Eternights

Even with its flaws, I immensely enjoyed the time I spent playing Eternights, especially once I reached the game’s true ending. Hint: When you reach the end credits and if you’ve remained faithful to your chosen bonded partner, keep your phone’s camera on for an additional pleasant surprise! I had more fun with Eternights than several other games I’ve played this year. It’s a true delight if you fit the target audience for it, especially for those action RPG enthusiasts who don’t mind romance and dating sim elements. In some ways, it is more substantial than some of the games it will invariably draw comparisons to, and it shows that Studio Sai is an indie developer to watch out for in the future! Follow your heart and stay the course with this one, as Eternights shows that even a rocky path to true love can ultimately be worth it.

Mixing Persona with real-time combat, Eternights delivers a robust package with charming characters, intimate romance, quirky writing, vibrant visuals, and an engaging gameplay loop. Despite it's flaws, Eternights makes a valiant effort in being one of the many games you will enjoy this year, and is a must play for RPG fans.

Eternights is a true labor of love from a small team of developers that set out to create something for themselves. It just so happens that it’s also one of my favorite games of 2023. If you can look past the juvenile character moments and flimsy early plot devices, you’re in for an awesome experience that delivers quality action combat, hilarious character skits, and a very strong final Act. It’s an experience I won’t soon forget and one that doesn’t demand too much from players to play till the credits. The wait for this release was genuinely worth it, and I’m happy to see this ambitious project come together so brilliantly.

The first work of a small independent studio, Eternights is exactly what we expected: a title that is anything but ambitious and limited in more or less every aspect, which overall is still entertaining, witty and intriguing. A product whose value is, in short, greater than the simple sum of its parts. Bearing in mind that the entrance ticket (equal to €30) is more than affordable, we recommend it to RPG lovers and especially to connoisseurs of the waifu factor.

Eternights' great success is that it manages to be more than the sum of its parts. The witty writing papers over the shakier aspects of the storytelling, the slight combat is used sparingly enough that its flaws rarely frustrate, and above all, it's got an undeniable charm despite its rough edges. We're swiping right on this one.