Review: Time and Eternity

To say that Time and Eternity is a bit strange is an understatement. How it ever made its way out of Japan and into the West, I’ll never fully understand.  Someone out there thought we wanted it though, so we got it.

It begins with the main character meeting his fiancé’s three best friends on the day of their wedding — not the kind of thing I would leave until the last moment – before heading off to the happy event. The day is unfortunately far from perfect, especially for the wife to be (who just happens to be a princess). This nugget of information is revealed in a passing comment, oddly enough. The perfect day is ruined when you –the main character — are murdered by a gang of thugs. Your wife in waiting then changes hair colour and personality right before your (dead) eyes, spouting crazy talk about changing the wedding by time traveling. Basically, she sounds a little more like Sarah Connor locked in an insane asylum, and less than a blushing bride.

Upon travelling back in time six months with “the missus” you approach a psychic gypsy. It’s revealed that this gypsy warned the Princess of your impending doom, but is unaware of who organized the attack. Oh and just for fun you’re now stuck in the body of your girlfriends pet dragon and are unable to communicate with anyone. Shorty after you discover that your beautiful blushing bride has two souls and two completely different personalities. Both live in the same body and you’ve never even met one of them. She likes to throw a knife around at every opportunity to scare anyone listening to her psycho-babble.

I bet that all sounds a little confusing right? It is a little at first but to the game’s credit it clears everything up quite quickly. Even though the premise is very convoluted, you won’t be too confused because everything is explained, at least in part. Aside from the complex — very Japanese — story the most interesting thing about Time and Eternity is its attempt to make the game feel more like an anime than a game. This is done with varying degrease of success. Some sections — chatting to friends and trying to figure out what the next mission is –actually felt a bit like a Japanese cartoon complete with overacting, hyper emotional characters flailing about the room. Other sections like the open world areas are a bit more of a struggle. Controlling hand drawn style characters in a rendered environment feels a bit off. It’s like you are controlling the camera rather than the protagonist and the characters are sitting on another plane of existence. It’s like an animation cell is sitting above the background.

The game is a little slow to start. Your first terrifying mission is simply meeting your wife’s friends in a point and click environment. It slowly ramps up to investigating the future catastrophic wedding. The slow pace at the start does work in the games favor as the complicated story needs some explanation and time to digest. Once you leave the house (your main hub) for a little exploration — and revenge – you’ll find that the world map is just that, a map. Click the landmark you want to get to and you’re there. Boring but it works.

Battles are a little more interesting. Once triggered in the open world you’re able to either attack from afar with your rifle or get in close and use your knife. At first, without any skills (which are learned later from leveling) you’ll find yourself mashing the Circle button. Doing so from a safe distance will see your enemy is shoot full of lead. If you get into trouble you’ll be healed by the dragon. Despite being the main character you don’t actually control him in battle. After you level up and gain some skills the fighting becomes more interesting. You’ll need to dodge attacks while finding the right time to begin casting spells on your enemies. Casting can be tricky. If you get hit by an attack during the few seconds it takes to cast a spell you will lose the chance to attack and the SP it cost to cast it. Timing becomes very important in battle for spells and dodging attacks. The strength of your enemies increases quite quickly after an initial easy run and the fighting soon becomes fairly challenging.

One of the most important things to note before running into battle is which soul inhabits the body of the female character as they play very differently. Toki, the calmer redhead is better with ranged weapons and magic and Towa, the fiery blonde is dangerous with a knife in close quarters. Later in the game you will encounter items that allow you to switch which soul is in use, but early on you are stuck with who you currently have until you level up. Each level up changes characters and allows you to form a stronger bond with each soul. This bond is shown in the aptly named “Affection Balance” screen. Having a soft spot for one girl over the other will unlock special benefits like a homemade meal or special conversations that help to deepen the bond between you and that soul by unlocking trophies.

Skills for battle are learnt either automatically at level up or by spending Gift Points. GP are obtainable by completing missions and defeating enemies. Once the level up is achieved you’ll then be able to equip the purchased skill. Each time you level up both souls will receive individual stat increases to boot.

The story may be crazy and the visual style seems to aim for an anime more than for a game, but it is interesting. The visual style is ambitious and the anime style suits well, but it falls short in a few areas like the battle. Even though it’s a bit tricky to master it’s repetitive and doesn’t work as well a simple turn based fight. These shortcomings are important to note but overall the game takes some chances and attempts things I have never seen before. Maybe this is common practice in Japan, but Time and Eternity takes risks and attempts something new rather than follow the same old JRPG format. We don’t see innovation all that often anymore so Time and Eternity deserves a pat on the back. Hopefully people will learn from this game about what worked and what didn’t. Hopefully someday soon we’ll be playing games that actually make us feel like we are controlling a cartoon.