Eternights begins together with your unnamed teenage protagonist establishing his Tinder profile whereas his greatest pal offers him prime ideas like photoshopping his image to make himself look extra heroic, and mendacity about who he’s to be extra interesting to the women. This, apparently, is sage recommendation, as a result of virtually immediately our hero matches with a woman who gives to ship him soiled footage earlier than he is even had an opportunity to make use of any of his greatest chat-up traces.
Ordinarily, this could be a successful morning for a teenage boy, however as he heads out to fulfill this girl within the flesh for what we are able to solely assume could be a most unsavoury encounter, the apocalypse begins, and a supernatural murderer slices his arm off utilizing a magical sword. What rotten irony; not solely is his afternoon delight along with his Tinder date ruined by Armageddon, however his hand has been unceremoniously chopped off so he cannot even… properly, we can’t end that thought.
With the world’s inhabitants steadily reworking into hideous monsters and unusual, otherworldly partitions out of the blue showing all through town making escape unattainable, issues are trying fairly bleak. All isn’t misplaced, nonetheless. A unusually flirtatious deity offers our hero a mystical glowing substitute arm that may rework right into a sword, and along with his greatest pal and a handful of different survivors, he decides to struggle again towards the denizens of evil, and perhaps, simply perhaps, discover love alongside the best way.
It is easy to have a look at Eternights and assume it is merely a randier model of Persona, and there are certainly similarities and it’s certainly randy. However gameplay is wildly completely different, with Eternights being extra of an motion recreation with gentle RPG components. Throughout fight encounters you possibly can assault enemies with combos mapped to the Sq. button, and whenever you often occur upon a harder creature that has an elemental defend, utilizing a spell of the opposing component will break that defend, permitting you to wail on the beast unabated.
These spells can solely be solid as soon as you’ve got stuffed the requisite meter, and also you fill that by attacking baddies or by dodging incoming assaults. The dodge timing is extremely beneficiant, and in case you do it accurately you may decelerate time for a couple of seconds, which suggests you possibly can land hits uncontested.
The preventing is not precisely difficult, however as soon as we settled right into a groove of dodging then attacking after which dodging once more, we discovered it enjoyable, if not solely difficult, all through the marketing campaign. Maybe if the sport have been longer we would have grown bored with it, however we noticed Eternights off in round 15 hours, and with fight situations accounting for roughly half of that point, it by no means managed to wear down its welcome. It is easy however efficient.
You have all the time received a predominant mission on the horizon, and the calendar explains how lengthy you have to full stated aim. Throughout these missions you may struggle monsters and remedy some gentle puzzles earlier than finally taking up a boss and advancing the story. Monster designs are suitably grotesque, incessantly leaning into physique horror and offering greater than enough fodder all through your journey.
Between predominant missions you possibly can spend your time attending to know your occasion members in addition to serving to them out by happening scavenging missions for gadgets they could want. These sections do not final lengthy, and finishing them will elevate your relationship with the character you assist out. You may as well participate in minigames with every character, rewarding you with expertise that can be utilized to enhance their expertise in battle.
Some expertise are locked till you elevate your relationship stage with a personality to a sure level, and also you do this by speaking to them, serving to them, and naturally, flirting. You have received loads of time between story missions for the reason that dungeons can simply be accomplished in a single sitting, so that you should not really feel too unhealthy about pushing aside saving the world to make goo-goo eyes on the quirky scientist in scorching pants.
Many of the characters are carrying outfits ill-suited to fight, it must be stated, however then we suppose if it is the apocalypse and also you simply occur to be carrying a schoolgirl uniform then what are you able to do? The conversations you could have together with your new associates/love pursuits will construct up statistics like braveness or confidence, and getting these stats to a better stage is required for unlocking some later dialogues.
If you happen to progress your friendship with a personality sufficient it will possibly flip right into a extra severe relationship, with a same-sex choice if that is the best way you’d favor to go. And whereas the courting sim mechanics are a giant a part of the sport and attractive jokes are the order of the day, Eternights by no means veers too far into overtly seedy territory. It is extra FHM than Razzle.
The dialog sections are elevated by snappy writing with an anarchic sense of humour. Among the dialogue choices are genuinely humorous, and the blasé manner among the characters discuss in regards to the absurd conditions they’ve discovered themselves in supplies Eternights with an irreverent, light-hearted tone all through a lot of the early going, earlier than getting slightly extra severe in the direction of the tip.
Among the jokes do not land, and the bawdy banter is certainly grating at occasions, however we would say there’s extra right here that made us smile quite than groan, and in the long run we discovered the entire thing fairly charming. It must be famous that we have been taking part in the sport in Korean with English subtitles and so that you may need a special expertise in case you go for the English voice work, which we discovered altogether much less interesting.
Eternights is slightly tough across the edges graphically, and there’re some extremely questionable animations. All the characters look downright weird once they’re operating, for instance, and generally when somebody is performing a process, the display will simply fade to black after which fade again in with that character in a special place, presumably to keep away from having to animate the movement.
However regardless of the apparent funds constraints, there are occasions that Eternights seems higher than it has any proper to due to intelligent use of lighting. Throughout fight, which takes place largely in darkened arenas, your glowing arm/sword and the graphical prospers that accompany assaults or a well-timed dodge cover a large number of visible sins.
Conclusion
Eternights’ nice success is that it manages to be greater than the sum of its elements. The witty writing papers over the shakier features of the storytelling, the slight fight is used sparingly sufficient that its flaws not often frustrate, and above all, it is received an simple appeal regardless of its tough edges. We’re swiping proper on this one.
