Eternights begins along with your unnamed teenage protagonist organising his Tinder profile whereas his greatest good friend 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 nearly immediately our hero matches with a woman who presents to ship him soiled footage earlier than he is even had an opportunity to make use of any of his greatest chat-up strains.
Ordinarily, this might be a successful morning for a teenage boy, however as he heads out to satisfy this lady within the flesh for what we will solely assume can 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 cannot end that thought.
With the world’s inhabitants steadily remodeling into hideous monsters and unusual, otherworldly partitions instantly showing all through the town making escape not possible, issues are wanting fairly bleak. All just isn’t misplaced, nevertheless. A unusually flirtatious deity offers our hero a mystical glowing alternative arm that may rework right into a sword, and along with his greatest good friend and a handful of different survivors, he decides to battle again in opposition to the denizens of evil, and possibly, simply possibly, discover love alongside the way in which.
It is easy to take 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 sport with mild RPG components. Throughout fight encounters you may assault enemies with combos mapped to the Sq. button, and if you sometimes occur upon a harder creature that has an elemental protect, utilizing a spell of the opposing component will break that protect, permitting you to wail on the beast unabated.
These spells can solely be solid as soon as you’ve got crammed the requisite meter, and also you fill that by attacking baddies or by dodging incoming assaults. The dodge timing is extremely beneficiant, and for those who do it accurately you may decelerate time for a couple of seconds, which implies you may land hits uncontested.
The combating 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 totally difficult, all through the marketing campaign. Maybe if the sport had been longer we might have grown uninterested in 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 most important mission on the horizon, and the calendar explains how lengthy you have to full stated purpose. Throughout these missions you may battle monsters and remedy some mild puzzles earlier than in the end taking up a boss and advancing the story. Monster designs are suitably grotesque, regularly leaning into physique horror and offering greater than sufficient fodder all through your journey.
Between most important missions you may spend your time attending to know your occasion members in addition to serving to them out by happening scavenging missions for gadgets they may want. These sections do not final lengthy, and finishing them will elevate your relationship with the character you assist out. It’s also possible to participate in minigames with every character, rewarding you with expertise that can be utilized to enhance their abilities in battle.
Some abilities are locked till you elevate your relationship degree with a personality to a sure level, and also you try this by speaking to them, serving to them, and naturally, flirting. You have received loads of time between story missions because the dungeons can simply be accomplished in a single sitting, so that you should not really feel too dangerous about pushing aside saving the world to make goo-goo eyes on the quirky scientist in scorching pants.
A lot of the characters are carrying outfits ill-suited to fight, it ought to 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’ve gotten along with your new associates/love pursuits will construct up statistics like braveness or confidence, and getting these stats to the next degree is required for unlocking some later dialogues.
In case you progress your friendship with a personality sufficient it could possibly flip right into a extra critical relationship, with a same-sex possibility if that is the way in which you’d favor to go. And whereas the relationship sim mechanics are a giant a part of the sport and horny 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 method among the characters discuss in regards to the absurd conditions they’ve discovered themselves in gives Eternights with an irreverent, light-hearted tone all through a lot of the early going, earlier than getting a bit extra critical in the direction of the tip.
Among the jokes do not land, and the bawdy banter is unquestionably grating at occasions, however we might say there’s extra right here that made us smile moderately than groan, and in the long run we discovered the entire thing fairly charming. It ought to be famous that we had been enjoying the sport in Korean with English subtitles and so that you may need a distinct expertise for those who go for the English voice work, which we discovered altogether much less interesting.
Eternights is a bit 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 job, the display will simply fade to black after which fade again in with that character in a distinct place, presumably to keep away from having to animate the movement.
However regardless of the plain finances constraints, there are occasions that Eternights appears to be like higher than it has any proper to because of 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 conceal 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 facets of the storytelling, the slight fight is used sparingly sufficient that its flaws hardly ever frustrate, and above all, it is received an simple attraction regardless of its tough edges. We’re swiping proper on this one.
