Intro: Why are we doing this?
Time & Eternity was supposed to be an ambitious project for Imageepoch. The idea was to combine 3D environments with hand-drawn 2D sprites to create a cohesively-flowing RPG reminiscent of an anime. Now, innovation is excellent. Its something that every game designer should aspire to doing. This allows us to experience many different things in video games, whether its ATB, Trinity Sight Systems, monster rearing, etc. However, there are certainly some cases where the game design and certain ideas may seem okay on paper, but their execution is simply heavily-flawed.
Enter Time & Eternity. One of the most flawed games I have had the misfortune of playing. The promise that Imageepoch had put forth of creating a game that felt like a player-controlled anime with hand-drawn characters roaming a 3D world never became fully-realized, and in essence, the idea is incredibly limiting for players in execution. There are a lot of good ideas in the game, but all of the potential it has is subsequently squandered due to its shortcomings, insipid narrative, unlikeable cast, and unbalanced performance.
Imageepochs initial idea is interesting, and in the hands of a better developer, it probably would have been neat. Even with that said, the hand-drawn animation aspect of it looks interesting for a few seconds until you realize how poorly-flowing the animations are, how jarring they look in the context of gameplay, and how limited the animations are. These small numbers of animations are repeated constantly, and they have short loops. The running animations also have short loops, and theyre simply awkward to look at in motion because they look incredibly unpolished. The defining idea for this game is pretty half-baked in execution. Satelight (Macross Frontier) did the animation for this game, with designs by VOfan (Bakemonogatari) being completely squandered in favour of looking like something incredibly low-budget. It looks awkward overall, and even though its one of the games selling-points, it certainly doesnt achieve what it has set out to do. Those wishing to play something reminiscent of an anime in terms of aesthetics should really think of playing the plethora of other games that essentially do the same thing.
Repetitive Narrative and Annoying Characters
In terms of a narrative, Time & Eternity follows Zack, a young man who has not even had his first kiss yet. At the beginning of the game, he is to be wed to Toki, the Princess of Kamza. As you can suspect, things go wrong, Zack dies, and Toki attempts to travel back in time to discover why these things are happening. Zack somehow follows her through time and occupies the body of her pet dragon Drake. He also discovers that Toki has another personality dwelling inside of her in the form of Towa, whos far more aggressive and physically stronger than Toki. Thus, all three characters attempt to figure out who ordered the attack on their wedding, and try to live happily ever after in the end. The storys pretty by the numbers. The key word for this game, though, is repetition. The wedding repeating time and time again is one of the draws for this game. Every time Toki/Towa and Drake/Zack fix the issue with their wedding, whether its assassins, the undead, etc., another problem arises. While this is an interesting idea, its rather awfully-managed, especially when taken in conjunction with other aspects of the game that can also be considered as repetitive. The game uses tired tropes, clichés and jokes over and over, hoping that players and spectators would eventually find them funny. Whenever the game tries to be serious, some jokes are scattered throughout the scene, but those jokes are simply awkward and ill-timed. Truly, there is something awkward about the story planning and scenario planning (and I was astounded to see that the story planner was Shoji Masuda (Emerald Dragon, Over My Dead Body PSP)). Nothing about the narrative seems cohesive at all, outside ofoddly enoughthe repetition.
In terms of characterization, I think I have to say that this is one of the most unlikeable casts I have come across in any RPG, ever. Some of these characters are character tropes dialled up to 100, with the voice acting following suit. Ive heard many of these voice actors before, and these are certainly not their best performances by any means. Regardless, every single character is vapid. They consist of one-note personalities with very little depth. Whenever the narrative tries to recognize some sort of depth for the character, a joke or a trope is recycled in order to maintain the one-dimensional personality that the character has. For instance, the main character Zack/Drake is a complete sex-raving lunatic. The only thing that seems to come out of his mouth is sexual innuendo, or a desire to make it with either Toki, Towa, or one of their friends. I certainly dont mind my share of innuendo, but when its just constantly being brought up in conversation, theres only so much I can take. It gets really annoying and obnoxious, to the point where I just want to strangle the character to make him shut up.
Most of the men in this game, to be honest, are pretty much like Zack to a degree. Ricardo endlessly flirts with Toki/Towa, and hes basically a creepy stalker. One of the characters who you meet later on puts you through a trial where the best answers to the questions are the most perverse ones. The list can go on and on, really.
Additionally, Toki is supposed to be demure, quiet, impressionable, and submissive. She isnt very worldly and simply wants to be an obedient housewife for Zack, and thus she seems like the perfect yin to Zacks yang, like every other clichéd anime. Towa, by contrast, is the complete opposite, preferring to take the initiative. Shes more dominant, and she tends to get shit done. Shes also a tsundere, which goes without saying. Out of the cast, shes perhaps the most likeable one, but the bar isnt exactly high for that.
Toki/Towas friends dont fare better either. Endas the loli girl whos very loud and obnoxious at times, Reijos the uptight rich girl with a sad little past, and Wedis the busty glasses-wearing girl who trips a lot. And all these people do for most of the game is sit at Toki/Towa and Zack/Drakes house and have a tea party while periodically sending you on fetch quests or talking about how Toki/Towa should have a shower and Zack/Drake gets the idea to sneak in and try to watch her (while failing until the end of the game where you do a sidequest to get the shower scene youve always wanted). They also involve themselves in the story a little bit, too, with each arc corresponding to one friend, but even if these arcs try to give these characters some depth, they end up being rather forgettable and youre still stuck thinking that these characters are simply one-dimensional.
Someone Please Hire a Better Cartographer
Okay. The storys a bit of a bust. But what about the gameplay? Well! The rest of the game
is
not that great. This game is developed by a studio who purport themselves as the Saviours of the JRPG. As such, I assume that their perspective is to go back to traditional RPG game design while trying to attempt new things and build on those traditional game designs. However, everything that the developers have tried to include in this game is incredibly half-baked.
The world map is point-and-click again. The towns, are also point and click. The areas in the town is point and click. So essentially, city traversal is done via a menu. Most of the time, youll go through areas looking for people who want to give you subquests. Additionally, you can go to shops, which are run by the most soulless-looking NPC ever, who says the same voice clip repeatedly.
But never fear! There are dungeons to explore! And fields! But these have their share of problems too. The issue with many of the field and dungeons is that its plainly bad dungeon design. Now, then, the field HUD is composed of the minimap, and a little gauge on top of the minimap indicating when youll have an enemy encounter. This is almost reminiscent of that mechanic in The Legend of Dragoon, except this gauge fills rather quickly, and youll find yourself using items that slow down this gauge rather often. This is because the dungeon/field design is too big for its own good. Pathways are very large. The dungeon designs tend to be rather linear with the exception of field environments. The problem is that while most of these areas are too big, they have absolutely nothing of interest for the player. Theyre large fields with literally nothing in them except little treasures sprinkled around here and there.
The map designers presumably tried to remedy this by introducing green crystals around the dungeons in order for players to quickly teleport themselves to the areas that they need to return to for a sidequest. However, this doesnt exactly solve the issue that there is absolutely nothing of note or value in the fields to begin with, and thus it doesnt warrant any of these dungeons to be as large as they are designed. I almost want to compare it with some of the dungeon designs in older RPGs, where certain maps are large and that provides the illusion that the dungeon is too big, or that enemy encounters are too frequent. Now, Imageepoch probably missed that point entirely, and designed a system where enemy encounters are naturally frequent with fields that are too big simply for the sake of being too big and looking like a spectacle. This, in turn, creates dungeon/fields that simply feel like a major slog, and too lengthy to boot. This is simply bad dungeon design and there is no other way to describe that. None of these dungeons do anything remotely interesting.
The minimap tells you everything you need to know about the dungeon, as does the games dungeon map. It marks where every crystal (save, warp, exit, teleport) is, where every treasure chest is, where every sidequest NPC/boss is, and the zones where you can go to for certain enemy encounters for sidequests. This means that there is little to no exploration involved on the players part.
Additionally, many of the landscapes are recycled. Many of the assets are, at least. Half of the time when I was streaming, people had to ask whether or not I was on a new map. This is because while most of the maps are different, they use the same backgrounds and assets, only with a filter applied. For the casual viewer or player who doesnt really pay attention, they could swear that they consistently go through the same areas repeatedly, despite the areas being new. So basically, it boils down to feeling like the game has 4 main dungeons, when the reality is that there are more dungeons than that, but theyre all palette swaps of each other. This makes the game feel even more repetitive than it should.
Character Duality Done Inadequately
Within the dungeons and field areas, you control either Toki or Towa depending on which level youre at. On odd levels, you can control Toki. On even levels, you can control Towa. There is an item that you can use to switch characters whenever you want in the event that you need one over the other for a boss fight or a Memory Site, but these items are in limited supply. They have different dialogue reflecting of their personalities in story scenes. There was another game that did something similar to this dual souls residing in one body thing, and that was Last Rebellion
which was also pretty bad. I liked how Last Rebellion handled this aspect better. Switching characters was something the player could do on the fly, and each character had their own advantages and disadvantages.
Similarly, both Toki and Towa have their share of differences. For instance, Toki is more adept at fire/earth spells, and she is more proficient at firing her rifle. Towa, by contrast, is more adept at lightning/ice spells, and shes more skilled with a knife. These two have different animations and animation times for certain things (ie: Toki will take longer to cast spells shes not adept at casting, and her knife combos arent as fluid as Towas are). In the end, though, these differences dont even matter. Both characters end up learning the same spellset (outside of the higher-level elemental spells which they have affinities for), and you learn the same Time Spells to alleviate the different animation times for the weapons for which the girls arent proficient with.
Like Punch-Out!! But Not Really
The battle system is something reminiscent of Punch-Out!!. Basically, twitch responses are required in order to dodge enemy attacks, guard against attack, parry attacks, and time your own attacks. There is little change to the battle system over the course of the game in order to make it more difficult or more complex, even when you finally acquire Time Spells. Almost every single enemy you encounter is a palette swap. Even in some dungeons, where an enemy may be introduced for the first time, or a new palette swap is introduced for the first time, you might get another palette swap of that enemy later on in the same dungeon. These palette swaps tend to have the same AI, or the same attack patterns, where its easy to predict their next move or their initial attack. They might have been maybe 10-15 enemies in total throughout the whole game, and the rest of them were probably palette swaps. Youre essentially fighting the same enemies ad nauseam, mashing the O button in order to get enough SP to cast a OHKO spell. Its very monotonous and it doesnt make for an interesting experience at all.
Now, the battle system could have been interesting, if only it had not gotten trivialized at level three, where you acquire spells. The game has a skill tree, which looks a lot like a job tree, because of how everything is named. Every sidequest, main quest, and every battle will give you a certain amount of GP (gift points) to unlock new jobs on the job tree. Jobs arent equippable; they simply give you new skills to use. To be honest, I dont really like this. Every new job basically unlocks one or two new skills for you to use, and youre not really switching jobs or anything. Youre just combining the assorted skills youve unlocked into a deck and using them willy-nilly. Additionally, in order to learn some skills youve unlocked by unlocking the job on the job tree, you need to be at a specified level. Most of the time, youre going to be at that specified level when you unlock the skill. But you have to wait until you level up next time in order to finally learn that skill. Its pretty silly that instead of unlocking the skill right when you unlock the job, you have to wait until you level up the next time to actually be able to use it as opposed to unlocking it right on the menu as you unlock the job. Its strange skill progression.
So, when you learn spells, it ends up trivializing the entire battle system. Spells are incredibly overpowered in this game, and typically, they can one-hit kill enemies. Later on, sometimes youll need two casts to get rid of enemies quickly, but this can be easily resolved by a split-second buff cast, and casting a higher-order spell. The game further trivializes the battle system by allowing the player to cast Time Spells. There are three major ones: one that speed up time for you, one that rewinds time, and one that freezes time. All of these spells can allow the player to get even more of an advantage that they dont need. You can easily cheese the final boss with these spells if you really wanted to. The spell that freezes time can grant the player the time they need to cast spells that require a longer charge time. The spell that speeds up time can grant the player the time they need to cast more spells in succession. Finally, the spell that rewinds time can be used to fire two spells in succession as well. Because of how the spells trivialize the twitch-based Punch-Out!!-esque battle system design of the game, it renders the game incredibly easy, even on Normal Mode. Additionally, there is a mechanic called Chemistry, where you can combine two spells in order to cast status effects on enemies. For instance, if you cast Stone, and then Flare, you can burn the enemy. Or if you cast Lightning and then Ice, you can cast Silence on the enemy. This renders the game even easier than it already is.
Even without spells, the games battles arent very difficult to get through. Most of the time, youll find yourself dodging every attack, and coming out of battles barely scathed. With that said, it was irritating not being able to cancel an attack into a guard because the animated portrait just didnt work that way.
There are a few boss battles that allow free movement, but even then, it feels like the character is moving as slow as molasses, and cast times tend to be incredibly slow. The hitboxes in these battles also seem to be inconsistent, where sometimes you think youre going to be hit, but you arent
and others where you dont think youll be hit, but you are.
Even the Sidequests Are Like Palette Swaps
In terms of sidequests, they are nothing more than mere fetch quests, and even they are repetitive. Most of the time, youll be doing fetch quests for the same NPCs throughout the game. And most of the time, theyll be asking for the same thing. Find 7 of these hamsters (three sidequests like this), find food for my baby/wife (multiple times), take this cake to people, talk to this person, take these writing utensils to this person in the dungeon, bring my son back home because hes a vampire now, etc. Theyre pretty one-note, and theyre all incredibly repetitive, because youll probably be doing the same sidequests per chapter. Sometimes youll feel the need to do them because they grant more GP than regular battles do. To be honest, because theyre repetitive, its probably not best to do them.
In terms of the Affection system, its incredibly shallow. If you order Drake to use buffs in-battle, youll increase Toki or Towas love stat. This affects the Affection meter for both girls. This doesnt really mean much in the first playthrough, but in the second playthrough, it will affect whether or not you can get the true ending. You can also increase the love stat by talking to Toki/Towa at home during the tea parties, or by going to Memory Sites in dungeons and selecting the proper options (which will usually net you a picture for your gallery). This is also linked to getting lunches from Toki/Towa which you can use in battle to restore HP. Overall, this mechanic is pretty half-baked, too, since there isnt much you have to do in order to make both girls affectionate towards Drake/Zack.
Soundtrack Snoozer
Finally, the music. Yuzo Koshiro is my favourite composer of all time, and he contributed to the soundtrack for this game. Some of his compositions are rather decent, such as
Garden Field Theme,
Toki Battle Theme,
Towa Battle Theme, and
Archipelago Field Theme. Some of the compositions are rather bombastic, and the battle themes are good at trying to make combat more bearable. But all the other tracks on the soundtrack are either
forgettable, or
downright terrible. Its honestly a complete surprise to me, considering Koshiro can do so much better than this. Theres not much else to say here other than to say that Im incredibly disappointed with the soundtrack overall. There arent a lot of tracks to begin with, and because everything in this game tends to be repeated, youre going to hear the same tracks over and over to the point of just getting sick and tired of them.
Stay Away
Palette Swap: The Tea Party Game is one of the most repetitive games Ive played in recent memory. Everything is repetitive, from the sidequests, to the enemy design, to the enemy AI/attack patterns, to the music, to the story arcs, to the dungeon design
everything. Essentially, it feels like you do the same thing ad nauseam until the game decides to end. I feel as though if this game were in the hands of a better development studio, it certainly wouldnt feel as repetitive or as though it were in the alpha stages of development. I legitimately felt nothing after completing this game, and I still feel absolutely nothing. Its a broken affair of a game, and I would implore that people spend their money on something worth playing.
Verdict: Stay the hell away. Dont even touch. Dont even look. Run.
Summary:
Pros:
+ Like, 3-4 tracks on the soundtrack were good.
+ Maybe you want to see how much of a trainwreck it is?
Cons:
-The battle system is half-baked; everything is too easy, especially when using elemental or time spells
-Every enemy, NPC, and even the main characters are palette swaps
-The characters are shallow and insipid
-The narratives basic premise is to repeat itself until the end, and it doesnt allow the player to sympathize with the characters at all
-Repetitive to a fault
-Bad dungeon/field design
-The rest of the soundtrack is poor
-The affection system is incredibly shallow
-Sidequests are nothing but fetch quests, and theyre essentially the same fetch quests throughout the entire game
-The Job/Skill tree isnt a decent way of doling out new skills as you must learn them on a level up despite being at or past the level specified to learn skill
-Toki/Towas differences in battle dont even matter in the long run
-Just stay away from this game.