Time and Eternity Review

By Kevin Mitchell  |  Posted: August 18, 2013

Unlike most role-playing game narratives, Time and Eternity's main protagonist isn't a valiant knight trying to save his beloved or attempting to save the world from impending doom. In fact, it's quite the opposite as the princess bride-to-be tries to save her nameless fiancé after the wedding ceremony is infiltrated by assassins that ultimately lead to his death.

Before blacking out, he catches a glimpse of what he thinks was his sweet princess Toki, but in fact was the other spirit inside of her: Towa. She just happens to have more in common with a Super Saiyan than an innocent princess – after all, Time and Eternity feels like a throwback to classic RPGs and anime.

Following Toki and Towa, the narrative sees them travel back in time to figure out the origin of the assassins and prevent the attack from happening. In the process, her future husband's soul has been placed into her pet blue dragon. We are privy to his constant perverted thoughts, yet both Toki and Towa are unaware. I think it's for the best, considering he is constantly going on about seeing not only both of them without clothes (and this is someone he hasn't even kissed yet) but also desires to take a bath with all her friends as well.

Did I mention the game has dating simulation elements as well?

Along the way, you'll be making decisions that affect your relationship with both personalities. It's an engaging and enjoyable element until a single choice near the end trumps every prior choice made in the game. In combat, you won't ever have control of the dragon, but you will control both Toki and Towa, just not at the same time. Encounters play out in one-on-one battles, although most of the time you will be facing consecutive adversaries one after another. Leveling up will change the outside personality each time, taking away any control over who you want to use at any given moment.

Both Toki and Towa have their own skill trees. The characters are better using specific combat styles: Toki with ranged combat and Towa with close-range fighting. Fights require both positions to be used to successfully dodge or block enemy attacks. Patterns will be instantly recognizable, and you'll be facing the same handful of enemies throughout the entire game with simple palette swaps. Spells become important after the first few hours of the game but leave you vulnerable during the casting process.

As I touched upon earlier, Time & Eternity feels and looks like a classic '80s anime. The hand-drawn animations lack polish, and dialog sequences feature little to no animation. Although the music score is enjoyable, the 2D characters move about in the 3D environments awkwardly. It's a commendable attempt at combining the two, but it feels and looks very rough. Along with seeing the same enemies throughout, the environments are also recycled, making travel feel tedious as you explore the same exact areas repeatedly.

Simply Put

While the story showed promise at the beginning, it quickly became unappealing, and the male protagonist further ruins the experience after the 10th time thinking more about "scoring" than trying to help Toki/Towa prevent his future assassination. Both the concept and the combat system showed promise, but the reuse of everything from enemies to animations quickly sours the experience, which drags on past the 20-hour mark. Even her friends are nothing more than one-dimensional stereotypical anime characters that further hamper the experience.