Characters’ faces hardly emote and their lips barely move, hair, pauldrons, flowing robes, and tassels all clip through characters’ bodies, and limbs move at such inhuman extremes everyone would have torn tendons after a few minutes.
I don’t know if the studio was inexperienced with 3D models, if their budget was smaller than necessary, or if some other stressor caused it, but the animations for the models just aren’t good. The title and loading screens have a very traditional anime look, dialogue boxes are accompanied by character portraits in a different, more western illustration style, and the rest of the game is 3D renders. For whatever reason, Edge of Eternity has three different art styles. The first thing most people will notice is the game’s visual design. Unfortunately, though Edge of Eternity has a truck load of cool ideas, very little about the game is well executed. My personal favorite are the crystal ballistae, because nothing helps you win a fight like a magical siege weapon.
During the day, the sun empowers fire and plant magic, while at night, the darkness strengthens sneaky poison magic and the chill of night enhances ice magic. I was surprised to see that even the weather affects the game, with different times of day and weather changing the power of different elemental magic. If an ally or enemy occupies the same hex as a crystal, they can get a bonus like being healed every turn or boosting their spell power. If players start fight near the many massive crystals, they can be included in the fight’s tactical plan. Eventually, some of these “items” turn out to be monsters, presumably to give a sense of risk and uncertainty to the item hunts, but the monsters are such pushovers that they’re only an annoyance. They also have a scent-based item radar, which allows players to find extra items as they ride towards their next destination. The nekaroo, being horse-sized, are used as transportation mounts, allowing players to travel farther and faster once they’ve gotten far enough in the game. Where these creative ideas really impressed me was how they effected the gameplay. Beyond fauna, Heryon is also littered with massive crystals that have remarkable effects but, presumably because they are so common, no one comments on them much. Likely to be the fan favorite is the nekaroo, horse-sized cats with two tails and feathered ears. In place of wolves, there are croctas, canines with a secondary mouth between their shoulders that can speak well enough to cast spells.
Instead of chickens, Heryon has pilitches, squat birds the size of a husky that only lay eggs in the presence of negative emotions such as fear or sorrow. I don’t know what deity created Heryon but they were clearly a sadist. Possibly more interesting than that are the natural features of the planet Heryon. This leads to the advanced machines being hoarded by the aristocracy and clergy, while commoners have to use medieval means to solve their problems. Though Heryon is at war with the Archelites, Archelite technology is both useful and rare. It also creates an interesting class disparity. One of the coolest examples of this union of technology and mysticism are the crystal ballistae scattered around the world that fire magical bolts.
The only other setting I’ve seen this merger is the Shadowrun franchise but in that it’s much bleaker. But on top of the sci-fi invasion, Edge of Eternity also has magic, which creates an interesting blend of genres.
#Edge of eternity full
In most other games, the alien race colonizing a world full of rare resources and technologically inferior natives would be told from the invader’s perspective, probably in a 4X game like Endless Space. The world is fascinating right from the start. There’s one undeniable fact about Edge of Eternity and that is it has a lot of interesting ideas.
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