《Eternal Anima》试玩上手与感想

At the same recent preview event where I was able to try out Muramasa: Revenant Blades, I also spent an hour with a brand new JRPG title called Eternal Anima. This particular title boasts some serious powerhouse names in the video game industry working on the project, including director Katsuhisa Higuchi of Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger fame, story concept writer Keisuke Makino, who worked on Persona 5, and composer Hitoshi Sakimoto, another Final Fantasy alum who also created music for series like Valkyria Chronicles and Breath of Fire. You may recall that the project was announced during the latest Nintendo Direct.

As someone who quite infamously never really got into Square’s JRPGs, despite being a fan of the genre as a whole, I was curious whether this one could make a believer out of me. I could tell even just from the look of this game that it has that distinct retro Square vibe that is so very difficult to replicate, but I went in with an open mind. 

The demo starts a few hours into the campaign, and was restricted to normal difficulty, though of course other options will be available upon release. Here, our party has time traveled for the first time. This is one of the key gimmicks of the game. They’ve gone back in time to visit an era that becomes desolate in the future to see if they can stop that from happening. The whole game has a strong environmentalist feeling about it, and in our current ever-changing climate, I do think the themes will hit home for players. As someone from a country that’s quite famous for its greenery, I know the themes certainly resonated personally.

Our party encountered a young man with knowledge of how to fix up plants and plant life. After successfully convincing him we are not of his time, he guides us to his village, where he gets into a heated argument with the chief and his buddies about mending the decaying forest. Martii, the young naturist we’ve met, blows up with rage after the chief suggests they continue following their village’s established ways, and after being a little mean to his childhood friend, he buggers off to the forest for a sulk. Martii eventually joins the party, and together we venture through the forest, which plays out as a traditional JRPG dungeon with puzzle solving and battles, and upon reaching the end of it, we go up against a boss. More on that in just a bit. 

First, I should talk about the presentation of the game, which is stellar. Characters have beautiful artwork and fun 3D character models in the overworld that are quite animated. Voice acting and text is largely what projects how the characters are feeling. I played the game in English, but the game offers a real star-studded cast of voice actors in both English and Japanese, and though this demo only featured English text, Marvelous assured me that subtitles for a plethora of other languages will be included. The main character Wade, in particular, had a very fun personality that bounced well off his other party members, a robot named M.O.S. and the team leader, a lady named Naria.

The graphical style of the game, as mentioned, features 3D models, and a 3D landscape for the players to explore. It looks quite good, especially the colors and lighting of the environments look really good. I didn’t get to see any areas of the future in this demo, and I must admit my interest is piqued to see how dystopian the world looks in contrast to the past. It has a very Sonic CD feeling about it. 

Back to Wade briefly – he wields an ability called Psychometry, which allows him to learn from the souls of the deceased and gain the mastery of that deceased person’s abilities. In the forest dungeon, for example, he gains a mastery of archery through using this skill on a now-passed person, but not before we hear that person’s backstory, which was about him sacrificing his life to buy time for other people to escape with theirs. This adds another class to Wade’s skillset, and with it various moves. This specifically affects battles. Let me talk about those. 

Combat follows traditional JRPG fare for the most part, with different attacks that have unique attributes and elemental properties that are more potent against different enemies depending on their weaknesses. For example, the boss I mentioned earlier was weak to ice elemental attacks. Some characters have healing moves, some can tank more hits than their fellow party members, and there are also buffs and debuffs. You can guard and use items to help you out in a pinch, like healing potions and revivals. Each character has a health meter and a magic/mana meter. As is the case in other famous JRPGs, when you have no MP, you can’t use certain moves, and if you have no health left, your character can’t fight anymore unless revived. All your party members die, and you’re out. 

The big unique element to Eternal Anima’s combat is that each battle follows a timeline displayed on the screen. This timeline shows which characters are going to attack when. Picking faster attacks than the enemy allows Wade and his team to manipulate the fight to their advantage by taking the enemies out first, stunning them, or guarding against them before they hit with a big attack, mitigating damage received. Circling back to our friend the dungeon boss, I found myself locked in battle with him for what felt like twenty minutes at least. After figuring out his ice weakness, I found myself using Wade and Martii’s ice attacks, healing with Naria and using MOS’s turns to use items when necessary. It was chipping away at the boss’ health, but at a pretty slow rate.

I was growing quite bored with it until something clicked with me after guarding for a few times as Wade; a meter was filling. When that filled up, a super move that dealt big damage became available for use. This featured a unique animation different from your usual moves to really sell the power involved, and the move also gave me second-hand embarrassment because it took me so long to discover this mechanic. By the time I did figure it out, it was time for the demo to finish. I didn’t even get to kill the guy! Or, at least, that should have been the case. Instead, the Marvelous crew encouraged me to whale on the boss and play the scenario out. So, Naria, M.O.S and Martii all pulled out their super moves to put the boss to bed, ending my time with the game. If the team is reading, sincerely, thank you for letting me do that. I would have been filled with a bitter sense of nonfulfillment the whole flight home. Instead, I ended my session with a pep in my step!

Eternal Anima was a fun time, but when thinking if it was a game I could see myself committing dozens of hours to, I think I would need to play a little bit more. A lot of this demo featured extensive cutscenes and voice work, which was all really good, but as a result I only got to get a flavor of the gameplay. I’d want to play more to get a full breadth of what to expect. Hopefully another demo releases publicly for download in the lead up to release. Still, taking myself out of it, this seems like a game built for classic JRPG fans, especially retro Square heads. Everything about it feels like it takes from all the best elements of that style of JRPG, and the all-star team of developers who have been hired for the project have really produced the goods on this one. I can’t see the future like Wade can, but if I could make a bold call: come March next year, this title could be a sleeper hit.