Evoland is basically every bad old RPG rolled up into one. Boring enemies, boring combat, excuse plot, character who dies who you just don’t care about at all (or indeed, care about any of the characters at all), ect.
The game is meant to poke fun at old RPGs, including Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Zelda, Diablo, and others, but frankly, it falls flat. All of the “humor” in the game is basically the game pointing and saying “isn’t this dumb?” It is basically explaining the joke, except there is no joke, just a reference to an older game which isn’t very funny.
The game seems to suggest that you’re going to gradually move through various eras of games, but by about a third of the way into the game, you’re already up to 3D graphics, and it doesn’t really go beyond that. The game feels almost as if it has to rush through to unlock all the earlier stuff and then get to 3D for some reason, even though, quite frankly, the 3D gameplay isn’t very good (but then, neither is the 2D gameplay).
Ultimately, the game is meant to be funny, but isn’t, and is meant to be fun, and also isn’t. The gameplay is as tedious as any old, poorly designed game with very little content; the JRPG overworld encounters happen every five steps or so and are pointless and tedious, while the dungeon Zelda-type movement is very basic, containing very little variety of monsters, none of which are particularly interesting to fight. The game contains three bosses, two of which are pretty boring; one of them is basically “stand there and hit it until it dies”, and another is a standard “dodge the charge and hit them” boss. Only the final boss shows any signs of real gameplay, and even there, it was kind of tepid.
There’s just nothing here for anyone. If you’re looking for humor, the game isn’t funny; if you’re looking for a game which is fun to play, this isn’t. It doesn’t even feel original, as literally everything in it is referential, meaning any “originality” it might have from the whole idea of evolving into the modern day of gameplay is basically dead on arrival, buried under a pile of old video game references.
.5