Edge of Eternity Review

Introduction:

I'm back once again with a game review, though this time the game has reached its release build, having left its early access phase. Edge of Eternity is a JRPG from Dear Villagers and Midgar Studio, a small indie developer in France that has a passion for old-school JRPGs. I am not completely certain, but I do believe this is my first experience with a 3D JRPG, and my experience with 2D ones is limited. I am familiar with some of core concepts to the genre though, and so have not entered this blind. There was still some nuance I had to learn, but if that is part of the genre or this specific example, I cannot say.

Edge of Eternity follows Daryon and Selene, siblings who have had quite different paths since Selene left to become a priestess and Daryon went to war. They are together again as their world of Heryon is threatened by war with the technologically superior Archelites, the Corrosion twisting animals, people, and the land itself into monstrous things, and a new enemy with significant power and its own motives. Their primary goal is to find a cure for Corrosion as their mother is suffering from the affliction that will turn her own limbs against her, but both have their own interests as well. Selene is on a mission and while Daryon is dedicated to his family, he also wishes to escape the suffering he witnessed in the war. Other characters will fill out your party as you progress, providing useful abilities and sometimes just being additional targets to disperse enemy attacks.

The game was first available at the end of 2018 via Steam Early Access, and while I had access prior to the official release, scheduling with other projects resulted in my playing the majority of the game after the 1.0 release. On the bright side, that does mean that most of my experience is what others can expect without a Day One patch throwing much off. That being said, you may notice some odd graphical issues in the first few review playthrough recordings. It appears the pre-release build had F12 set to take engine screenshots, as I call them, where the game takes a screenshot at an increased resolution. This caused the screen to flicker as it transitioned to that resolution and back, but this was disabled for the release version. I did find disabling the Steam Overlay and using OBS Studio to capture screenshots reduced the stutter and even after the behavior was disabled, I continued to take screenshots this way.

As I just said, I do indeed have a review playthrough for the game. Unfortunately I have not seen a rating for the game, though I could believe it working out to be around teen. However, there were definitely periods when I was especially frustrated and so my commentary is likely not suitable for everyone, so please consider that before watching those videos. (There were times when the difficulty seemed to outpace progression, but it is quite easy to skip several things and return later.) The key was provided by Tinsley PR for Dear Villagers.

I believe that covers what needs to be covered for the Introduction, so time to get into the body of this review and see if Heryon is a world worth saving.