to find (and are sometimes dropped in boss fights)
  • Money and experience are retained from when you last died (making it possible to eventually level your way past certain battles even if you lose each time).
• Artificial Intelligence:
  • The Magi have robots helping them with their job, "RoboServos." They seem to suffer from A.I. Is a Crapshoot however, thanks to them thinking of actions they weren't ordered to but aren't unsure of (such as "Destroy?") which they immediately back out.
  • The Abandoned Laboratory has the hostile security systems, along with the trickster terminal AI which keeps you turning on and off terminals with no end.
• Art Shift: The art is characteristic of the era you're in, evolving the further you are into the future. The Magi era has monochrome pixel graphics, alike to those displayed by the original Game Boy with thin lines dividing each pixel. The past era has 16-bit pixel art graphics, alike those displayed by the SNES. The present era features 32-bit pixel art commonly used by indie games today, while the future era uses 3D graphics accompanied with post-processing effects.
• Bullfight Boss: Captain Ababa can be this if the player runs in front of him from a distance and then escapes the Captain's dash, which ends with him motionless at a wall for a few seconds.
• But Thou Must!: Deconstructed. You notice several things that you think you'll solve in the future. By the end of the game, you've caused almost all of them to come to pass.
• Character Filibuster: Unlike most minor NPCs in the game, which only have one quick line they say when interacted with, a demon in the past era Demon Camp prattles on and on after being interacted with, taking a few minutes to get through without speeding through the text. He lampshades this, as apparently none of the other demons want to talk to him because they find his non-stop speaking annoying.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: In the store in Fina's home village, there is a bookshelf with a book titled "The Merchants Illuminati of Genova" written by one Dr T. Conspiracy. What seems to be just a mad conspiracy theory turns out to be true in the future, where the Traders actually take over Genova.
• Darker and Edgier: You get to see how the future goes to the worst. An entire race gets wiped out as time progresses, a thriving kingdom goes into despair as it is taken over by the Traders, the Frozen Continent melts which raises the water levels and wipes out the Wikings. Unlike Evoland, the death toll is absurdly high.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Menos and most other demons actually aren't evil, they just have a bad reputation among humans due to a lot of bad blood throughout history.
• Defeat Means Friendship:
  • When you defeat Menos in the past arena, he suggest you escape together.
  • Subverted when you beat Jatai. He becomes friendly after the fight, not instantly because you beat him, but because he then finds out you’re not out to hurt his friends.
  • Upon defeat, both Cherry and Plum make a Heel–Face Turn and ask you to stop and protect Reno.
  • Even the final boss Ceres changes her tone the moment she’s defeated.
• Downer Ending: The ending is rather dour, where Kuro and co are doomed to repeat the events of the game in a Stable Time Loop forever. However, it does qualify as a "Ray of Hope" Ending, since Ceres, while she is dying, promises to meet Kuro again and end the loop once and for all.
• Eldritch Abomination:
  • The Guardians are incredibly old beings, even older that the Magi, who thought they created them, but in fact just discovered them, can control Maana, the magic energy that comes from nature and come in a variety of weird forms, from a living tree to an aquatic fish thing.
  • The Exogarth, nicknamed Tiny Tiki, takes the cake, being a giant snake shaped mass of flesh with countless eyes, surrounded by rings and wings made of stone, having his own ecosystem and EATING The Anomaly.
• Eldritch Location: The Anomaly looks like a weird tornado from the outside, but inside is even weirder, looking like an unfinished 3D level, having objects from all time periods, bending when one walks, changing gravity and creating multiple time loops that somehow exist at the same time.
• Fake Difficulty: When played on touchscreen, especially mobile ports. Quite apart from the general difficulties, the parts requiring precision left/right/up/down input become nigh impossible, like the pong, snake and pac-man minigames in Giro’s lab.
• Fantastic Racism: Humans and demons mutually hate and fear each other. Later subverted after you defeat Magus, in which humans and demons don't hate each other and realize their war was Magus's fault. The victory in the war against the demons is still celebrated, however.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: The Prophet, leader of the cult of the Great Destroyer and a very powerful fighter, used to be a little kid who told stories about a great disaster that only his friends took seriously, and then the Great Disaster happened...
• Futureshadowing: You get to see the crater and the "Smog" technology made possible by the Great Disaster in the future, but it's only a while later until you actually witness how it happened.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Any time an ally leaves your party on-screen, such as Menos at the past era Demon Camp or him and Velvet in present era Demonia Ruins, you are prevented from summoning them until they visibly return.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • Present era Jatai and Dalkins (before defeating Magus) may be enraged by your appearance, but they'll still happily play Game of Cards with you without any problems. Even the demons in present era Demonia Ruins (again, before defeating Magus) won't mind a game.
  • Game of Cards players in the Magi era have cards of characters beyond their own era. Can be justified as the remains of future eras before the Magi era starts because of the game's time loop.
  • In the Anomaly, you are challenged by puzzles based on multiple copies of yourself doing different things. Velvet comments that from the outside it seems as if nothing happens and no time passes. However, you can still summon her during them. This is especially weird when she comments on hearing pots breaking but not seeing shards, even if her summon broke them during the puzzle.
• Gameplay Roulette: Unlike the first game, where there was only one Unexpected Gameplay Change, with it otherwise just experiencing a Genre Shift, this game makes a selling point out of shifting through multiple different genres as you progress, including a strategy RPG, match-3 Puzzle Game, Rhythm Game, Professor Layton-style puzzles, Shoot 'Em Up, and many others.
• Ghost Pirate: The reason why sailors fear the Cursed Isle is because they think it's haunted by the ghost of Pirate Rogers. Eventually subverted when it is revealed that there was no such ghost haunting the island; instead the pirates in the present mistook a time-travelling Kuro for Rogers' ghost.
• Good Morning, Crono: Following the Distant Prologue to acquaint the player with the base controls, the story proper starts with Kuro waking up in bed as the beginning of its many Chrono Trigger references.
• Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress: Parodied when Kuro escapes the coliseum with Menos through a hole he made to the sewers, as initially gravity literally doesn't exist until Kuro opens a chest that makes it, after which he freaks out as he realizes he's about to fall a decent distance.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Nakomi's Manor. Unless you find out that "Nakomi" is an anagram of "Konami" (thus acting as a hint on what to do), or that the sign which says [↑ A - ↓ B] tells you that going up is similar to inputting A and going down is that to B, you're never going anywhere without a guide. Worse if you don't know the Konami Code.
  • In the Anomaly, you are presented with another "walk only on the lit tiles" puzzle, along with the Anomaly's time-limited repetitions of your actions. The puzzle is made in a way that you have to walk on all the tiles in three repetitions, but you only have two available paths. If you or your previous 'ghosts' walk on an unlit tile, the puzzle will reset. The secret is mimicking one of your repeats up until you part ways to get the third batch of lit tiles. This is never hinted at in the Anomaly.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Ceres is half-demon half-human, although her demon traits are more visible. During the ending, a baby resembling her is seen in the abandoned Lost Island cabin with Menos and Velvet. Contrast to Fina's Uneven Hybrid status.
• Hammerspace: Lampshaded in-game by Velvet after you obtain the Flying Machine, who wonders how you carry all these items with you.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: You can name the main character (Kuro), Fina, Menos, Velvet, Nawi...even Ceres.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: Your first fight against Colonel Dalkins cannot be won. You are taken prisoner and locked up in Genova's jail afterwards.
• Interspecies Romance: During the ending, Menos and Velvet are seen with a baby Ceres in the abandoned cabin of the Lost Island. Since Ceres is half-demon half-human...
• Ironic Name: The Exogarth, the Guardian that ate the Anomaly and was almost the size of the continent is nicknamed Tiny Tiki by the Magi. Justified because when they named it, it was tiny.
• Item Get!: Same as the first Evoland: a fanfare plays and the hero holds the items he got or won. Lampshaded by the game when you earn and literally struggle to hold the Wonderful Boat.
• Just Following Orders: Dalkins' reason for preventing you (or himself) from stopping Magus, as he has received no order to stop him. It takes an Imperial medal from a regretful Dalkins in the present era to change his mind. This is later subverted when he reveals after defeating Magus that he was dubious of how Kuro got the medal, and tells the party of the risk of being executed by the Emperor. He knew all along that he wasn't doing the right thing but didn't have the courage to go through with it.
• Lampshade Hanging:
  • After escaping part of prison in a cardboard box, Fina comments how weird it is that you succeeded, fitting for a parody on the trashcan escape from Breath of Fire II.
  • Velvet asks herself how the prototype of the flying machine will fit in your bag, but the question is left unanswered and it just appears in your inventory, marked with a backpack icon.
• Large-Ham Announcer: Largo LeGrand at the coliseum is pretty much this. Even if he is disappointed by the responses he gets, he will do his best to make it be as exciting as possible.
• Last of His Kind: Olaf the Wiking in the present by his own admission.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • Fina has a tendency to obliviously make meta references to aspects of the game, such as feeling less "detailed" following the Art Shift from 32-bit to 16-bit after their first experience with Time Travel, initially referring to the easily-tricked prison guards as "scripted" before using different terms, and experiencing a feeling of volume after traveling into the 3D future era.
  • The Character Filibuster:demon in the past era Demon Camp does some Lampshade Hanging on how everybody repeats the same phrases when talked to like they have memory problems that make them forget that they've already said something, to which he posits a theory about whether everybody is actually a bunch of robots programmed to say things written by somebody else.
• Ledge Bats: The sewer platformer level is highly populated with bats that periodically swoop in an arc, which cause negligible damage but are mainly found in areas where they can knock you into highly toxic sewage that will quickly deplete your health.
• Left Hanging: Despite having a much better put together story then the original, a fair number of plot threads are left unresolved, including: What was Ceres trying to accomplish? What was the guardian and why was it sitting at the bottom of the ocean for all of history?, Why did Kuro detonate the weapon and why did he build it in the first place, as professor Giro?, and finally, what was the Anomaly and how was it created?
• The Little Detecto: The Everything Under the Sun-dar detects how many cards or chests are in an area and where they are relatively to your position.
• Mirror Match: The boss fight in The Anomaly is a fight against three doppelgangers, named "Kuro?" by one of the cards.
• Non-Linear Sequel: This game is only a sequel to the first Evoland in the sense that it takes the "game evolution" gimmick and expands on it alongside keeping the RPG-like primary gameplay style, with there being no references to the characters or Excuse Plot from the original.
• Outrun the Fireball: After defeating Captain Ababa on the Pirate Island, the volcano erupts. Cue escaping the island under a time limit while facing off more mooks.
• Party in My Pocket: Same as with the enhanced Evoland, except you can actually call upon your party members' abilities.
• Permanently Missable Content: Averted, as you can revisit most places including Giro’s lab once the anomaly is standing over it in the present. You can even get back into prison by talking to a guard in past Genova.
• Plot Tunnel: Partway through the game, story progress requires causing a rockslide to scare some guards away from a bridge, then running through before the rocks fall on it. After this event, all the areas on the other side will be inaccessible to you for some time, so anything you missed will have to wait until later when you find a way to get around it.
• Pirate Booty: Rogers was supposed to tell you of where he hid his treasure after you complete his quest, but forgot where he hid it. It turns out it was a piece of Orikon Ore.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Reno in the present era wants revenge against humans and seeks to destroy humanity. He even has Cherry and Plum brought along, who don't entirely agree with his plans.
• Save Point: Liberally scattered throughout dungeons as an Anti-Frustration Feature. They even fully heal you automatically.
• Sequential Boss: A significant portion of the bosses have multiple parts to their battles before you finally beat them. Most notably the final boss. The first phase is in the future, featuring the typical gameplay, the second is in the past, featuring the platformer gameplay. The last is in the present, featuring horizontal shmup gameplay.
  • Reno's encounter. He first uses and confines you to energy orbs primarily, before summoning images of himself to attack.
  • Plum's real boss fight is first fought with bombs, before she snatches them from you and you're forced to fight with your sword instead.
  • You have to make it up to the Great Troll Donkey Kong style before actually fighting him.
  • The fight against the Prophet. It starts with him in his normal form, and once you defeat him, he begins another match in his transformed form.
• Shout-Out: Like its predecessor, the game has so many references that it needed its own page.
• Stable Time Loop: It is implied that the Magi's "Project" was to induce this to stop the End of Time from taking place.
• Strange-Syntax Speaker: Yoda Tree, he is called for a reason. Later subverted hilariously when Yoda Tree doesn't talk with his way of speech when thanking you. He realizes his error, cuts off, and reiterates what he was saying with the signature verbal tic.
• Stealth-Based Mission: The prison escape sequence is a No-Gear Level where you must avoid being seen by patrolling guards while working your way through the maze-like areas.
• Stupidity Is the Only Option: When visiting the Magi Era, you are told that the Temporal Research Center threw their fragment of the Magi Key into the Anomaly, which sounds a lot like a black hole according to its descriptions. Yet the only way to get this fragment and advance the story is by shooting yourself into the Anomaly.
• Sword Beam: In the platformer-based levels, Kuro inexplicably becomes able to shoot sharp beams from his sword, when in all other gameplay types hes a Close-Range Combatant that needs his summonable allies to attack at range.
• Take Your Time: Unless there's a timer on the screen, the party can take their merry time doing anything else no matter how urgent their main task is.
• Temple of Doom: Jatai's lair has an unhealthy amount of traps that even his pirate friends in the future hate.
• Tennis Boss: Reno's first phase involves you deflecting his energy orbs back at him.
• Thoughtcrime: Blaspheming the Great Destroyer can turn you into The Heretic. The problem is, the act of blasphemy is expanding to ever uncompromising degrees.
• Time Machine: Expect to deal with them with a lot. Comes in two variants:
  • The time portal variant in the form of Magiliths. They remain fixed in place and takes you to the past, present and future eras. Only one Magilith takes you between the Magi and the future era. They can be destroyed.
  • After obtaining the module dropped by the Exogarth, your Flying Machine becomes one and can travel through all four eras.
• Time Travel: Your party travels through four eras in time, meddling with past and future alike, and while the party debates often about the consequences of doing so, they nonetheless carry on with their meddling, to the point they cause more than they solve.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • Kuro's amazing decision making skills and how reckless the party is might as well be vital to them as breathing. Taken into an extreme when being literally shot into the Anomaly.
  • Anyone buying into the pitches of the Traders, considering what they have on offer versus where it gets those unfortunate to fall into their allure.
• Ultimate Blacksmith: The blacksmith in the past only makes weapons and armor of the highest quality, which he needs Orikon Ore to make. He doesn't have anything else for sale.
• Uneven Hybrid: Fina has magical powers courtesy of her heritage: her grandfather was a human and her grandmother was a Sylph. Contrast to Ceres's Half-Human Hybrid status.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: The Prophet pulls this off on you before you fight him, turning into a more muscular version of himself.
• Weapon of Mass Destruction: Professor Giro's "Weapon" is this. It was intended to be used against the demons but has remained unused until it was detonated in the present, leaving a large crater in its wake. The weapon bears the nuclear symbol on its exterior, which may explain its potency, as well as the potency of the crater's residual smog. It has no nuclear fallout, thankfully.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Menos is usually quite serious and strong both physically and mentally, but he's reduced to trembling and stuttering when he learns that the Haunted Forest is genuinely filled with ghosts, immediately cowering behind Kuro, which Fina teases him about.

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