I won't bother talking about any of the well known games I like. Instead, I'll introduce you to this little SNES gem I just love, that not many people have heard of. I don't think it's been mentioned here. If it has, sorry.
E.V.O. - Search for Eden
This game, published by Enix in 1993, has got to be one of the finest action/RPGs hybrids I've come across. The story of the game is as follows: After creating the planets, the Sun chose Gaia to harbor life. One of the many life forms to appear on the planet should prove it's worth by, after millions of years of evolution, becoming the greatest life form on Earth. That creature would then be granted entrance to the Garden of Eden, together with Gaia. The player would take the role of one of Gaia's creatures, with the ultimate role being to reach Eden.
You start the game as a fish, and trough the game you would climb the evolutionary ladder by becoming an anfibian, a reptile, a bird, a mammal and ultimately being able to trasform into a human. By fighting other animals in a plataform-style world, you would recieve Evolution Points, wich you could spend in upgrading certain parts of your body, creating your own unique creature, that fitted your style of playing. You could make a fast, agile little mammal, or a big, slow and monstruosly strong dinossaur. You could also find crystals that transformed you into special, hideously strong creatures, as a dragon or an eel, for a small ammount of time. You could register any animal you became into a kind of journal, and then use special crystals to become any of them again temporarily.
The music in this game was made by K?ichi Sugiyama of Dragon Quest fame. It included incredible songs, as well as some ordinary ones. The graphics are very nice, with elaborate backgrounds and many different sprites for all the creatures you could become. The enemies were equally well designed, fitting well with the rest of the game. The bosses were specially good. Although it had some slowdowns, the game would run just fine most of the time.
The replay value of the game is very high: because of the massive combinations of upgrades you could do, it's very hard to find two people that played the game with the exact same animals. You could play the game again with a completely different evolutional approach, making entirely different creatures and having the most diverse experiences possible. Playing the game another time is never quite the same.
The downside to the game was it's repetitive gameplay: to collect enough points to buy the most expensive evolutionary upgrades, you had to go trough many battles that were largely the same, as there wasn't many means of attacking. Other than that, the gameplay was sometimes very brutal, with bosses that did massive damage and moved incredibly quickly, annihilating the player's creature, even if it was very evolved. This frustrating aspect of the game made many gamers develop ways of exploring the evolution engine to continuosly refill their HP during said battles, making them more manageable.
In my opinion though, the good part of the game far surpasses the bad one. The joy of seeing your little digital avatar evolving from a little fish all the way to a giant shark-like animal, with giant teeth, a plated skin and a spiraled horn on it's head more then made up for the large quantity of fights necessary to do so. I recommend this game for any plataform/RPG lover with enough patience out there. For those who can withstand all the fighting, there's a great game behind it.
PS: Sorry for the long post.
I usually get carried by what I'm writing and it gets huge. Also, I hope my english was good enough. If you see any errors please correct me.
