Eternights Review – Keep Swiping Left – MonsterVine

I try to avoid dating apps whenever possible. You know how it goes, you download a dating app, match up with a god, and suddenly everyone’s a zombie and you’re stuck on a train with your best friend and an idol. It’s a tale as old as time, and that’s just the beginning. Eternights is a little action RPG/dating sim that takes place in a pseudo-post-apocalyptic city where our protagonist is the only person that can save the world. Of course, he can’t save the world without the friends he’s made along the way. And while the premise is nice and the game looks fun and clean, is Eternights as good of a game as it appears?

Eternights
Developer: Studio Sai
Price: $30
Platform: PC (reviewed), Sony Playstation 4/5
MonsterVine was supplied with a PC code for review

It all starts in our protagonist’s apartment, named by you, the player, chatting about dating with your best friend Channi. Channi is the typical anime sidekick, he’s over-enthusiastic, completely girl-crazy, and kind of a pervert. He convinces you to join a new dating app, match up with someone, and immediately fall asleep after agreeing to a date. The next day you’re hanging out with Channi when giant walls appear around the city and you have to go to these underground bunkers everyone is just aware of and exist for some reason. Eventually, the bunker unlocks, you run into an idol, you meet a crazed woman who cuts your arm off, and suddenly you’ve got a morphable arm that can take different shapes.

One of those shapes is a sword, allowing our protagonist to fight some of the zombies that have taken over the city. The combat in Eternights is not very deep. You have a five-hit combo that’s followed up with a finisher, and that’s about it. You can unlock a few more attacks but they can’t really be woven into the primary five-hit combo. However, the pivotal combat move in Eternights is the perfect dodge. An enemy with the telegraph that it’s about to attack with a bright red light and, if done correctly, a perfect dodge will slow everything down allowing you to get off a five-hit combo.

This is all pretty standard fare for an action RPG. Unfortunately, the perfect dodge just isn’t right in Eternights. First, there are a few attacks that are telegraphed to the player and immediately executed, making a perfect dodge absolutely impossible. A perfect dodge also doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be able to execute a full five-hit combo. The world drops to a blue hue when a perfect dodge is achieved but it only lasts for about three attacks, leaving you open to be knocked out of the five-hit combo. This isn’t just an issue when there are multiple enemies on the screen, either. Many of the enemies don’t recoil or are stunned by your attacks.

Likewise, there are some interesting design choices around making some of the monsters tankier. Some monsters carry around large weapons or shields that, on attack, will block the attack and in some cases damage the player. There are also enemies who have a shield icon on their health bar that requires you to perform a special attack on them to break. Each character has an element assigned to them and can break the shield of the opposing element. Fundamentally, Eternights wants you to wait and not attack. In most situations, attacking before a perfect dodge results in you taking a hit and being knocked down. In keeping with the theme of not allowing the player enough invincibility, you can be knocked down again before the player’s character gets back up. This results in some fights against multiple enemies being downright exhausting.

This is my biggest issue with the combat in Eternights, every time I went to be the aggressor or push my advantage, I was immediately punished for it. I never once felt that the power balance had tipped in my favor. I was in a perpetual state of waiting. This was especially true of boss battles, where attacking a boss outside of a perfect dodge usually resulted in your weapon being deflected and you taking damage. As a player, I’m not here to wait, I want to take action. The fact that, even when I’m executing a perfect dodge and combo perfectly I’m unable to press my advantage, is disappointing.

The other half of Eternights is a Persona style dating-sim. Once you’ve sufficiently survived after having your arm cut off, your group finds a railless train and makes that their home. Here you can forge bonds with your team members, take them scavenging in the evening, or train with them. Scavenging in a mini-game where a character will ask you for an item and you go with them to one of three places, the library, a warehouse, or a convenience store. Each of these places has a set of items and you’re required to kind of just guess what’s going to be where. If you successfully find the item, you get a lil’ stat boost and some white essence, more on that later. If you fail, you still get a lil’ boost and white essence, just not as much. Training is also a mini-game, ranging from holding a button to keeping a meter in a specific place, or just the squat mini-game from Final Fantasy 7 Remake.

Forging bonds is the meat of the dating sim portion. You’re supposed to be learning more about each of the three girls (and one guy, don’t get excited, he’s not datable,) and eventually choosing one to date. I found this part extremely tedious. Instead of having a living world where things are happening and events take place to bond you with your characters, you’re just running around the train hitting menus and occasionally going out to fight with only one of the girls instead of all of them. Each girl has a struggle they need help resolving and of course, despite being kind of a bonehead, only our protagonist can solve their issues. As long as his social stats are high enough.

That’s right, even if you are stuck on a train with crazy zombies everywhere, it’s important to maintain social health. There are four social stats you need to maintain; Expression, Confidence, Acceptance, and Courage. Generally, when you respond to someone talking to you, it will increase one of these by one. Some of the conversation options made complete sense and others seemed completely arbitrary. The only time I ever paid attention to them was during the final stages of “dating” one of the girls, it required me to hit level four of the social stat, which is the max. I don’t believe the social stats affected anything other than my ability to go on the final date with any of the girls and as a result, I have no idea why the developer felt the need to include these at all.

And thematically, that tracks because I don’t think Eternights sought to say anything new. Just about every aspect of Eternights can be found in other games and executed better. The conversations with the girls felt shallow and pointless. The overarching narrative felt well-trodden and archetypal. The combat was loose and frustrating. The further I made it into Eternights the less I felt compelled to resolve the story.

Artistically, I felt like there was some good to be had here. Some of the environments looked pretty good and matched the location where the characters were supposed to be. Unfortunately, Eternights is so dark it was difficult to see a lot of the environments. Sometimes you’d be running through hallways with the only light coming from your sword. This was especially frustrating when trying to solve a puzzle and continually having to maneuver around my monitor to make out details necessary for completing the puzzle. Some of the enemy designs are really cool too. Even some of the simpler salaryman or high school girl enemies had grotesque heads that truly added to the sense of style. Unfortunately, the character designs were pretty lackluster, with no standouts whatsoever.

Impressively, Eternights is almost fully voiced. The protagonist isn’t voiced until the very end of the game and occasionally there are pieces of small, short dialog that aren’t voiced. But, the bulk of the game could be listened to with your eyes closed. This would be great if they allowed for an auto-advance option on the text, but sadly that’s missing. The voice acting is also punching above its weight class. The VA was definitely working with what they had but I felt like they did a very good job of maintaining consistency in their characters. It’s impressive how much of this game was voiced.

I didn’t hate Eternights. In fact, I think if you’re a huge fan of action RPGs or anime games you will find something to like about Eternights, maybe even love. However, short of the niche I believe Eternights is specifically catering to, I think you’ll end up in the same boat as me. Disappointed.

The Final Word
The pillars holding up Eternights; Narrative, Combat, and Characters, have lots of cracks and didn’t take long to start crumbling. As impressive as it is that this game was made with such a small team, I can’t recommend this game. 

MonsterVine Rating: 2.5 out of 5 – Mediocre

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• Source: https://monstervine.com/2023/09/eternights-review/