S&S Review: Time and Eternity

Title: Time and Eternity
Format:  PS3
Release Date:  July 16, 2013
Publisher: NIS America
Developer: Image Epoch
Price: $59.99
ESRB Rating: T

NIS America has given us the first of three new PS3 exclusives this week with Time and Eternity.  I was pretty excited for a hand-drawn RPG from NIS, but after spending a heavy amount of time with the game, this isn't a great first start of the trio.

Story and Presentation:

There are a couple of themes featured in the game's narrative that really conflict with one another.  when first going into the game, I thought it was going to be a heavy romance tale, but the game is full of juvenile jokes that really contradicts the overall story arc.  You follow the tale of a young girl Toki, who on her wedding day, loses her love to a group of assassins.  She then travels back in time, where you find out that her body houses two souls, so you'll be controlling Toki and Towa as try and foil the plot that killed her once soon to be husband.  It's a pretty ridiculous story, but if you're familiar with NIS, then this won't be anything new.  The story never evolves into anything memorable, but thanks to the great visuals, I managed to stick around.  The game reminisces to an early 80s anime, and it really is an eye-popping venture.  This is all hand-drawn, and though that gives off a great vibrant look, it can clash with the 3D environments.  The scenery itself is gorgeous to look at, filled with bright coloring.  But when you add in a 2D hand-drawn character, the character movements end up coming out a bit clumsy, and can quickly take you out of the experience.  The music is the stand out in the game, with possibly one of the finest title themes I found in a game this year, Time and Eternity is filled with a great orchestral score.  

Core Gameplay and Multiplayer:
The twin soul mechanic works a lot better during the game's combat, where you switch between Toki and Towa with every new level you gain.  Each character has a different set of skills, although there aren't to drastic from one another, it's still nice to switch things up a bit.  The game's mechanics are ripped from a lot of other JRPG's out there.  There are random encounters, but in place of turn based action, all of the combat mechanics are in real time.  It's pretty simple, you can stay at long range and do damage with your rifle, or you can get in close to pull off the more damaging combos.  As you gain levels, you can acquire new special abilities that can really come in handy.  You can also dodge in real time, which can make things a bit easy when you first start out, as you can clearly see enemies preparing for an attack.  The combat looks pretty simple at first glance, but as you acquire more active and passive abilities, it actually proves to be a pretty robust system.  All of the gameplay mechanics are solid, but since the game becomes so repetitive, I found myself getting extremely bored.  If the music wasn't so good, I probably wouldn't have made it so far in the game.  Not only does combat situations repeat, but the environments repeat as well.  You can only palette swap so much to have people figure out that you've explored the same island for the past few missions now.  By the end of the 20 hour campaign, you can go back through the single-player again with the New Game+ mode, but I couldn't really bare to play it again.

Final Thoughts:
Time and Eternity is a pretty game, but it lacks depth that a RPG needs to keep people's interest.  I'm not sure if the story is strong enough for you to finish the 20-25, it just gets to repetitive way to fast for my taste.

S&S Rating: 6/10

@whatsPlay