EvoCreo Review (PC): Another Imitator Without Much to Offer

When it comes to Pokémon knockoffs, I’m not usually too impressed. Sure, over the last 30 years, Game Freak’s formula has gotten a little stale, but I’ve never seen another monster-taming game that could either replicate the joy I get from playing a Pokémon game or introduce something that makes it stand out in a meaningful way. They’re always just “Pokémon, but made by someone else.” In the case of EvoCreo, it’s the same story: something that is derivative, while not really doing much to make it stand on its own. It may have been released a decade ago on mobile, but its release on PC today is nothing better than fine.

The Boring World of EvoCreo

You start the game and are given an introduction to this world, and right off the bat, the writing and story are not anything to write home about. You’ll pretty regularly run into NPCs that don’t challenge you to battle in the world that have nothing to offer, only saying things like “Thanks for taking the time to talk to me.”

An opening crawl of text explains that the Creo creatures throughout this world were used as weapons by evokers (trainers) in a decades-long war a long time ago, but now their battles are just used for sport. Then, you are immediately thrown into a situation where your evoker is reminded that their famous father is missing, so go find a Creo and go on a journey collecting them all and competing to join the colosseum battle challenge to prove you’re the very best there ever was.

So, while you are looking for your father, you do the pretty basic task of moving between towns in this region called Zenith, taking on arenas (not gyms) where you fight other evokers before you have the chance to go find that town’s RAD (not gym leader) hiding around the place and fight them to get their piece of the Zenith Key, which lets you enter the Coliseum (not Pokémon League). Those RAD fights, in particular, are very challenging, but I had plenty of battles I lost in my time playing.

Outside of the main stuff, it’s a lot of walking around, battling evokers and catching wild Creo with Links (not Pokéballs). Nothing exciting, but it can definitely waste time if you have nothing else to play.

The Creo the Evo is Named After

If you are the type of person who is tired of the usual fire, water, and grass-type choices at the beginning of a game like this, EvoCreo does change that part up. Instead, you choose from three different normal types. That’s because all three of these choices are the equivalent of an Eevee. No matter who you choose, they all have eight possible evolutions, which are decided by which move types you decide to use with them, rather than using an evolution stone. By using a certain type of move, you fill out that creature’s affinity, which will then allow it to evolve.

My choice was Rebas, which is a small lion, who I eventually evolved into the fire-type, Volcadon. While I like the ability to essentially choose your starter’s evolution on the fly, I feel it’s a little more railroaded at the beginning. Outside of the normal scratch move, my first attack ability my Rebas learned was Kindle, a fire move, so just because I was using the only elemental attack available to me, my Creo evolved down the fire route.

While evolving into a certain elemental type will affect your stats in various ways in battle, it doesn’t really matter from a moves standpoint. My Volcadon would still learn moves of all types, but they just wouldn’t necessarily put out the same power for those attacks.

Overall, the Creo in EvoCreo stand up to the challenge of providing endearing designs without looking like full-scale rip-offs of Pokémon assets like Palworld. They look good, as does the game’s sprite work overall. Even when I would run into bugs where the opponent would summon two Creo at once, I thought the game looked pretty good.

Battle Changes to Add a Little More Thinking

The one area where EvoCreo tries to stand out from Pokémon the most is in its battles. Every Creo will have a total of five moves they can choose from in battle: one elite move, three normal moves, and a healing move. As you might expect, the elite move is the most powerful, but there is a push-and-pull here because the more powerful a move, the more it is going to need to recharge before you can use it again. This isn’t a situation where you can continuously spam your best move to take down the opposition.

Because of this and the lack of shared experience between Creo, it is very important that you spend a lot of time grinding away, making sure all of your party members are being leveled up and learning new skills. In the beginning portion, I focused solely on my Rebas because it was the most powerful, but after beating the first arena, I hit a wall because while that was around level 15, the rest of my party was still level 2-5 with no options in the area for catching more powerful Creo to replace them with. I was then forced to grind those weaker Creo up to even stand a chance of moving forward because you cannot just rely on one powerhouse in this game. Say what you will about EXP Share making Pokémon games too easy, it at least removes the need for pointless wild battle grinding that slowly fills up your experience bar incrementally.

In battles, I was interested in how conditions can be increased the more you use a certain move. For example, a Creo that is burned will be badly burned and take more damage from that status effect if it is hit with more fire moves. You can use that opportunity as a snowball effect on your opponent and really rack up the damage quickly.

Final Verdict

EvoCreo is a suitable, though not an amazing Pokémon clone for anyone who doesn’t have access to a Switch or older Nintendo handheld. The battles can be pretty interesting at times, and the art style is endearing, but the need for grinding levels and its uninteresting world really nail home how this is an imitator just trying to fill a void instead of something to be taken seriously. It can take up time, but is any of that time spent fulfilling?

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