Eternights

Great game, especially since it was made by a small team. There was some clunky mechanics in the gameplay so not exactly a BANGER, but a smaller version of a banger. a banglet if you will.

10/10 ngl bro i cried. yeah the game is janky but it has its charm

I've found this game on accident and played the demo first (which is already awesome to include for ANY game), added to wishlist and bought later on a sale. From what I've heard it's an indie game inspired by the Persona series (no entry specified) and a few other (DMC I think?). Let's start with the best aspects of Eternights: [h2] Graphics and artstyle[/h2] If I'm not mistaken, this game was made in Unity. It looks really good, the artstyle of 3D enviroments and objects is always consistant and for it's budget is also high quality. The lightning at night and afternoon is very moody. The character models are simple and decent but also very well used for their limitations (goofy stop motion-esque mouth animations), they fit the world too. Though the best 3D designs definetely belong to the monster enemies. They are SO DETAILED, especially the bosses. Seriously, you don't even get to see them upclose unless you walk to them yourself. Even with such more complex designs they fit the world and other characters with no issue and their animations are SUPERB. The UI is simplistic and may seem bland, but it's servicable [h2] Gameplay[/h2] This might be the best aspect of this game. It starts with a simple gimmick of perfect dodging and adds more things to it without getting really complex yet still entertaining if you're an expireienced player (not really the DMC level sweat). The system with elemental attacks is pretty well balanced though their attack-tied quick time events are painfully slow, no matter the difficulty. You have some gimmick skills you might know from other games like Stinger ("This party is getting crazy!"), rotating swords shield ("Where is your motivation?") and others that use your SP gauge. Frankly I found myself using them the most as the SP bar can be easily replenished with enough combos or perfect dodges. The weakest part of gameplay are probably the bond skills: aside from Yuna's healing, I rarely found any use of the others except when my heals were on cooldown. If I were to compare the gameplay of this game to any other, it would probably be Persona 5 Strikers, which is funny to think considering it came out after Eternights started development but before it released. Perhaps there was some inspiration. [h2] Technicalities[/h2] This game is very well optimized and debugged, never have I encountered a single freeze, lag, or soft locking. The only issue I've found is a hole in the map in the final dungeon before the final boss. Unfortunetely this is the game isn't so perfect in most of the non-gameplay aspects: [h2] Voice acting[/h2] The game offers 3 audio language options: Korean, English and Japanese. I started with english and after a while some characters (basically anyone besides Chani or Yohan) got kinda annoying with their voices. Like the delivery and intonation not matching the scene, cliche squeaking of some moe female characters, kinda cringy lines during attack cut-ins. So I dedcided to switch to Korean, since it's the creators' native language and I usually always play in the original dub. Well uh... it wasn't any better, to say the least. I sort of got used to it later on but the only character I remember being played the best, was Chani (goat btw). [h2] Story[/h2] The story is quite simple and maybe that's for the best, since the game doesn't really delve to deep into some concepts. Another positive of this simplicity is that it can serve as an excuse for the game to happen (which isn't always a bad thing), and it's not always taken seriously by itself. We never really get answers for how this affected every other civilian besides the main cast's character bubble and the villain never felt like one, or even the other deity helping you. luckily it's mostly easy to forget about considering how small scaled the whole plot feels. In the end though the whole story kinda falls flat considering the message the game is trying to say. [h2] Characters and social sim[/h2] For a game that markets itself as a partial dating sim, it kinda says something went wrong when NONE of the romance options seem appealing. I swear, when I stopped and thought about who to romance I came to the realization that I don't really care or like any of the candidates enough. This might be a deeper issue as it feels like this game has NO idea how to write women (this game was made by Koreans, which might tell you something). Like, one of the girls, has a very specific hobby she does to relieve stress. You wanna guess what it is? IRONING CLOTHES. Like jesus christ. She already (like the rest of romancable girls) falls into an archetype of female anime characters which is milked a lot (luckily not too deep to be THAT eyerolling). Nothing really makes any of them that interesting if you're not obsessed with these sort of ancient anime tropes. For example: [list] [*]Yuna - the idol singer with childish interests in plushies, her singing is her strength and helps a sick child. [*]Min (I think that's her name?) - the young clumsy athletic girl who crushes on her senpai (player) that helps her [*]Sia - the twintailed tsundere(?) obsessed with tech and only tech, hey romance isn't tech-y but I like you dummy. [*]Aria - big tits important lady (goat tbh, Chani you tried), also why does she [spoiler] share a VA with the main villain and it never leads anywhere? [/spoiler] [/list] At the end of the day I chose the only guy to romance (take that Persona games!) for laughs and even if I don't swing that way, he actually had a very interesting story and arc. Hooray, [spoiler] doomed [/spoiler] Yaoi!!! If I had to chose my favourite character it would be Chani, the protagonist can have the coolest interactions with him. The jokes with him (depends on you humor) are actually funny and he makes it actually feel like (the most bland and generic self-insert) protag and Chani are actual friends with some history (I'd say it has better interactions than other bro characters in Persona). Perhaps his struggle of feeling useless isn't too original, but it made me actually care about because of that bond. What a chad, carried this game's cast. Shame you can't romance him but even he rejects your advances at one point. As for the social sim aspects, I'd say they are servicable. They never feel grindy, passive leveling of social stats during conversations is definetely a positive (take that Persona!). Some bond levels feel short and pointless (mainly Yuna) and the scavenging runs could be more varied and interesting but it is alright. Just like in Persona 4-5, you can complete the deadline objectives in one day if you're dedicated enough, but as in the inspirations of this game, you can take your time. [h2] Music/sound[/h2] If you were to ask me about the music in Eternights I'd be like: What music? A lot of the tracks either don't fit the scene at all, do not exist for scenes where it'd fit. I literally cannot remember a single song from the game. And the sound design in many places is also missing, like why doesn't the ingame pause menu have any sound? [h2] Inconsistancies[/h2] I praised the graphics in the beginning but they were only 3D. The 2D art in this game is inconsistant as hell. We have the simplistic character models, anime cutscenes (rare but still) in one artstyle, flashback cards in another (pretty good simple) artstyle, and then the menu and special character portraits which look completely different! If you compare the sprites in the pause menu to the ingame models, it appears as if the former show similar but older-looking character, huh??? The credits explained everything to me as all these graphics were made by completeley different entities. [h3] To summarise [/h3] Would I recommend this game? Despite it all yes, IF you don't mind the cliches and want to expierience a passion project, of what was initialy one person. So all I wish the developer to learn from the mistakes in their future games

yo ♥♥♥♥ this game and it's ending, genuinely life ruining despair and agony. and then once the credits finish they have the audacity to tell you there's a new game plus. new game plus? go ♥♥♥♥ yourself. would recommend if you want your heart shattered, 8.5/10

dating sim/mechanics are just so cool together and i never would of thought you could even make a game like this but here it is and its amazing.

I have a hard time writing negative reviews just generally, but I felt obligated to for this one. It's short and has a few charms, but is absolutely NOT worth 30 dollars. My play time is deceiving, I played through this game twice and I tab out a lot. I didn't have enough feel for it the 1st time since it felt like I was only just starting out and not giving it a chance. It's meh as a 15 dollar game, and absolutely absurd as a 30 dollar game. If you want to give it a go, it's not horrible... just get it at a steep discount. It's pretty forgettable.

A beautiful story...... Go play it for your self