Heed the Call to Awaken

What the HFIL did I just play? 

The answer is G.O.D. Growth or Devolution: Heed the Call to Awaken. The translation was released in 2018, so I’m eight years behind the times. Shame on me. I’ve heard this game compared to Chrono Trigger because of time travel. There is no time travel in this game, so tell those people to shut up. I’ve also seen it called an Earthbound clone. That’s a bit truer, but only on the surface. It starts out very kiddie but quickly spirals into some heavy stuff. But GoD goes further and makes more sense. The goofiness remains, though, but this game goes places Earthbound didn’t. Religion, metaphysics, politics, and then there’s the gameplay. This was wild. 

I like to be unhelpfully vague when discussing the story and try to avoid spoilers. That isn’t possible for GoD, so you may want to skip the plot portion of this review. I’ll mark the gameplay with #gameplay if you want to Ctrl+F away from it. 

GoD starts out with the simple task of going to Grandma’s. It’s an 800 mile bike ride, so poor Gen was never going to make it. He rides north, from Tokyo to Hokkaido, on his bike, enjoying the idyllic scenery of eastern Japan. He passes through a cute farming village before taking a break at the foot of a mountain. He ends up running into some bullies, but he Gen can take them out. He continues up the mountain to take in the scenery, but accidentally falls into a hole. Inside is a talkative giant bat. Through the use of a popular soda drink, Gen manages to eke out a win over Batty, the loud and egotistical Chiroptera. But behind it was an orb inside a transparent pyramid. As anyone would, Gen touches it, and he sees things. He’s not sure what it means, but it’s time to go to Grandma’s. He finds the exit to the cave and takes one last peek at Tokyo behind him. It’s a beautiful sight, but then the world changes forever. Spaceships descend from the sky and destroy the city. Gen’s life, and the planet as a whole, is forever changed in the year 1996. 

Ten years later, Gen wakes up in an army barracks with the sudden remembrance of that day. He somehow forgot it, but this amnesia plot point is so inconsequential that there’s no reason to talk about it. From here, Gen is a soldier fighting the alien invasion. But even this home is quickly raided, and he needs to seek out a new goal. Various Bless missions take him around Japan, where he finds three other people like him. In the preceding ten years, Gen discovered he had access to something similar to magic, but I’ll get to that later. But he’s not alone. A fiery American stranded in Japan keeps laying waste to aliens in Kobe. And then they find a girl who was being used as an icon to a cult on an island to the south. And finally, a spunky girl who isn’t afraid to single handedly take down ancient demons. Gen, Keith, Mina, and Ai manage to destroy the main base of operation for the aliens in Japan and decide to set out to do the same to the rest of the world. Along the way, they discover more Godstones, which are the same pyramid orbs Gen found after fighting Batty. A scientist with Bless, the military organization Gen and Keith are a part of, surmises these expand the brain’s power from thirty percent to a full 100 percent. Mainland Asia, Western Europe, Africa, Oceania, and South America all house something from an ancient civilization with a Godstone inside. This journey takes them not just through forgotten relics but through personal struggles. There are hopes and love, but also tragedy. 

Every one of our five heroes is spurred on by something that happens in the game. They act heroically, albeit destructively at times, for the sake of those around them. They are active forces in this war. 

Eventually, they arrive in America and learn that the Americans have agreed to peace with the aliens. While breaking up the treaty signing, the real horrors kick off. Even the strange guy who’s been stalking the group can not withstand the Great Calamity. When the team faces off against this monster, they learn who the aliens really are. They are a precursor race who lived on the planet when humans were less developed. They built the pyramids, Angkor Wat, Stonehenge, and other Godstone relic sites. And they only left because of God. It should be shortly before this when you realize all but one boss alien is named after a god in various religions. So all the ancient gods are real. And they live on the moon…

Yeah, there’s a lot of conspiracy stuff here. None of it is pointing to them being correct, but hollow earth, hollow moon, lost continents, “ten percent of the brain” myth, the meaning of god, aliens, and a flat earth are plot points. It’s actually an interesting take, and they’re well done. Sorta. It could have been deeper, but the writers chose to make the aliens nazis, so it ends up falling a tad flat. But it turns out there’s a real god, and you have to kill it! And then the real final boss is the emotions we made along the way. This was mostly enjoyable, outside of a few parts that weren’t supposed to be fun, and one really stupid plot twist. 

The #gameplay is quite solid. To start off, each Godstone you find not only advances the plot, but also your character’s powers. Magic in GoD is called Psycho, and what gets learned is unique to each character. But the Godstones allow you to empower what the game calls chakras. These chakras can be equipped like materia from Final Fantasy VII and allow the users access to the chakra’s specialized magical abilities. They start off sorta useless, but the more Godstones you find, the better their skills and the more useful they’ll look. One chakra lets you avoid the random battles, while another can buff or debuff a target. There are a few that do that, actually, but the hows are different for each. There’s one that can heal status effects, and one that lets your physical attackers shine! You can also Tenchi no Uta the battles with one to talk to your enemies. You can eventually combine two of them for more access, and those two create their own passives. I liked the one that lets Keith perform two attacks a turn. Just a tad broken! You’ll have to grind those with cosmic stones, which are just AP from mobs. There’s a lot to work for in GoD, and it’s all worth it and fun! 

The music is a mixed bag. Most of it is pretty good, be it action or relaxin’. But there are a handful of tracks that are just awful, three second loops that drive me mad. I had to mute the game twice, and I almost did it a third time. 

There is quite a lot of asset reuse when it comes to the graphics. NPC sprites, especially, are overused. There will be a lot of green haired/brown clothed girls in 2006. Enemy art is also palette swaped a lot, and there aren’t too many unique dungeon tiles. Spell animations, though, are hella rad. 

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Plot: almost. All the characters are fun, but they’re just too basic archetypey for me. Their worst issue is how little they change during and after the story. Keith is always a pervert, Mina is always the madonna. They’re so close to being perfect. The enemies are far behind them, though. Most of them are of the monster-a-day variety, even if they have a fun name, so no one lasts. And only one of them has a personality, but they’re also in a stupid plot twist that brings the entire story down a notch. The mid boss gets the most subpoints… 7/10

Gameplay: it’s fun. There’s a lot to mix and match with the chakra system, and the inherent uniqueness of the characters, along with the way the game keeps ya moving. It’s the lack of side quests that tries to drag this down. And the bland dungeons. 8/10

Disclaimer: There is an easy type patch out there, and I think I played that one. At no time did I ever feel threatened by a boss, and I curb stomped my way through everything past Batty. Maybe I overleveled with some accidental grinding, but this was one of the easiest games I’ve ever played. 

Sound: should be better. Harlem, Angkor Wat, and the second overworld get muted. One is too many, so imagine three. 7/10

Art: RPG Maker. Spell graphics are top notch, but there’s so much reuse in the world. 8/10

Charm: solid. Despite being kinda barren, the world feels alive. It’s a rad quirk with the irreverent way the story gets told. A mailman in a ruined world is funny, and I won’t hear otherwise! NPCs feel alive, but there’s only one side quest, and it’s kinda meh. I don’t see myself ever replaying this, but at least it’s a perfect length. 7/10

Now the writing/translation needs to be discussed. I’m pretty sure the writing is a bit “lol so random XD” as a baseline. I also feel like the translation took a few liberties. Early game swearing let me notice that. I’ll never know what’s what, but I’d bet the team took that philosophy and ran away with the script, which can be either a good thing or a bad thing. Either way, it didn’t vibe with me. That isn’t my type of humor. Why are all the nurses horny, for example? It might not be a problem for you, but it was for me. It's also a tad sorta racist here or there... So there is a 1 point negative. 

With all that in mind, Growth or Devolution gets 36/50. I feel like it’s better than a C-, but I also can’t argue against it. It’s definitely a good game worth playing, but it isn’t a heavy hitter. And that’s fine. Not everything needs to be/can be Chrono Trigger. But the modern setting, fun chakra system, and intricate story, which is deep, exciting, and can bring out the tears, is worth experiencing. You’ll probably score it higher than I, but don’t get your expectations too high. I’m placing it at 15 out of 34 SNES RPGs.