Evergrace

Evergrace
North American PlayStation 2 cover art
Developer(s)	FromSoftware
Publisher(s)	JP: FromSoftware NA: Agetec PAL: Ubisoft / Crave Entertainment
Director(s)	Yūzō Kojima
Composer(s)	Kota Hoshino
Platform(s)	PlayStation 2
Release	JP: April 27, 2000 NA: October 26, 2000 PAL: March 30, 2001
Genre(s)	Action role-playing
Mode(s)	Single-player

Evergrace (エヴァーグレイス, Evāgureisu^?) is a 2000 action role-playing game developed by From Software for the PlayStation 2 and published by Agetec in North America and Ubisoft and Crave Entertainment in PAL territories. The game was a launch title for the system in North America and Europe.

Evergrace features two main characters, Darius the swordsman and Sharline the homemaker, with two distinctly different storylines and different battle techniques. The game allows players to switch between characters at any save point, and uses an experience system dependent on items and equipment rather than statistical upgrades. Another feature is the Palmira Action System which allows players to improve the physical abilities of their characters by combining specialized crystals with their armaments.

Evergrace also features a bonus dungeon that is named after Shadow Tower, another game by From Software, a company is often known for including past game references in their games. The Moonlight Sword, for example, a weapon that originated in their flagship series, King's Field, also appears in Evergrace as well as its follow-up Forever Kingdom.

The continent of Edinbury once held the largest and most powerful empire of all time: the Rieubane Empire. This empire was primarily ruled by Morpheus, a powerful magician, and his servants and clients. Morphius became devoted to studying the Crest, a series of markings on one's hand, and are considered cursed due to the misfortunes that happen to the Crestbearers. Morpheus was fascinated with the Crest and performed several experiments, thus creating the powerful Palmira Armaments and the man-made AI Crest. After capturing a renegade soldier who had the Crest, Morpheus ordered the Empire to invade Toledo, a nearby independent village in the Billiana forest, because they worshiped the Crest and were supposedly a threat to the balance of Rieubane. The Empire would never have agreed with Morpheus if they knew his real reason for invading the Toledans: simply to acquire more test subjects. In the end, the Empire effortlessly crushed Toledo, but as the flames grew higher, the Rieubane Empire, Toledo and the Human Research Lab suddenly and completely disappeared. People came to call Rieubane "the Lost Kingdom", and the land became overgrown with Billiana Trees. Hundreds of years later, four villages once part of the empire banded together to establish the empire of Fontraile, but this was not to last...