Edge Of Eternity

PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series

Within minutes of being introduced to Edge Of Eternity’s spiky haired protagonist Daryon, a friend mocks his oversized sword, before calling out another companion for her “clingy girlfriend routine”. Not long after, this self-aware camaraderie is cut brutally short when most of your starting party is wiped out by an invading alien force – and that’s before you discover your other comrades are being sacrificed by the religious Sanctorium, which is supposed to be protecting humanity. Right from the outset, then, it feels as if Edge Of Eternity is consciously subverting the genre it purports to be inspired by.

While we’re uneasy about a game by a non-Japanese developer being touted as a JRPG, it’s evident that the biggest influence on Midgar Studio – if the name didn’t give it away – is Final Fantasy, arguably the most western-leaning of JRPGs. So despite that initial selfknowing air, Eternity is happy to plunder from (or be a love letter to, if you’re feeling generous) its inspirations, with its own versions of Active Time Battles and Limit Breaks, not mention Nekaroos, summonable cat-like mounts which serve as the game’s Chocobo equivalent.

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t try to bring something new to the table. The turn-based battles take on a tactical twist, with party members able to position themselves on honeycomb-style grids. A ranged fighter or spellcaster can stay at a distance, or you can move away from a glowing grid that’s telegraphing an enemy’s devastating attack. Although battles whisk you away to separate arenas, they nonetheless take account of your immediate surroundings. Initiating a fight with a stray monster, for instance, usually means that’s the only enemy you fight rather than spawning an arbitrary group, while initiating a battle near a crystal means you can position yourself in proximity to it to yield buffs.

Yet while the freedom to move around might open up tactics, this is still a JRPG that makes you fight countless battles to level up, so you’ll prioritise your most damaging attacks to make the grind as efficient as possible. The ability to turn up the battle speed, with everyone’s HP and MP automatically restored at the end of each battle, does help. Yet that leaves the tactical movement mostly redundant save for boss fights, until the game tries to compensate by shoehorning in some awkward navigational puzzles. The best thing we can say about the latter is that they’re largely optional, and at least preferable to games where the distraction of random encounters while solving environmental puzzles can make you lose your bearings.

Of course, an indie studio striving to compete with one known for making some of the most lavish RPGs of all time was always going to face an uphill battle. As we’re treated to close-ups of characters that send us back to the uncanny valley circa 2004 or clumsy

CRYSTAL CHRONICLES

Pitched between FFVII’s materia and FFX’s skills sphere, crystals are used to enhance weapons with increased stats or new abilities. Weapons can also be levelled up to unlock more crystal slots, which can diverge into multiple paths – and although you can only choose one path, you can always start over. Since crystals are regularly given as rewards in battle, you’ll have a surplus soon enough, although in our playthrough we found a lot of the same skills kept coming up or overlapping, which seems a waste when socketing two blue crystals that both give you Icestrike. Although crafting benches also enable you to recycle your crystals in the hope of yielding something better, finding rarer crystals is largely about grinding through the RNG. animations that spoil the more extravagant special attacks, we’re moved to wonder why Midgar doggedly pursued a realistic look in Unity rather than adopting a stylised approach like other JRPG developers working within relatively limited budgets.

Eternity’s environments, on the other hand, are much easier on the eye. Indeed, our first steps into the vast green pastures of Solna Plains feel as wondrous as Gaur Plain in Xenoblade Chronicles – and the comparison doesn’t stop there, since that game’s composer Yasunori Mitsuda also contributes to the soundtrack. We only wish exploring the continent of Heryon was as freeform as in Monolith Soft’s game, or at least allowed you to jump over knee-high fences instead of forcing you to take the long way round. Navigation is also hampered by UI oversights: it can be difficult to tell from the world map which fast-travel point you’re warping to unless you’ve memorised the name, and while arriving at a new town floods your HUD with icons of quest markers or other areas of interest, there is no option to view a more detailed map.

And once you get past the surface, the environments are lacking in engaging activities, largely consisting of requests to hunt a certain amount of monsters with gradually diminishing returns. It’s a shame, because earlier sidequests inject some personality. (In one absurd scenario, our curiosity gets the better of us as we agree an exorbitant fee to open a treasure chest behind a guard, despite him saying that it contains nothing more than a basic healing potion.) The illusion of an open world soon cracks, too, as we’re gradually funnelled through areas surrounded by cliff faces, Eternity

becoming as linear as the first half of Final Fantasy XIII.

One element that does stand out is the characterisation of central siblings Daryon and Selene, who bicker and tease one another relentlessly, but are ultimately bound by familial love. It’s a more accurate depiction of sibling relationships than we often see in JRPGs, which have been known to veer into creepy territory. Indeed, it’s refreshing to find a JRPG cast who aren’t constantly falling for one another. Yet perhaps that contributes to one of Eternity’s fundamental issues: it’s hard to care too deeply about anyone. Apart from Daryon, forever enveloped in an aura of gloom, the default tone is snark. Though we might normally find ourselves gravitating towards the one sarcastic know-itall in an otherwise wide-eyed and noble group, a whole room of them quickly becomes insufferable.

After a lengthy development, Eternity has the good fortune to launch in a year without a new mainline Final Fantasy to be compared against, but anyone hoping this will fill the gap is settling for a tribute act that lacks its own identity. Besides, there are better examples of this genre – believe it or not, from Japan itself – and you don’t have to wait an eternity for them.

The illusion of an open world soon cracks, Eternity becoming as linear as the first half of Final Fantasy XIII