Edge of Eternity Review

I’m a bit of an RPG fan, I enjoy the story rich world and the different mechanics of each game. On the other hand, I’m not particularly keen on early access games. “Edge of Eternity” has left me with a bit of a conundrum by being both. This is a supplementary review, if you want to see my first impressions of the game right after I was done playing it, go check the video down below.

Edge of Eternity is a JRPG developed by Midgar Studio and published by Playdius. The game is currently in early access on steam with only the first chapter available. When I started the game for the first time I was greeted with the main character walking through a snowstorm with his sister, and I gotta say, I was impressed. I was walking knee deep in snow and I was leaving a trail, and as any sane person would’ve done, I tested how long the game will maintain the trail by drawing naughty things in the snow. First impressions matter kids.

Don’t lie, you would’ve done the same.

Anyway, let's get back on track. The story of the game presents us with a world at war. Strange metal ships appeared in the sky bringing technology as gifts just asking for food and to mine the land in exchange. But when they also asked for the crystals that the people use, the people of this world refused and a war started. After many losses, the people of the land finally managed to take the upper hand only for some sort of disease, known as the corrosion, that morph living things into half organic half mechanical creature to break out. Our hero of the story deserted the army after receiving a letter from his sister telling him that his mother has been infected by the corrosion.

“Give me your oi..eh…L.. *COUGH* crystals”

Our hero Daryon and Selene embark in a journey to see their mother, getting in many troubles along the way. When it comes to the story, it is your typical JRPG affair. A troubled world, outcast hero etc. We have to remember that the game is in early access and not all of the story is out, so it is hard to judge where the story will go. If anything I can say this game reminded me of the good old era of JRPG’s on the PS2.

I mean, this can’t get more JRPG.

Gameplay, on the other hand, I found quite interesting. Combat is turn-based, and like in Chrono Trigger, you can see the monster in the world before you battle them. You have a bar that fills up, and when this bar is full that character can perform an action.

Here’s an example of some other combat mechanics.

Also, I like how the weather & time of the day can influence the battle. Like how fire attacks get weaker in the rain & electric attacks get stronger.

Unlike Chrono Trigger we have the typical cutscene where light flashes on the screen and then we are taken to the battlefield where we face the monster. I find this quite odd since we are taken to the same place that we were standing because, in this game, the position of your character is important.

Almost forgot, your weapon levels as well, and your skills are bound to crystals of different colors that you allocate in slots in your weapon.

The location where you are confronted by a monster is important because in the overworld you’ll find things like healing crystal or lighting rods and catapult like weapons. These things are translated into a grid in the battle screen where you can position, and move your character around in other to receive some benefits in battle.

Look at this stupid dog sitting there… healing….mocking me!

Moving around is also integral to avoid certain attacks from the enemy where you’ll see a certain part of the grid light up in a red color telling you things are going to go down. Also placing your healer/caster away from the enemy but close enough to heal Daryon is a solid tactic. This gives the game a bit of Tactical RPG and I find that really fun. I can only imagine how fun it would be with more party members but unfortunately, as right now, you only have two characters. Given that in some quest you get a random NPC to join you, but they don’t have skills and playing them boils down to “attack”.

Ok, Nugget just stands there and don’t die.

Speaking of quests, we have our typical side missions of “collect 100 of this items”, and “kill these many enemies”, but also we have very interesting quests. At one point of the story, you have to lure a giant boar towards this prison camp so you can free an NPC that is integral to the story. It was very interesting, to say the least. The monster will chase you if it catches you-you have to fight him and knock him down. While the monster is down, you have to run before it wakes up again and repeat this till you reach the camp.

Also, it will make a nice meal after everything is said and done.

I think it is important that I take a little bit of time to reiterate that the game is in early access. There are some bugs in the game, and I’ve had some issues streaming the game. Sure it could be on my end, but I haven’t had any problem streaming more demanding games, in any case, the game still needs some polish.

Oh! Selene can use shadow clone Jutsu? I didn’t know.

Also, what’s with this camera angle?

Still, the game shows promise. Yeah, it does have the stereotypical JRPG tropes, but that only gives me nostalgia for the good old days of JRPG’s. But the gameplay and the quests with a twist like the boar one gives me a lot of hope for the game. Also, the fact that the areas of the game are not instances, meaning that you can walk from one map to another without seemingly loading anything, reminds me of an MMORPG. This feeling was also reinforced by the presence of event quests in the overworld, one to be precise.

This quest seems to pop out every time I logged in, and aside from different monster that I had to fight,

The reward seems to be the same. Access to a merchant for a limited time.

The game has many things going for it, a matter of fact, it feels like the developers are trying many different things in just one game. Whether this is good or not, only time will tell. I do believe though that the game will focus itself and pull through.

So do I recommend the game? Well, it is an early access game and if you buy it now you are only purchasing chapter one. To tell the truth, though, I had a blast with the little there is of the game, and do believe that this game has tremendous potential, also it’s only 19.99 on steam. So if you check videos/reviews and like what you see and wish to help the development of the game, I would say go for it.

In conclusion aside from some problems that can be fixed in the future, like how NPC pretty much look the same even in important quests, the game shows potential. Don’t get me wrong, in this era of gaming that we live in anything can happen, but I’m a hopeful person at heart. Have you tried Edge of Eternity? What are your thoughts on the game? Let us know. Now I return to the deepest darkest corners of my dwelling. Good-bye, for now, my friends.

Can’t wait to see where this journey will take us.

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