Everlong, a free RPG that provides over 50+ hours of normal play, is one of my most beloved old school RPG. It has a well-woven main storyline with 11 playable characters and numbers of NPCs. Though a Ragnarok stereotype, Everlong develops a world of unique outlook, geography, demography and cultures. Several main continents have been shared by different countries/states which are divided by cities and regions. Warning: the rest of this post contains heavy spoilers....The journey starts from the West continent of Tyr-Anon and Seraphia where the former is trying to conquer the rest of continent after Eridwell falls, under conspiracy of Cirigogh from the Imperial Continent. A Blackguard named Brad escapes from Cirigoth's control and is badly wanted because his body is used as a portal of Abyss for the Expirius--the dark lord. Brad's escape leads to the introduction of the main playable characters including Glen, Sammy, Drakeor, Vetu, Meridith, Julia, Justin, Keen, Vixen and Willis. Their journey to save the world from Expirius therefore begets .
Some features that I love most of Everlong:
Map sytem:
Everlong world is enormous, with many continents, dozens of cities, regions, dungeons, and special areas as islands, volcanos and other underground/underwater kingdoms that will emerge following the story progress. A mini world map is nicely produced with hero highlighted position, which is very helpful when navigating. Continents of the full world map can be zoomd out for details, esp. useful when looking for specific place.
In the current version of 3.23, important places are marked by a yellow arrow to help players avoid missing special items, events, or merely getting lost, which reduced the difficulty of puzzles and map navigation challenge. In the earlier versions, help arrows are not marked.
Two pillars--green for HP and red for MP recovery are indicating a boss is awaiting not far away. Because HP/MP will not be refilled at end of each battle, or after leveling up, so it is important to watch HP/MP frequently to be prepared for surprise attack. Pillars of recovery help player to prepare for boss fight.
NPCs:
It may sounds strange that NPCs count as a feature for a RPG. But yes, Everlong has used NPCs better than other games.
Some NPCs are used for story only, but over ten special NPCs will join the player team on certain conditions. Some of them are:
A statistician who provides records of game data, such as counts of battles, special items numbers etc.
A painter who provides menu background changes.
A retired banker provides banking service. I usually forget to deposite and with a cap 999,999 and continue getting tons of GP when battling through...I am retarded sometimes...
A musician who provides jukebox of background music.
A sister who uses a special item to create more special cosumable item.
A sculpter who made sculpture for each character.
A doctor who heals for free.
A martial arts master who gives knowledge of monsters and monster attacks, plus elemental charts.
A historian who has records of all playable character's life story, and some story NPCs background information.
A shadow ninja who sells special attck items that can not be found anywhere else.
A pirate captain who discloses his hidden treaure places.
A poker master who gives unlimited money by playing simple card game..I cheat him always.
etc
Skill shards system:
Leveling up in Everlong gives characters skill shards which can be used to learn personalised skills and magic spells. Shards are redistributable, and will not loose by reconfiguration. Two kinds of skills are available: linked ones must be developed consecutively, independent ones are free to develop any sect separately.
One demerit of current skill shards system is that for certain skills, it does not provide any information by reading the name, only when exiting the SS and go to menu can player check what is the newly added skills, and what attribute it bestows. So it takes longer for choosing skill and distribute SS when the player is not familiar with or have not used all skills. It also takes some time to get familiar with all different skills of all the characters, but once get known it is easy to manipulate and very useful for strategic preparation for difficult boss battles.
Another special part of SS system is the scrolls. Scrolls are found during walking through, and can be learned by certain characters through SS. Scroll skills are all unique and very powerful, some very important supporting spells are from scrolls only, like boon, esuna.
SS system is very carefully developed that a fully grown character can just fill all skills by all shards s/he earned, plus scrolls available to him/her. It is more important to learn to distribute SS when characters are not very strong to enable better skills for use.
Puzzles and mini games
Everlong is filled with challenging puzzles and minigames. Even now when I've played this game for many times, I still enjoy the puzzles and minigames. They are very intelligently designed and sometimes are really hard. For each puzzle a detailed description and instruction is provided at entrance of puzzle room, and no punishment for failing times.
Many of the puzzles and mingames require good time-management skills, observation and analysis, and patience for repetative attempts. Player gains special items for completing puzzles and mini games.
For storyline puzzles, players could choose to skip on the condition of giving up bonus items. But most times, puzzles can be solved by patience, and all rewards are very sweet.
Hidden Affection thread
It won't be discovered until a certain point of the game, that there is romance among characters and choice of dialogue and party member will influence the affection rate, which said on the Everlong official site as will "influence game dialogue, events, and ending scenes". Dialogue choices pop up without saving option, so player can only check the affection point after the whole dialogue or even a whole story event. Sometimes, player need to load a file before difficult boss fight in order to do the choice again for higher affection points. I actually need to do that several times, because I really want to build up the relation between Glen and Meridith. Choices before the point when player is able to check statistics are doomed and no way to find out what choice is for/against the romance.
Arena and Battle points
Arena fights are special, player will earn battle points for success in every battle in a chosen battle field. All areas visited will be available as battle field, different battle field requires respective registration fee and contains area -pecific monsters. Each arena battle contains four battles which have random hinderance in between, such as halved HP, halved MP, broken armour/weapon/acce, all-1(HP reduced to 1 for all party member), and all conditions like confused, berserk, blind, and all conditions are forced on party members despite accessory protection. That means, even with Ribbon (all condition protection), in arena, characters are made vulnerable to status/conditions. All hinderance will grant different rate of raising BP. Lucky 7 will give huge boost of BP and team status. Once I was at the 3rd fight and get this berserk status on all, I could do nothing but looking at my members physical attack a Bearded Dragon, and perished. Arena fights are fun, challenging and torturing, but still fun.
Battle points can be used to trade special items, weapons, and some very rare items required by side quests. There's cap of 999,999 of BP that player can store. No EXP will gain fighting arena battle, but GP will be saved for player. It is a good place for GP and funny risky fights.
Savage Monster attack
Most battles are general, but some monsters have special tricks as Backfire, Counter blow, or enraged mode when player deals "unacceptable" damage. The harder you hit, the ravager the counter attack from the monster. But beware, monster may have over millions of HP, but Glen will be dead for a counter blow of his 9999 hit. Some monster are really "sensitive", even simple physical attack with good weapon will make them use backfire or enraged to escalate their attack. The only way is to limit player's attack within their rage range.
A lot of bosses have very special attacks, such as replacing HP with MP, or redistribution of HP among team members, or heal all that are dead but kill all that are alive, or consecutive AoE....Just to name a few that make my nightmare. This makes all fights more interesting and monsters more monster-like. I remember this very special monster--Tonberry, who uses a small knife and looks like a harmless hamster, can kill everyone in one hit within a blink. Defeating him gives a great sword. And I remember Tyr, who counts down for his death blow which might just eliminate the whole team all at once if not prepared and protected.
All in all, Everlong has a battle system that I enjoy most. As an addtion, there are 7 dragon trials where Drakoer has duel with powerful dragons, and 13 Aeon temples to visit and conquer for Vixen the summoner. Strong dragons, gods, and elemental spirits thus will help the journey in Everlong.
Dual-Party Adventure
This is one of the best part. In Pheonix Cave, it is a dual-party adventure that leads the team to destination. It is not new that in RPGs, sometimes to divide team and play both. But in Everlong, two teams act at the same time and watch each other progress through the switches and puzzles. Switches are not set to dead when pressed, so players have to switch between team A and B in order to keep moving on. It requires a strong team work and a good leadership of the player....Sounds like passing an interview, but yes, it is true and it makes me like working with all the game characters together for our goal.
Mini Hunting
It is in Everlong hunting instead of fishing is for extra meat!:) Sometimes on the world map, hunting areas will pop up, forest, beach, snowfield, mountain, plain. Each time, a random numbers of animals will be available. As simple as hit the SHIFT key, players can chasing little animals and hunt them for Jerky(25%), Stirloin(65%) or Roast(100%+all condition) as supplementory items for HP recovery. All are FREE and as good as the best in shop. But only some of the characters can do this job, and they do it all in a different way depending on their weapon and magic. It is much more interesting than just standing and wait for a bait.
Book Collection
All over the Everlong world, there are books of essential informations to be collected and read. Some of them with hints for hidden treasures, or locations for hidden dungeons.
Monster drop trading
Monster drop a variety of things which can be traded for useful items and consumables from identical merchants in differnet towns and places. It releases players from struggling with GP, and GP can be used on equipments soley, esp important for early part of the game when money is not easy to earn.
Funny jokes and puns
Here are two examples.
One is Osama hunting. Travel to the desert castle and the player will find Osama Ben Laden locked in a prison cell. He shouts his typical words/sentences for every attack: bio atatck, bomb, gunshooting....He is still STRONG as a prisoner. Lvl 40-60 may have a chance to get him, but return from the Pure Land will make it a piece of cake.
Another one is this little boy in a small town. He told me he likes bushes. He has his own "bush", for whom he called "George"...........What other name can I think of....
I have to stop talking about this game, otherwise my whole life will be used just for sharing what this game gives me. I really thank for the efforts of Everlong's producer and contributors for making such a fabulous RPG as one of the best forever.
All rights of the pictures used here and content related to Everlong are reserved by original Everlong producers/contributors.
Everlong Official Site
For all who like RPG and are looking for good ones, Everlong is my NO.1 recommendation.
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