Eternights begins along with your unnamed teenage protagonist organising his Tinder profile whereas his greatest buddy provides him high suggestions 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 girl 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 is able to 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 cannot end that thought.
With the world’s inhabitants steadily reworking into hideous monsters and unusual, otherworldly partitions immediately showing all through the town making escape unimaginable, issues are trying fairly bleak. All shouldn’t be misplaced, nevertheless. A unusually flirtatious deity provides our hero a mystical glowing substitute arm that may rework right into a sword, and along with his greatest buddy 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 simple to take a look at Eternights and suppose 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 mild RPG parts. Throughout fight encounters you possibly can assault enemies with combos mapped to the Sq. button, and once you sometimes occur upon a more durable 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 forged as soon as you have 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 appropriately you will decelerate time for just a few seconds, which implies 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 completely difficult, all through the marketing campaign. Maybe if the sport had been longer we would 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 bought a foremost mission on the horizon, and the calendar explains how lengthy you have to full stated aim. Throughout these missions you will battle monsters and resolve some mild puzzles earlier than in the end taking over a boss and advancing the story. Monster designs are suitably grotesque, ceaselessly leaning into physique horror and offering greater than satisfactory fodder all through your journey.
Between foremost missions you possibly can spend your time attending to know your celebration members in addition to serving to them out by occurring scavenging missions for gadgets they may want. These sections do not final lengthy, and finishing them will increase your relationship with the character you assist out. You can even 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 increase 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 bought 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 unhealthy about laying 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.
Should you progress your friendship with a personality sufficient it could actually flip right into a extra critical relationship, with a same-sex choice if that is the way in which you’d choose to go. And whereas the relationship 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 means a number of the characters discuss in regards to the absurd conditions they’ve discovered themselves in offers Eternights with an irreverent, light-hearted tone all through a lot of the early going, earlier than getting a bit of extra critical in the direction of the top.
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 moderately than groan, and in the long run we discovered the entire thing fairly charming. It ought to be famous that we had been taking part in the sport in Korean with English subtitles and so that you may need a distinct expertise in case you go for the English voice work, which we discovered altogether much less interesting.
Eternights is a bit of tough across the edges graphically, and there’re some extremely questionable animations. The entire characters look downright weird after they’re working, for instance, and typically when somebody is performing a activity, the display screen 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 apparent price range 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 thrives that accompany assaults or a well-timed dodge cover a mess of visible sins.
Conclusion
Eternights’ nice success is that it manages to be greater than the sum of its components. The witty writing papers over the shakier facets of the storytelling, the slight fight is used sparingly sufficient that its flaws not often frustrate, and above all, it is bought an plain allure regardless of its tough edges. We’re swiping proper on this one.