Eden's Last Sunrise

Eden's Last Sunrise is a fun tactical game about the threat of a Calamity. I spent so much time going through every path before heading into the true path/ending. I did enjoy the many characters of this world and how they responded to the situation depending on the path you took. This game does have flaws but i think the story, gameplay and soundtrack overall lead to an enjoyable Experience. [hr][/hr] For further details: I only found one character in this game to be a very weak character. Ral. [spoiler] She doesn't work much as an ally character but a great villain to fight against. [/spoiler] The only other character that comes close but is still a somewhat good character is Alicia. [spoiler] Another great Villain. Thinking back, I did find her motivations and aspirations to be respectful with the whole rocket and progression. [/spoiler] In terms of combat, It is just as tough as Final Fantasy Tactics. Not as Punishing but still a great challenge. You can even change difficulty at your leisure. The only complaint is the inventory system. Not being able to sell, trash items as you keep getting them over time. For my final thoughts, I hope the game gets another patch someday for quality of life fixes. [spoiler] I couldn't redo the final support conversation for the characters in each path. While i did not check, I suspect that each path has its own unique final support conversation. [/spoiler]

A very solid tactics RPG with some light management aspects. The character writing is very well done, and I appreciate that it's enocuraged for players to see multiple endings, each of which provide different information to the larger "true ending" story. Class design is varied and generally feels good. There are about 18 classes, most of which have a unique mechanic, and many of which have synergistic partner classes on the other end of the tech/magic spectrum. There's enough depth to get invested into the setup of equipment, passives, and classes to find an ideal mix. However, the length of the game does mean that some characters will feel "finished" with their relevant classes well before the true ending. If you use mastered classes, most encounters will be a bit too easy on Normal, so I'd advise that one varies their class loadouts to keep the non-story encounters from getting too stale. Narratively, it's very solid. I think four endings (two sides, each with 1 branching path) is just enough scope that it feels like your choices matter without forcing the writers to make obscure choices less developed. I didn't play two of the endings, as you only need to play one of each side for the true ending, but the ones I did play were engaging and interesting. The individual character trust events were also an excellent addition. Most of them feel sharply written, even if some are a bit archetypical and didn't catch my interest as much. Lastly, the crafting system for gear upgrades and the general inventory management was decent, but it felt like it was missing an escape valve for "junk" items. I ended up carrying so many armor sets and weapons that were completely useless for level 50 when compared to the better stuff you get at the end of a given run. I'd have appreciated a way to dissasemble them for materials. There was also one menuing bug that caused the action select menu to double up. Only one bug isn't so bad, so I mention it mostly for the dev's reference. Seemed to trigger by inputting commands very quickly using keyboard shortcuts.

Eden's Last Sunrise is an interesting game that deserves more attention. It's one part Final Fantasy Tactics and one part visual novel. Society had a major split 200 years prior to the start of the game. One faction used modern technology to take to space and forge a new life, while the other stayed on the planet and embraced magic. The beginning of the game sees the space faring faction detecting a potentially life-ending wave of energy wiping out their distant satellites, and deciding its time to contact their long-lost kin. In true visual novel form, you choose whether to play as the space faring people or those who stayed behind at the beginning. From there, each route splits into two more a ways in. The combat gameplay takes most of its queues from Final Fantasy Tactics, but notably adds a cover system and an aggro system. The cover system effectively changes how you think about positioning, while the aggro system allows for MMO style tanking and riskier positioning with those who can reduce their targeting priority. The game also features an action point system, with each character (typically) getting 6 action points per turn. A standard attack costs 3 points, moving can be done once per turn for a single point, and defending is always available for 2 points. Stronger attacks can cost more, while certain attacks and utility abitliies may cost less. This usually means a move, an attack, and a utility ability or defense per turn, but could also means two or more attacks in a turn if forgoing movement. On top of this, you have a solid number of classes to mix and match abilities with, covering both magical and high tech options. There is also a tension system, which allows for powerful limit-break like abilities, but I found that most of these were either not that impactful or took too long to build to show up outside of the longest couple of battles in the game. The combat is enjoyable, but it unfortunately doesn't quite hit the tactical heights of the best in the genre. I found the majority of the moves I used to be damage with some minor status effect rider or healing moves, with pure status effects and debuffs not generally being worth the action points when alternatives are available. For example, there's nothing that feels impactful in a similar way to Time Mages in FFT. There are a couple of abilities to speed up turns, but they only speed up the next turn as a rider effect on a heal or as a high tension cost ability that just didn't come into play. Similar things could be said about hard control abilities and other utility focused skills. Further, the difficulty is a bit odd -- I found once I'd learned a few essential abilities hard mode was quite easy, but expert was annoying. Enemies on expert are not only at a substantially higher level than you, but they also get an additional action point per turn. This means that most enemies can move and attack twice in a turn, which just felt bad to me. It was still doable once I got rolling, but I found I preferred just having the game be a bit easy rather than constantly feeling like the computer had a weird advantage. I really enjoyed the character writing. While I did find some of it to come across as a bit amateurish, the cast is quite likable, has good development, and are all quite distinct from one another. This is bolstered by each character having an affinity rating that is increased through optional social scenes. My biggest complaint about Eden's Last Sunrise is that, much like many visual novels, it expects you to play multiple routes to unlock the good end. I liked the gameplay and story well enough for a single route that took 25-30 hours, but not enough to playthrough a couple more times given how many excellent games are sitting in my backlog. The ending I got did a good enough job of wrapping up character arcs, but the conclusion to the existential threat was unsatisfying. I still enjoyed my time with the game, but it did drop my final opinion of the game a bit. So, my recommendation for the game comes down to this: If you like doing multiple routes in a game and New Game+ type options, and are interested in the genre, then definitely give Eden's Last Sunrise a go. If not, I think it's still worth playing, but it does depend on whether you are willing to move on with a bad end or are happy looking up the good ending.

A great game, despite a decent bit of roughness! The story and characters are the highlight here, and the tactics gameplay is good once it gets going. There's way more content than I expected, from the sheer amount of writing to the pretty long list of classes that can be unlocked. It took about 20 hours to finish one story path. I'd guess that all endings would take 60-80 hours. It definitely has an abrasive start, though. The class+subclass system doesn't quite work like you'd expect based on similar games, the UI for managing classes/abilities/equipment is janky, there's dozens of minor status effects to learn (and I didn't even find the status effect info screen until 95% of the way through the game, oops), and dispatching troops each week can be a chore. Everything started to click after playing around with the systems a bit. The game's not super punishing if you do dumb stuff early. If those things don't scare you and you want an interesting take on the genre, this is a lot of game for pretty cheap!

Nice tactical RPG with good writing. I want to give Moke a hug.

Despite it being furry game and unskipable animations I quite like it, its no Final Fantast Tactics, but it looks nice and story is interesting.

Other than games like Xcom, Baldur’s Gate, and some others, I haven’t gotten too far into the Tactics genre as a whole. Eden’s Last Sunrise is probably the most “traditional” variation of the format I’ve seen, and it's an excellent one, especially for one made by such a small team. [h3] Gameplay [/h3] Eden’s Last Sunrise has some pretty basic RPG systems at play with all you could expect from the genre (i.e. crafting, levelling, and some management systems à la Xcom, etc). You’ll be spending most of your time in combat encounters since it seems like they’re the best way to gain resources, XP, and items, with additional ‘Dispatch’ phases that let you level your units passively. The encounters themselves bring everything you’d expect from a game of this genre with basic combat and spellcasting, cover, HP and XP, but they do spice things up with a “tension” bar that only fills when dealing or taking damage, and elemental resistances between allies and enemies that forces you to strategize with your units. There's not too much challenge later on except for growing HP pools and resistances, but the wide variety of abilities you get throughout the game keeps things from going too stale. That being said, I’d say the more memorable thing about Eden’s gameplay was its unique class system. Basically, you get a couple characters to start, and the choice of a few classes, each of which is able to be set as a main, or subclass. Your main class allows you to use all the abilities that you assign to it, while your subclass only uses your combat abilities and gets less XP. There’s no limits to which classes can be put where, so you get plenty of opportunities to experiment and figure out what works best. For example, I paired a support class and a rogue-kinda class together to create a character that can easily attack and debuff enemies from cover while still being able to heal allies. It’s well-balanced with a lot of potential, and I had a lot of fun playing around with it. [h3] Story [/h3] On the story side of things, Eden’s Last Sunrise’s narrative is phenominally well done, and is told in a visual-novel style format. Starting with the basic premise of a world-ending threat and a growing conflict between magic and science, it branches into a really fascinating dilemma. Should we sacrifice everything, or should we take everything we can to save ourselves? There’s a well-written conflict in the backdrop of everything that occurs, and the lack of traditionally “evil” antagonists in the plot makes Eden’s Last Sunrised a really nuanced, interesting story. The characters are also surprisingly good. Though they aren't the strongest in terms of writing, they have enough charm and distinctive personality to make them worth socializing with and learning their stories. Some of them are particularly interesting, and I appreciate the effort that went into defying traditional tropes. The music is also really great! While tracks repeat often in certain situations, each one is such a great listen that it doesn’t really matter. [h3] Issues [/h3] I’d say the main problems I found in Eden’s were mainly founded from its very clunky UI and how little information it gives on its systems. For example: [list] [*]It’s hard to tell what buffs/debuffs your character has at a glance, and at times I even had to resort to a handy Steam Guide (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2896612623 use this!) to figure out what my spells actually did. [*]Inventory management is a bit of a nightmare. The UI is too basic and doesn’t provide much control in terms of dealing with large amounts of items. I imagine this would get pretty exacerbated by having multiple playthroughs-worth of items in your inventory at a time. [*]I also agree with the negative sentiment that having to sink multiple playthroughs in to get the ‘true ending’ is a big ask, especially with how repetitive some aspects of the game can get and the 20 hour-ish runtime. [/list] Thankfully, none of this overly detracts from the game too much or becomes unbearable, but it's worth knowing before going in. Overall, I’d say if you had any reason to want to play Eden’s Last Sunrise; Do it for the story. It's unique, extremely well-done, and for a dev-team that can fit on a business card, it is an incredible piece of work that I’m glad I had the pleasure of playing. I recommend it regardless if you're playing it through to the true end, or simply staying for a run or two.