I wrote in a previous blog that recently I’d been playing Edge of Eternity a lot. Still haven’t cleared the last boss but after nearly 40 hours of gameplay, I figured I knew enough to write this. Edge of Eternity is currently available on Xbox Game Pass and is also available on Steam. My play through was on the Xbox, which seems to be a very recent port to console. EOE is a turn based JRPG which was originally a Kickstarter for PC and if I’m honest, the design shows it with menus, text and camera position reflecting a PC based design. I’ll be honest and say that I gave up on much of the in depth crafting very early on as I got tired of having to go right up to the TV screen in order to read it. On the other side though the game is extremely pretty with some lovely vistas, and acceptable if slightly rough cutscenes.
Gameplay is focused on exploration in combat with the odd puzzle thrown in. Some of the puzzles are extremely difficult but only a few are mandatory. For me not enough is made of the puzzles and that is a shame as they make for an interesting change of pace and the ones present are well designed. Combat is basic in principle but complex to master. A grid system controls position and range whilst terrain can block attacks, do damage or cause buffs. This is a great piece of design. And the bonuses for blindside attacks make combat rewarding if occasionally repetitive experience. Enemies are vulnerable to certain damage types in a manner familiar to any RPG gamer. But the game doesn’t have the usual plethora of buff and debuff spells; there are a few but most of the combats and tactics are damage focused.
The story is strange. It starts off as a tale about a fairly tropey sword wielder in black , whose friends are massacred before he himself is nearly sacrificed in some religious ceremony which is intended to release some great power to vanquish an alien invader. That’s just the tutorial. After this, we eventually join up with his sister Selene and the two sets off in order to save their mother who’s contracted some form of virus called corrosion. Along they are way they recruit Ysoris, Fallon Thea and Myra though she doesn’t stick around too long. Along the way, the story becomes a rather convoluted save the world/religious schism narrative which is never fully explained. It’s ambitious, but also a little too big and after 40 hours, I still wasn’t really sure what was going on. Tales of Arise does this kind of story far better in my view, even though that RPG does end rather abruptly.
The EOE character design is not bad. Deryen is rather tropic but the others have reasonable depth and the designers have at least resisted giving into fanservice temptation. There is reference to outfits within the game menus. But these seem to be locked off currently in the Xbox port. Weapons do change the visuals, but that’s about the only change that takes place irrespective of what armour or equipment you have on. It’s very hard to ignore the Final Fantasy influence in the design. But on the whole, it’s well thought out. And there’s certainly none of the gratuitous butt shots that Tales of Arise became somewhat famous for.
The biggest problem by a country mile is how this game runs. It is unbelievably buggy. I lost count of the number of crashes I’d had, even when just walking in the open world. Load screens are slow and post loads often see you floating in nothingness until the visual assets finish loading. Some never do load and you have an NPC in lurid purple polygons rather than pants and on the whole it really breaks the immersion. Hopefully some of these bugs will be patched in later updates. But the combination of this, the absence of a proper working mini map, and the display text size issue, stop me recommending this game to anyone who wasn’t a serious JRPG player. This is a potentially brilliant game. But as it stands, it’s just that potential. For a freebie It’s definitely worth a look. And if you like JRPGs you’ll get a fair bit from it. But if you were after a far better example of the JRPG genre, then I would say Tales of Arise remains the king on the market at the moment.
Rating: 6/10
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