I always want more Paper Mario style games, The Thousand-Year Door is probably my most played Nintendo Switch game, and that includes the fact that I go on and off playing Fortnite every so often. We have gotten a few over the years, with Bug Fables being my favourite one so far. Now, it’s time to say “hello” to Escape From Ever After, a Paper Mario style RPG in every aspect of the statement. Fun partners that join you in each chapter? Check. Paper aesthetics and characters? Check. Turn-based battle system? Obviously. It’s almost like someone saw a gap in the market, but the real question is, can it reach the bar? It is a rather high one.

Based on his size, Tinder would just be called “feisty.”

Escape From Ever After is all based around classic fairytales. The classic “knight slays the dragon” style stories, The Three Little Pigs, The Shadow Over Innsmouth… Wait, you didn’t read the last one as a child? Basically, what’s happening is a massive corporation is taking over books, and finding a way to profit off their resources. The Three Pigs are building condos for people to live in, while the “big bad wolf” is actually just a rather peaceful bard. Chthulhu is still a bad guy though, don’t worry about that. The worlds are really nice to explore, with Innsbeak being my favourite of the locations. Given we have games like The Sinking City that give us some ideas around what Innsmouth is meant to be like, it feels very familiar, but with the RPG puzzle type twist.

One of the coolest parts is the fact Flynt doesn’t even need to be in the battle, you can just use two partners if you switch him out in battle.

One complaint is the overall length of the game. When you think of, for instance, Paper Mario, after two to three chapters you’re starting to get really invested in the characters, in the world. In Escape From Ever After after three chapters, you’re nearing the end of the game, and the story makes that quite obvious. Given how many stories there are out there, and yes I understand you can’t just use any of them, but only having four chapters set in storybooks before going to the real world really ruins the momentum that the game was doing a great job at building. The fun of the story even makes up for the fact that the combat isn’t quite as smooth as it could be.

Much like other games of this style, there are button prompts to do more damage, do an extra attack, cause status effects, block attacks, so on and so forth. The thing is, the timings feel really awkward. For instance, Flynt, our main character, throws his buckler at enemies to attack, his (basically) quick-time event to do an extra attack is to press ‘A’ when he catches it, but sometimes it feels like it needs to be when he catches is, sometimes it’s when he’s sort of planted his feet back on the ground. This sounds like there would be a rather large window to hit the button, but there’s just simply not.

Remember, never look up the name is H.P. Lovecraft’s cat.

I love how emotive the characters are, honestly it’s probably even better than Paper Mario in this sense because where that is all based around Mario himself, Escape From Ever After lets everyone shine. The environments are beautiful, with their 3D designs bringing a wonderful juxtaposition against the 2D characters.  There’s also some fantastic lighting and dynamic particle effects from hits and various magic spells being cast.

Speaking of shining, music and atmosphere are quite good as well. As mentioned before, Innsbeak is easily the best of the locations, nails the visuals and the atmosphere, but the other locations do a good job as well. Probably the most lacklustre is actually the first chapter, based around The Three Little Pigs, which doesn’t give the mysticism the forest should give. It’s ironic because Wolfgang, aka the Big Bad Wolf, is all about music.

I love alliteration!

Essentially, if you like Paper Mario, this is a really good version of that style of RPG. The characters and areas are charming, the puzzles are fun, but the combat is slacking by comparison and there’s not really any music that’s quite as memorable. Still though, this is well worth playing if you get the chance. It’s not massively long so it’s less of a time commitment by comparison, and most Paper Mario fans will be able to get into it.

Escape From Ever After is available now on Nintendo Switch, PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch 2.

A copy of Escape From Ever After was provided by the publisher.