Its hard being put in a position like this. You sit down to play a new game and you have these high hopes. As you play though, those hopes begin to dwindle and you’re stuck with trying to find some, any way of redeeming your purchase. When with without bias we can see and appreciate the value we get from reviews and hopefully developers will also pay attention. Though it may defeat the purpose that this review comes so late after release, maybe there is a chance that this can do some good. This a review of Time and Eternity for the PS3.
Story
Toki, the princess of Kamza is preparing to marry her fiance Zack. Let’s stop right there! I enjoy a good wedding JRPG as much as the next man and this is a large part of the problem. We don’t enjoy wedding JRPGs! Surely there must be a plot twist coming, yep here it is. So while getting advice from friends of the bride and indulging in low-brow humor, you get attacked by bandits, Zack tries to be a hero but fails miserably. Toki comes to rescue, not quite looking herself and long story short her body is occupied by two souls. Toki and Towa use their ability to travel back in time before Zack was attacked but for some reason Zack is now occupying the body of Toki/Towa’s pet dragon but he can’t speak so she/they have no idea. The mission now is to find out the reason why anyone would want to interfere with their wedding. Sold yet?
Gameplay
The story could be forgiven if the game was fun but Time and Eternity could have benefitted from time for fine tuning gameplay. Once you’ve made your way beyond the juvenile dialog sequences you get to try your hand at combat. While different then what we’ve become accustomed to, it doesn’t translate to fun or particularly engaging. You can attack from a distance, rush your enemy (or get rushed) and attack up close and you can also dodge. The system is hampered by the fact that started animations prevent you from dodging on time and that most battles are easily one by repeatedly tapping the attack button. Your dragon (or Zack) fights by your side and he’ll heal you in most cases if you’re not paying attention.
Battles occur randomly as you traverse very similar terrains in search of the next marker that’ll progress the story you’ve already lost interest in. What I also found strange is that I’d go out of my way and endure extra battles in order to reach a chest and find equipment but the item would be less useful than what I started with…why? Also the enemies are for the most part just swapped color pallets with different abilities and you always fight them one at a time.
Visuals
At first I really liked the art direction. The 2D animation in a 3D world is done in such a way that you feel like you’re in a cartoon. It gets old quickly because you realize the target audience is boys or men for that matter with an affinity for scantily clad cartoon characters. This happens right around the point you’re awarded your first piece of as*…er art. Normally I think this wouldn’t have been an issue, if the game had more positives then this would’ve probably been overlooked or more easy to swallow.
As mentioned before, the animation or lack thereof takes away from the fluidity in combat and is most likely the reason so many assets are re-used. It boils down to, if you like what you see, you’ll probably get tired of seeing it or if you don’t like what you see, too bad, there’s a whole lot more of it.
Conclusion
I’m not enjoying this, it doesn’t make me feel good to say bad things about something many people put their time into making for others to enjoy. I have the feeling that if I was in junior high then I would give this title a raving review. I am not so I cannot. There really isn’t much more I can say other than buyer beware. If this is what you’re into then apparently you’re the target audience.
Positives
+ Excellent visuals
Negatives
– Juvenile/crude humor
– Stale combat
– Boring story
