Time and Eternity

Time and Eternity may not be as polished as other Japanese RPG titles but it does give the player a standard experience that for the majority of the time, I enjoyed. It definitely could have been better as it stays in the safe zone, rather than try to challenge the current genre.

The good looks of most JRPGs will be in some way anime-influenced, but Time and Eternity is flat-out anime that you play. With that comes the often cringe-worthy plotting of the latterday art form, too.[September 2013, p77]

Time and Eternity is a roleplaying game focused, mainly, towards the Japanese market. On one hand, its plot is entertaining, but not a very complex one; on the other hand, it offers a wide variety of secondary missions and different unlockable elements that will prolong the game's life. Although visually interesting, the plain and sometimes badly designed scenarios will overshadow the overall impression. And it will be released only in English.

Considering the fact that there are many more JRPG choices out there (of much greater quality) for the same price, it is virtually impossible to recommend anyone spend their gaming dollars on this twenty-some-odd hour game that will only annoy and disappoint them.

A so-so JRPG with neat ideas and a unique graphical conception but it also has lots of technical problems and annoying battles too.

I can't recommend Time and Eternity, but I’m not sorry I played it either. The whole experience was like looking back through a chipped lens at some of the good, and much of the bad that was anime and RPGs in the 80s.

ImageEpoch attempts to try something quite different with the Japanese RPG genre, and while a lot of the game suffers from missteps, poor gameplay decisions, and terrible writing, Time and Eternity’s anime-come-to-life visual style makes it an experience that feels unlike anything that’s been released in recent memory.

Time equals money, and Time and Eternity is not worth either.

Even if you're the most die-hard of RPG fans, there's no reason to bother with Time and Eternity.

Time and Eternity, despite the promises, it's bland and uninspired. The game lacks everything that an RPG needs.

Good-looking but with simple repetitive combat, there's not enough on offer here to back up the potential of its two-girls-one-game premise. [Sept 2013, p.89]

We had high hopes for Time and Eternity, but the game was ultimately a disappointing experience. The pros: the soundtrack's great, the gameplay's pretty elaborate, the story s interesting and the 2D-sprites are beautiful. The cons: the combat's rather stupid, the 3D-world is mediocre, the voice-acting's awful and the environments keep repeating themselves. It's a nice attempt at a JRPG, but there are a lot of better alternatives out there.

More money and more time would have helped this game to become something better. Still there are some good ideas that a certain audience will indeed enjoy.

Once again, Imageepoch had several fresh ideas but it didn't put those ideas into effect. Time and Eternity could have been an innovative and visually stunning jRPG, instead it's just an inconsistent, shallow and unpolished one.

Looking at just some still images from the game, you would have to be blind, not to call it beautiful. However once you see it in motion, you realize that producing manga or anime is not the same as making a game. The lively animations do not match with the static backgrounds. [September p.86]

This may look like a playable anime, but the mechanics are miles away from Ni no Kuni or Tales of Graces . Character, quest and leveldesign are uninspired, the battles are primitive and the plot… Well, it has half naked women…

Some very good writing bumps up the score for this one, but the lazy gameplay decisions make finishing the game a chore.

Time and Eternity is a game of great ambitions, but due to some rather poor design choices and budget restraints, it manages to achieve almost nothing it sets out to do. I’m sorry NISA (you know I love you), but it seems you picked a stinker this time around.

Maybe Imageepoch just wanted to experiment. I can’t fault them for that, and they certainly had guts in putting this game together. NIS America, too, for bringing it overseas. I’m only sorry that the concept and effort didn’t come together into a cohesive whole.

Rather than the suave, impressive chat-up line it could so easily have been, Time and Eternity instead sashays up to feminism and blurts ‘I like your boobs’ like Seth Rogen’s menacing delivery in Donnie Darko. It could be a misjudged line but it’s not attractive and it’s not funny. It’s just plain creepy.

Boring story with a prepubescent side goal of trying to get up skirts and wet t-shirt shots of the main lead, who actually deserves a better fate than this repetitive junk. I want to go back in time the 25+ hours I gave this game and swiftly take it back.

Sadly, while the game does have its fun moments here and there, the game breaks apart with monotonous and predicable combat, boring side quests and poor pacing. It’s one for the hardcore fans, but even then, I’m not sure how well they can admire this.

Compared to Imageepoch's decent track record of niche RPGs, Time and Eternity is a resounding disappointment. And that's compounded by the game’s promising 2D visual concept falling short. As there is nothing especially remarkable with the game's world exploration, battles, or anything else for that matter, the only audience that would appreciate Time and Eternity is the one that buys anything publisher NIS America releases. Even then, this one's a hard sale.

The game is a decent JRPG, good enough to be played if you are a big fan of the genre. Unfortunately it’s also ruined by a lot of technical problems such as a poor graphics and terrible animations. And the combat system is overly simplistic and boring. A pity because, since the game shows some very good ideas.

Time & Eternity is by far one of the worst RPGs I have ever played, and even when accounting for different tastes, I cannot recommend it to anyone. At best, a select few may enjoy the game's sense of humor, but I'm convinced that the gameplay is so broken that almost anyone will regret purchasing this game.

Jarring banality. [Oct 2013, p.77]

If you want to experience a beautiful anime-style role-playing game, you have many other choices, like the recent Ni no Kuni. It's best to leave Time and Eternity on the store shelves forevermore.

Time and Eternity is a wasted opportunity. The premise of a Japanese role-playing game that looks and feels like an interactive anime is a sound one. But this game is anything but sound. A vapid story, obnoxious characters, and heaps of unrealized potential awaits those that fall for Time and Eternity's glossy veneer.

Its story amounts to little more than misfired jokes about an obnoxious perv trying to look up as many skirts as possible.

Time and Eternity's veneer is gorgeous, but style doesn't trump substance—and the substance here leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Toki and Towa may love Zach the Alleged Protagonist, but I sure don't.

Graphical issues, lazy design, broken mechanics, dull combat, vulgar dialogue, and a loathsome main character are all bundled together in Time and Eternity, resulting in a particularly uncomfortable and unenjoyable JRPG. If you're looking for dynamic battles, gorgeous visuals, and a decent yarn, pick up Tales of Xillia or Ni No Kuni instead. Just trust us on this one.

Structurally it’s a mess, with most missions playing out as grind-fests through dull-as-dishwater locales, and with the kind of misogynistic portrayal of supposedly-strong female characters that gives the genre a bad name, this is the very worst that JRPGs have to offer, and we can only recommend that you divorce yourself from any thoughts of shelling out your hard-earned cash on it.

Time and Eternity feels as empty and pointless as its shallow male protagonist's classless advances. It's a chore to play and a failure to its genre influences. I never felt like I had control over my characters, and I didn't really care, thanks to the focus on creepy sex talk. To put it simply, Time and Eternity is an embarrassment.

Only try out Time and Eternity when someone offers you money in exchange for playing it, or if you want to see what happens when a development studio doesn’t do any kind of QA testing. For no other reason should you waste your time playing it.

There is very little in Time and Eternity to warrant paying full or even half price to try out.

This clumsy attempt at RPG matchmaking throws together a super-casual dating simulation with a sluggish battle system, framing the whole thing with a story that never stops wobbling between the serious and lecherous.

I implore you to avoid this game at all costs, and play just about anything else on the market with the joy in your heart that you aren’t playing Time and Eternity.

Time and Eternity is utterly embarrassing in so many ways that I do question how much it will hurt NISA's overall image.