National Park Girls - Episode 5: Eternal Evergreen Part 2 DLC

amazing finale to an amazing story :)

Well here we are, at the finish line, last episode was a real rollecoaster, Studio Elán did a great job on it. Nice satisfying conclusion to NPG storyline. I am very much looking forward to their next game. [spoiler]Dwayne is dope af[/spoiler]

A heart touching and beautiful conclusion to a story I have been following for over 3 years now. Thank you Studio Coattails/Studio Élan for spending what I must assume to be at this point thousands of hours collectively story writing, drafting, sketching, concept art, and more for this visual novel.

[h1]A rather… unusual way to end things[/h1] First off, it is the ending so the gay-watch [spoiler]is finally at the peak, and the tsundere romance has bloomed. That might be enough for you to buy it, if you got invested in the relationship.[/spoiler] I want to make it clear, I still think the entire series is an up, even if the ending gets a down, it isn’t the kinda down that taints the first three beautiful episodes in any way. The voice acting is still great, the emotions they are trying to evoke works for the most part, and the characters and their struggles feel ‘authentic’. This episode was always going to have an uphill battle, after all it had to deal with the aftermath of the whip-lash twist of episode 4, and does it manage to do that? Yes, but it means instead of being filled with cuteness, adorableness, and a beautiful sadness… to me this episode was a lot uglier. Like way too ugly in its problems and themes for this series cutesy aesthetic. And it feels like they knew that, so they compensate by throwing in new comedic relief characters with their own side-plot in this episode. [spoiler]The rock-spirits in particular feel like their very existence was just to lighten everything, while just making it worse. Sorta like the gargoyles in Hunchback of Notre Dame. [/spoiler] The cover-spirit for this episode, Death Valley, was fine in principle. Think there is way too much going on with her, design-wise, maybe they should have cut her weird hair a bit… [spoiler]But she shouldn’t have had the weird stuff with the rock spirits or joined the girls back home. Seemed rather shoehorned in really, and she doesn’t fit in there with her shooty attitude.[/spoiler] Maybe this is the ending the creators envisioned from the start, but honestly, it doesn’t feel like it to me. It doesn’t feel thematically connected to the start. Sure there’s a resolution to the relationship, that has been simmering over the first many episodes. It doesn’t deal with the nature of the spirits, or explore any character we know in a meaningful way. [spoiler]The focus is on Eve, but it is very much on Eve in her current depressive/slow suicidal state, so we don’t feel like we get to learn anything about Eve, because we want to break her out of her current state of rot. And Death Valley is only introduced in a very surface way to her character.[/spoiler] I wanted to like this episode, after all, it was 2 years since the last one ended the way it did… sadly this episode didn’t salvage it, but like I said, the first three episodes of this are still stellar, and worth getting. Those episodes, along with Studio Élan’s Highway Blossoms and - to a lesser extent - Heart of the Woods, ensures that I will at least check out their future projects to see if they look interesting and have decent designs.