The world of Heryon is in its last years of life. The Archelites an alien race has invaded the planet. After many years of war they released a new illness named the Corrosion, which killed countless people. Your mother contracted the sickness, but your sister claims that there is a cure. So after some time preparing for your quest, you join your sister to look for the Corrosion’s remedy. Journeying in a crisis filled world full of dangers where not everything is as it seems. What follows is a review for Edge of Eternity.
Exploring the world of Heryon
Edge of Eternity is an open-world, turn-based JRPG with tactical elements. The story is interesting with related quests and tons of secondary missions to accomplish. Between story missions, you will have the opportunity to explore the world of Heryon rather than to just adhere to a story. You will receive new quests, events (time-limited temporary quests) and items. You will also need to solve numerous puzzles and confront many enemies.
There are different kinds of quests and events like eliminating determined enemies or gathering specific items. At intermittent points of the map, puzzles will spawn. They may not immediately be resolvable and can be bypassed until the player feels their characters are ready for the challenge. You have a limited time to solve these, but can retry to solve them as needed. Overcoming these grants a slew of great rewards.
During exploration key locations will appear marked on the map; as will quest and event points, and sites for saving/teleporting or resting. A gauge measures the amount of Team Energy currently possessed by the player’s characters. Team Energy determines the yield of the team in battle. If it’s high they will deal more damage. It naturally decreases over time and if enemies defeat your teammates. Though it can be refilled on bonfires or in the town inns.
The world of Edge of Eternity has a day-night cycle. Depending on the time of the succession; different NPCs, quests, and enemies will appear. Some missions and monsters are only available at determined times.
At a certain point of the story you will unlock the option to use a Nekaroo; a quick and big cat with two tails that allow you to explore faster. Aside from that, he will indicate the location of hidden valuables or enemies, on the field. With his growls indicating the source of his discovery, it can feel almost like a mini-game.
Turn-Based Battles
Edge of Eternity’s battle system is turn-based. Battles occur in the location of the map that is being explored when enemies are encountered. With the camera focusing on the fight. In combat characters have four basic commands; to move, to attack, to flee from battle, or skip a turn, which puts the character in a defensive stance until their next turn. Four items can be equipped as battle shortcuts. Depending on your equipment you can use several skills: from magic spells to attacks with their own specific properties. You can scan enemies and update the available information held about them, through discovery by action. For example, if you attack an enemy with a particular weakness for the first time, it will register in the bestiary.
You can use four characters in combat, from a total cast of 6 playable characters. For established fights, you will count on temporary allies too. After the completion of battles, you will recover your health. There are a couple of factors that influence your fights. You can use the element of surprise to attack enemies, granting your side the initiative in the battle, but beware if this attempt fails and they hit you first, they will cease the initiative. Elemental power is a modifier to attacks in combat. Depending on the area the encounter is being fought in, that power will vary. For example in an ice cavern, ice-based attacks will be stronger, while fire-based ones will be weaker. These factors add a level of strategy to battles.
The battle stage takes place on a hexagonal grid, where you can move to adjacent locations. Also, strategic positioning is significant. If you hit the enemy from behind, it will receive more damage. Certain magic spells have a determined area of effect, so if the enemy moves out of this zone before the attack is summoned, it will not lose health. This applies to your team too.
Crafting your equipment
In Edge of Eternity, you can buy items and equipment or just the recipes required to craft them. Also, you will obtain some quest items from exploration or defeating monsters. Buying the recipes and creating the equipment is cheaper, but requires seeking and locating where these items are sold. So the cheapest places to buy them become known.
There are four weapon sets for characters, each comprising of four different weapons. The difference between them is that each set focuses on fixed stats, and weapons have diverse special effects. For example, there is one type of weapon family that can collect souls by hitting enemies. If you gather enough souls, your next attack will deal more damage. You also level up weapons by using them, resulting in an increase in stats and their capacity to use crystals.
Another salient part of Edge of Eternity’s equipment is the crystals’ system. Each weapon can install crystals, and the number of available slots will increase when you level them up. There are several colours of crystal, and each one levels up certain stats. Only crystals of the same colour can be installed on a weapon’s slots. Aside from this, some crystals confer certain skills for use in combat ranging from; fire spells to ice elemental melee attacks, among others.
There is even a unique crystal that can transfer the ability of a character and a different one to others. Each character has their own designated skill set. Crystals are collected from puzzles, exploration, enemies, and crafting. They can also be fused together to obtain better ones.
As such weapons and crystals add a tactical component to your teammates. For example, you can configure a character as a healer, equipping him with crystals of a healing nature. Alternatively choosing to configure the same character as an elemental mage if preferred. The configuration of a character’s crystals can be changed on the fly by simply re-equipping them with the appropriate crystals.
Overall experience
Edge of Eternity is a grand turn-based JRPG. The graphics, the environment, the monsters, and the world of Heryon are in general beautiful, despite its tragic situation. The soundtrack is epic and is a great accompaniment while exploring its lands.
I experienced a couple of minor problems. First I experimented with punctual frame rate drops. They are not game-breaking but cause some weird effects. Also when you buy several recipes and open other menus, like in a shop, these menus can overlap stopping text from being seen on the menu below. These are minor problems which will have a minimal impact on your experience.
Since I initially played Edge of Eternity over a year ago, its evolution to this final version has been incredible. I came to appreciate the changes that have been made and loved my time with it. The big world and the opportunity to explore it, together with the crafting and the crystals systems, the character’s background, and the story, make this title a very recommendable game to play. If you like turn-based games, I am sure you will enjoy Edge of Eternity.
