Everhood 2 Review — What Is Going On?!

In 2021, an ambitious indie game called Everhood was released into the world. This Undertale-inspired dance-battler pushed many boundaries with its strong thematic storytelling and unconventional combat encounters and subsequently cemented itself as one of my favourite games of all time. Everhood 2 promises more intense, dark, and mysterious locales with an equal amount of colourful characters to boot whilst ditching an important part of what made the first game so special.

Beginning with a questionnaire, Everhood 2 teaches you the basics of combat and throws you into a new dimension depending on the colour of your soul. From here on, the story is fairly open depending on where you want to go and how much of Everhood’s world you want to experience. You can tackle the Vegetable Kingdom’s ‘Royal Juice Tournament’ and overthrow the current Juice Master, liberate a bunch of Aliens from their fierce and ruthless wardens, or visit the Hillbert Hotel’s many rooms.

Everhood’s sequel boasts similarly abstract visuals to its predecessor, with a medley of haunting and garish locales. One thing Everhood loves to do is throw trippy, flashing sequences at you frequently. There is an Image Sensitivity option added for accessibility; however, I don’t feel qualified enough to share my thoughts on its effectiveness. If you have any kind of sensitivity to flashing lights, you might want to refer to a publication dedicated to accessibility. Character design is haphazard and creative, with a library of characters ranging from a simple ball of light to a suggestive-looking slime girl and just about a thousand varied mushrooms. Everhood 2 is such an audio-visual feast for the senses, sometimes to an overwhelming extent.

Everhood 2 has this fantastic way of simultaneously making you feel like you’re always lost yet always landing you exactly where you need to be to push the story further. It always has this air of mystery surrounding its various characters and story beats. I was constantly at odds with this feeling of missing context or content while playing and then being rewarded with closure (and several more questions) further down the track.

There isn’t much you can say Everhood 1 or 2 does that is typical, and that has been the reason I love Foreign Gnome’s game so much. Unfortunately, I can’t say that for everything in this sequel, namely the combat and the additions of RPG mechanics. The original Everhood had a tight narrative with strong thematic gameplay ties. Combat, for at least two-thirds of the game, was entirely one-sided; not only until your character reclaims a piece of themselves are they able to even take a swing back at their foes. While I preferred that first portion of the game, it felt deserved, like myself and the character I was playing had earned that right.

Everhood 2 foregoes this thematic device, instead opting for a more generic RPG-style gameplay loop. Throughout the dimensions across Everhood 2 I found a number of different weapons, talismans and “power gems”. I also found that I had an experience bar now and could level up the protagonist for extra damage. This cheapened the experience for me as many encounters were no longer unique, in any given area I could be fighting the same zany creature a few times over and found myself almost immediately checking out, avoiding anything that looked like it wanted to fight me.

Don’t get me wrong, each fight is fantastic in a bubble. Foreign Gnomes in no way phoned in their prolific OST, with each track as stellar as one another. One moment I could be rocking out to some hard metal, fighting an anthropomorphic shark and the next moment I’ll face a Giant Gorilla and a chorus of throat singing. It might trump its predecessor for my favourite indie game soundtrack. My issue ultimately lies in the dependency and frequency of these bouts, since the first game is simply much tighter when comparing the two.

It is likely that there will be things you miss on your first playthrough of Everhood 2. There are so many detours you can take and areas you can completely blow past if you aren’t observant enough. From what I’ve experienced through my two playthroughs, one finished and one ongoing, I can confidently say there is plenty to unpack and uncover hidden in the details of this universe. I’ve visited at least six different rooms containing nothing but a single toilet, and I have no idea if they do anything but flush. I’m looking forward to the community getting together and figuring these things out.