Medal System
---------------
broken medal - 0.5 or 1 star - technical disaster
bronze medal - 1.5 or 2 star or 2.5 star - the games not for me/below average
silver medal - 3 star or 3.5 star - doing well
golden medal - 4 star - above average games
plation medal - 4.5 star - might've masterpiece but somethings missing
diamond medal - 5 star - The Masterpiece or just special for me
---> Games Medal: Diamond Medal (special for me)
---> My Game time: 10h 30m

The Perfect Bad Game

This game truly manages to take everything corny about Persona's dating system and turns them into something thats not exactly that good but just charming with how funny and stupid it is.

The gameplay is pretty much the most medicore action combat of all time but i wont blame this game for that as its developed by basically a single person.

Absolutely the best aspect of this game is that I spent basically the entire runtime laughing my ass off. If you try taking this game seriously you will not like it but if you consider the game as a massive ironic joke it turns into the greatest thing ever written

I dont think i would recommend this game to anyone but at the same time its so funny that I think people should see it for themselves

Before I write my opinion, keep in mind the game was developed by an incredibly small team, mostly one individual.

The game feels awkward at all times: the pacing is awkward, the combat is awkward and the story is awkward.

On the combat side of thins, it mostly revolves around dodging and parrying. However, you need near precognition in order to execute them, because either the iframes while dodging are minuscule or the window to execute these moves is tiny, possibly both.

Then there's just the general feel of the game. Some details make the experience awkward, like not being able to use O to back out of menus, or the 4 elements, which are effective against each other in pairs (ie, fire and ice are effective against the opposite) not being opposite on the mapping as well to make the experience more intuitive.

Weirdest of all, you are given a QR code at the end of the credits to watch the ending on your phone.

So yeah, the one word I would use to describe the game is awkward. However, it's relatively cheap and on the shorter side (I finished it in around 12 hours according to Steam), so I do think it's worth checking out if you're curious.

Also, the one character known as Sia looks extremely awkward while doing her power. I don't like her for this reason.

Eternights is a huge achievement for the individuals who made the game. While the game's writing comes across pretty juvenile, the creators still delivered on their vision and made an interesting work. What clearly started as a fan work of Persona, SMT, and action RPGs does create its own identity. There is a great amount of gameplay variety, and you can feel the joy the creators must have felt adding in different puzzles, minigames, bonds, and creating the dungeon layouts. These additions are not there to distract from the core gameplay loop, but instead does a good job of breaking it up and feeling like you have a diverse experience for the entire 12 hours or so of the game.

I had fun with the battle system, but without the extra bells and whistles outside of combat, it would have overstayed its welcome. There is a decent amount of unlocks in the combat, but most of it can be reduced to dodging attacks and then building up your meter to breaking an enemy's shield wit ha special attack and then just spam "x" to combo and deathblow them. The special attacks have quicktime events and sometimes missing prompts would have you lose your momentum or it wouldn't target the right character, which was really just a minor annoyance more than anything. The skills you unlock from your party members also mostly went to waste and I didn't even really realize how much it changed things until the final chapter. All of it is a little bit janky, but it's fun jankiness. It's a challenge on normal difficulty but you will eventually meet the game on its own terms.

The writing is something I am still conflicted about. It's mostly pretty funny and has a sort of interesting world building that seems very inspired by COVID and the impact it has on already socially isolated teens. The characters are all quite sympathetic, though there is an abundance of horny otaku stuff, which is offputting. I think this could have been well neutralized by going darker, but I think the edginess that the game hints at early on doesn't deliver. I think the game is at its most compelling at the very beginning but the momentum doesn't really have much of a place to go. The mystery and unsettling early chapters don't pay off. To the game's credit, they chose not to go for an easy fanservice ending, however it still didn't have much of an impact on me.

In the end, I think this game will split people a lot, but it is exciting to see something like this as a debut game from a new developer and I look forward to seeing what they produce next.

A bit rough in places but it was pretty good. Set your expectations right and this is a nice snacky little action RPG. Game really could do with some more definition of its social aspects, I really felt like my social stats leveled up randomly and I didnt really get how each choice would effect my stats at all. I eventually got locked out of finishing two characters questlines cause of it, I have no idea how you are supposed to do everything in one run. Have a guide up and you might have a better experience with this then i did.

Eternights was the game I almost didn't play, but I'm so glad I did.

I was excited about Eternights when it first got announced, but after playing the one-hour demo I was a bit iffy on it. The combat felt clunky and weird, and the visuals looked lower budget than I expected. And I thought some of the dirty humor felt way out of place at times.

But something about it made me want to keep going, so I took the risk and bought it. And I'm so glad I did, because after that first hour it started clicking, and by the end I was so shockingly moved by what I just experienced, I was close to tears.

This is a beautiful, but flawed game. It's a game I wouldn't blame anyone for not feeling. I do think the combat is weird still, though I liked how surprisingly deep it was with all your different moves, elemental attacks, and party support. The story also wasn't quite as deep as I would've liked, it really was a story that went up and down for me.

The beauty of this game is in its characters. It's a Persona-like game. You power through dungeons and maintain relationships with characters to gain the upper hand in fights. But even though I wasn't sure about the writing at first, I ended up absolutely loving it. It ranged from funny to romantic, to serious and emotional. And all the characters feel unique and equally well written. Like I said before, by the end I was moved to almost tears by how attached I felt to these characters.

The music was also great, it matched the tension of dungeons, and the emotions of those serious character moments. And the art style, while still feeling low budget, had a charm to it that I liked. And after all, it is a low budget game, so I gave it credit.

Overall, I thought this game was a beautiful experience, and with the new game + as well as branching endings and stories for different characters, I'll definitely be diving in again!

"Mom I want Persona"

"We have Persona at home"

Persona at home:

Eternights is truly a video game, and one that jumped on my radar almost immediately after watching a Sony State of Play sometime last year. As my intro details, it was effectively billed as a hack and slash Persona-lite with heavy dating sim elements. Knowing myself as a filthy Persona consumer and a reluctant weaboo, I cautiously wrote down the title as something worth keeping on my docket for whenever it released. I vividly remember reviewing the games I had notched as "interesting" following the State of Play and thinking "There's no way this one is any good right?" and it turns out... yeah it wasn't really all that great. To be level with you the reader, Eternights is pretty much the Coors Light of video games. It's not great, it's a lesser version of something you can get better elsewhere, it doesn't stay with you long, but it's not the worst way you could have spent your time.

The game begins with a zombie apocalypse, as many do, and of which you and your best friend (who felt like a very watered down version of the Ryuji/Yosuke archetype) must survive. You quickly run into Japan's biggest pop star, Yuna, and link together with a mysterious force to fight against the architect of this malice. The premise of the story is mildly exciting at best, which is whatever because that wasn't necessarily the guiding light of the allure of Eternights. What drew me and probably most people into the title was the dating sim and Persona-esque nature of it. Now naturally you are a male protagonist on a train venturing out to do some dungeoneering with a team of waifus and two husbandos, all of whom you can earn affection and I believe romance with. Just like Persona these conversations are checked with substats, but instead of guts, charisma, or intelligence, you have acceptance, expression, and confidence (and a few more.) I appreciated this game for doing more of what Persona did, but I found the way that you gain each of these respective stats was a little too hamfisted and awkward. Much like Persona you do the bulk of it through selecting the right words in conversation... but I felt like what my intention was (for instance, trying to level up expression) didn't always match what I was saying in conversation. Early on in Act 3 I decided that I wanted to romance Yuna, but my expression wasn't high enough. I spent the rest of the act and the one after trying to pick the answers in conversation that leveled up expression... but I was wrong almost every time. This was okay in the end as I got to romance another character and go down their route, but it was mostly via incident and not intention. Persona did it right in having alternate routes to level up these stats (P5 for instance eating at Big Bang Burger leveled up your guts,) however that was not present in Eternights and made the dating sim element, a main draw, unfortunately too vague.

The other main element of the game outside of the dating sim aspect is the combat, and man did it look real nice in the trailer. An ongoing issue with anime action games is that the combat will often look pretty and clean (Tales of Arise, Scarlet Nexus) but in practice feel like slapping sand against a brick wall, and that is an apt descriptor of Eternights' combat system. Much like Scarlet Nexus you wail and wail against waves of enemies in a group in a button mash style. These enemies will sometimes have barriers that require popping with your elemental powers granted to you by the select group of waifus you call your team. While not every enemy has a barrier, and you can bypass many of these weaknesses by just using whichever element you want, it just becomes another game of matching the shape to the peg hole. This is what killed a lot of Scarlet Nexus for me, it was just lukewarm button mash combat with added in weakness hunting. On top of that, the game will throw a lot of enemies at you that require dodging before you can attack, and man there's few things I dislike in action games then staring at your opponent waiting for them to attack so you can get your own hits in... it just straight up kills any pace and flow that the title has.

I feel like this is probably way more than anyone will write about Eternights, but what else are we to do.

The positives of Eternights are thus: it's actually pretty funny and self aware of the lewditiy of it all... and no that is almost assuredly not a word. And honestly? Sometimes a Coors Light can hit the spot, they're low in ABV and go down like water, and sometimes you just need water. I'm between Starfield and Lies of P, with a Cyberpunk DLC on the horizon so this game tucked in with a pretty short runtime and some decent humor that got me to crack a grin every now and again. There were a few callbacks to animes and videogames that must have been influences on the developer that I appreciated (hello Final Fantasy X!) as well.

I can't recommend anyone to play this game, unless they really like Coors Light. It's a decent at best game with some weak to middling dating sim elements that are better done in many other series, and an unfortunately poor combat loop.

Feels like a Persona Spin off that was made with half the budget. The inspiration is very clear, and the game doesnt seem to try to hide it.

It falls under a lot of common anime tropes and the characters are a bit shallow, but the writing on certain scenes was actually pretty decent, this game also has a better excuse for shallow characters than persona considering its 1/10th of the playtime.

Combat is perfectly serviceable with combos, dodges, parries, especial abilities and somewhat okay enemy variety.

The main story is pretty whatever but it does try to incorporate the romance bits of the game into it towards the end, it doesnt quite work but it is a commandable effort nonetheless.

Seeing in the credits that it was made by a handful of people from what seems to be a tiny studio, its quite a commendable effort that the closest point of comparison for me and a few others is Persona.

Its not without issues tho, combat only doesnt get boring because the game is quite short, the main story is, once again, quite whatever for the most part, and character scenes and dialogue can be pretty hit or miss.

Still, i dont regret playing it, its a decent video game at the end of the day, even has some actually funny bits, i expected it to be way way worse than it ended up being.

Tal vez una unpopular opinión, pero el juego sí me gusto... Digo, no es una obra maestra, pero vamos, es el primer juego de esta desarrolladora que es indie y si bien tiene cosas que me desagradaron como el que metieran un chingo de mecánicas que solo se llegan a usar 1 sola vez y lo oscuro (y no me refiero solo a lo edgy de la historia) que es ya que parece que cada puto dungeon estás jugando en la oscuridad y sumado a que no tiene ningún minimapa para guiarte, es probable que te pierdas muchas veces sin saber a donde ir. Por suerte las dungeons son relativamente lineales y puedes avanzar sin problemas si te perdiste.

Ahora bien, el juego me entretuvo y creo que la espera si valió la pena, ya que fue justo lo que esperaba. Un juego pequeño de una empresa recién creada que se iba a notar el bajo presupuesto en muchas cosas, pero que al final iba a ser un juego entretenido a pesar de la inexperiencia de los creadores y lo fue. El combate es un HacknSlash y te la pasarás spameando las mismas cosas una y otra vez, pero el combate en sí se siente muy ágil y me recordó un poco al de NMH

Su historia es... Bueno... Es demasiado edgy la mayoría del tiempo y tiene escenas un poco fuertes las cuales se sienten fuera de lugar, ya que si la historia siguiese ese mismo tono constantemente hubiera sido aceptable, pero más parece un slice of live donde personajes se la pasan haciendo o diciendo chistes pervertidos o cosas que se salen de la seriedad que quieren transmitir... Al menos el "Social link" de los personajes fue mejor trabajado y ahí si se siente mejor llevada la narración. Sobre esto, se le agradece que todos los personajes tengan voces y además hay traducciones a múltiples idiomas. Yo no tengo problemas con jugar en inglés, de hecho yo juego y leo casi todo en inglés, pero siempre me resulta interesante probar traducciones en español cuando las hay y puedo decir que me lo termine 100% con la traducción al español, ya que fue buena y neutral, nada del asqueroso castellano que suelen verse en estas traducciones (aunque hay cosas que se notan que fueron mal traducidas del japonés como lo es usar la palabra "Entrenador" como traduccion de "Senpai".

No es perfecto, para nada, pero se nota que hicieron este juego con cariño y pasión y se nota. Como primer juego en su curriculum me hace ver que tienen potencial para crear mejores juegos en el futuro.

I love this game. It has a lot of heart in it, and it had me wanting more at the end.

This is a budget title, and it shows. Do not expect perfection from this. That being said, I'll go into more detail.

Gameplay wise, it's a fine action game. You start off with barely any movement or abilities that feel good, but once you start bonding with the other characters, that in turn unlocks the ability to spend points into some very fun mechanics. By the end of the game, I was stun locking bosses and tougher enemies and they never once got a hit on me. It felt really good.

I do wish there was a block button. Dodging is fine, but I found it can be a little off. Sometimes I would nail a dodge with perfect timing but the game just didn't bother to recognize it. At first I was blaming myself, but then the next time I would do the exact same timing on the dodge, with the enemy using the same attack, and it worked. I'm still not sure what I was doing wrong there, or if it was a game flaw, can't really figure it out. It happened rarely, so it wasn't that annoying, but it's still there.

I liked the little minigames you can do for training with each of the main characters. Nothing groundbreaking but they are at least easy enough.

The one negative about gameplay is the looting/scavenge missions. Characters will ask you to go help them find something at night, you get a choice of three locations, and you guess where an item is. Pretty quickly I figured out that items are not randomized, and if you memorize or write down where they are, you will have an easy time with this. I just didn't really like them all that much. Feels like it could have been cut from the game and you wouldn't be missing anything.

There are puzzles out in the world to solve, but I found them not annoying and pretty simple. It does break up the action a bit, and it's a nice distraction.

Bonding with characters is fun. I chose to pick the silliest options I could, and to my surprise, these aren't just written off. They are brought back up later. What was the most fun for me is the game just flowed with it. I appreciate a game just letting me be a goof and having fun.

Characters have personality and while it can seem a bit rushed to learn about them and bond with them, it works in the game's favor by not wasting your time. I rarely get a game where I actually like every character that is in it, and this is one of those games.

I think the graphics and art direction are honestly really well done. You aren't getting the best in the business, obviously, but world design is pretty neat and characters just look good to me. It's a style that I like.

I played with all the voice options. I found the Korean and Japanese voices to be the most interesting in terms of direction, but the English VAs also do a very good job. I wasn't expecting this game to be mostly voice acted, but it is, with rare scenes not having any. Loved all the animated cutscenes as well.

I don't really want to spoil the story for anyone who might be interested in playing. I will say at the end, there is a very simple but also very cool thing the game does. Once again, showing there is clear passion for this game from the people who made it.

Also for those curious, my run took me about 9 hours. And beating it gave me New Game+, so I expect do another run pretty soon.

I recommend playing this! It's a low price game but there is a demo too, so at least give it a shot!

After playing the demo these are my thoughts:

Very impressive for such a small studio. From the little I played of the game, I was impressed by pretty much everything.

Characters are good so far. Normally I object to anime horny-ness but it surprisingly works here. Don’t really know much about the story yet but seems like a decent enough set up.

The art style is great. There’s a lot of nice neon colours throughout that really pop and the environments are great. Something else of note is the lighting. This game is so well lit.

Only real complaint so far are the mouth movements. They look so unnatural and ugly.

I’ll definitely buy the full version of the game after my backlog is cleared and I’ll update this review when that finally happens.