So if this is not a game where you engage in sexy times with monster girls, where is the Eroge content? Basically in this world it is a sin to have sex with more than one woman, this is one of the very few things that can cause you to become an Outlaw. Outlaws are people who fall from the grace of Eve and as a result they are unable to produce their own food and they are cast off from society. Often they are just flat out killed over it. Unfortunately this also causes women who are raped to get cast in with Outlaws as well. This has many different story ramifications that I won’t spoil here. But what this has to do with our hero, Aster, is that he wants to marry his twin “sisters”. But he can’t marry both of them without losing Eve’s blessing. As a result, he heads to the mainland to try to become a knight. His sisters told him that knights are allowed to have more than one wife. Once he’s there, he also finds out that the higher level of knight he is, the more wives he can have.
That almost sounds like a premise for a pervy version of Pokémon. But Aster is actually a really good person, even if he does have quite the sex drive. So he does genuinely marry the girls that become his wives, and all that entails. One of the really nice things about this story, as opposed to something like Mass Effect, is that sex is treated as just a stepping stone in your relationship and thereafter a part of a greater whole. Instead of being something that is just the reward at the end of a journey. While it might be unrealistic, even when he gains the maximum number of wives you can have in the game, each of his wives still feels fulfilled in the relationship. And they do go out of their way to make sure that you also know each of them is also fully sexually fulfilled. Much more than Beat Blades Haruka or Rance VI, this game is quite romantic and all of the relationships have their own distinct flavor and style. Not only that, but you are never making decisions between the girls that are permanent, like in other visual novels. There is only one route, the harem route. That is a breath of fresh air in many ways. It was actually quite easy for me to get 100% of the CG scenes in a single playthrough.
Aster’s goal from the beginning to the end is to have sex with as many pretty girls as possible. And that may seem fairly simple minded of him. But he is most definitely not like Rance. He has zero interest in forcing or tricking any girl to sleep with him. As a result, every rape in this game is caused by an event that the hero was unable to prevent. While Aster may not to always have the best of intentions, he’s actually a good person and can be quite heroic. But his wives, and the women he chases are also very exceptional individuals. So as a result he ends up having to effectively save the world one step at a time as he courts them. One really nice thing that I liked about Aster is that he totally avoids the Japanese Visual Novel problem of having beta males as their protagonists. He may not want to have to choose between the various girls, but he conquers that indecision by going out there and earning the ability to marry all of them. And if he’s looking at a girls chest, he is going to openly admit that he is. Crazy enough, he even actually asks for sex with his wives, this is an important game mechanic when it’s time for limited Affection Events, which will build the relationship between the two and also earn Skill Points and very special items. Even if other games are not a harem game, I would still really like more proactive protagonists like him. The Japanese ideal of a passive male is just someone that I have very little in common with and I found Aster to be much more relatable.
The story of Evenicle is not all sex and rainbows. It does occasionally get a bit dark, but never quite as bad as Rance games can get. The overall story is a very interesting mix of Biblical and other western mythologies. There is a lot of King Arthur myths in the story, but there are also influences like Don Quixote and Alice and Wonderland. But it is not all just haphazardly inserted into the story without any rhyme or reason. The overall story is actually quite good and engaging, easily up there with any other Visual Novel or JRPG story. The story ends with a sequence that wouldn’t be classified as a cliffhanger, because it gives closure, but also definitely indicates that they plan on making more in this series. And I couldn’t be happier for that. This is easily one of my favorite Eroge games of all time, and it even ranks up there in the JRPG ranks (especially when comparing it to a lot of the ones released in the last few years).
Like most quality Eroge Visual Novels, the main menu includes the ability to look at all CG screens, replay all sexual events, and listen to unlocked music. Especially important for this game is that the config menu allows you to remap the keyboard buttons and gives some very fine tuned graphic options, since this game does require a bit more computer power than your standard Eroge VN. Unfortunately, one thing that it does not include is the option to configure a controller. That is really my only problem with the game, but it is a large enough problem to knock down the score a bit. When you are playing a very long JRPG, not being able to control it in the way that feels most comfortable is an unfortunate thing. It didn’t ruin the game for me by any means, but the mouse controls are a bit simplistic and clunky, and the keyboard controls are not fine tuned enough to easily avoid traps as you are walking. But, like I said, that is my only complaint. The music is quite good and extremely diverse, varying in every major region of the map. Some of the songs sound fairly influenced by major JRPGs that I’ve played, but never enough to be plagiarism. And the voice acting was of a very high quality and was massive in quantity. One other advantage this game has over Beat Blades Haruka and Rance VI is that the sex scenes were all much better written, and much better voice acted. The art was also much more beautiful, even though there were a few laughable anatomical impossibilities in them.
This game is massive and wonderful, as such it must have been a very difficult task to localize it properly. MangaGamer has been steadily getting better and better over the years that I have played their games, and this is their best effort yet. The amount of text in this game is massive, even for a JRPG. But they were able to translate and localize it to such a high degree that I would put it up there with any other localized game in the past few years. It is hilarious when it needs to be funny, it’s heartbreaking when it needs to be sad, and it’s extremely sexy during an Eroge scene. I cannot commend them enough for doing such a high quality job with a game that took me over 100 hours to finish. If you don’t do all the side content and you don’t try to get 100% of the CGs or try to beat every Mega-Boss, you can probably beat the game in around 60 hours. But I wouldn’t expect any less than that unless you are rapidly skipping through story text (which would be a huge mistake). The $44.95 might seem a lot, but that is only comparing it to a standard visual novel. As I’ve repeated throughout this review, this is a full JRPG, just with Eroge content on top. In that respect, this game is well worth that price and I would have even paid $60 for it like I would any other new release. Don’t hesitate to get this one if you like JRPGs, you like Eroge, and you are fine with the content warning that I posted in the beginning. You won’t regret it. Bring on Evenicle 2, as soon as humanly possible.
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