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Time and Eternity review

On August 13, 2013 by Ash Meehan

SG Gaming Info takes a look at the latest game brought from Japan to the west by NIS America, the time travelling adventure, Time and Eternity.

Time and Eternity was developed by Japanese based developer Imageepoch and published in both North America and Europe by NIS America. The concept of Time and Eternity involved a princess and knight getting attacked on their wedding day, during the attack the princess reveals she has two souls. Following this reveal the princess travels back in time with her husband to be to stop the attack on their wedding. The game also uses a unique anime like graphic style.

While the concept of Time and Eternity seems interesting, especially with time travel, the game isn’t that interesting. The game is average at best with only one or two moments really standing out for me. There are numerous reasons why Time and Eternity is a poor game; these include a main character which acts like the comic relief character and a battle system which requires next to no skill. With that said the story isn’t that bad. When I first started playing I hated the story, but by the time I finished the game the story had grown on me. I guess I shouldn’t have judged a book by its cover.

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First of all we have the characters. The main character is the knight who you can rename, but I kept the name Zack, the other main character is the princess Toki and her other soul Towa. Another main character is Drake, the princess’s pet dragon; he becomes a main character because Zack’s soul is put inside Drake after travelling back in time. There are other characters, but I’ll focus on these for now. Zack as a character is terrible. He appears to be a nice person but everything he says seems to lead to an innuendo. This make him feel like a comic relief character, saying something humours and disappearing for a while, but in the case of Zack has his few humours lines and keeps going with them. Here is an example of Zack’s stupid lines “Well well, who is *this* lovely little flower petal?” This was said when he sees a female character for the first time. Then there is Toki/Towa, this is a more interesting character. The main reason why she is interesting is due to “dual souls”. While Toki and Towa are similar, there are some differences; Towa likes to play the tough girl and Toki plays the innocent girl with no knowledge of the outside world. What makes the character of Toki/Towa work is the fact no one knows she is the princess, since she has only recently being allowed to leave the castle.

Other characters include: Ricardo and his friends, Edi, Enda and Reijo who are friends with Toki, and Makimona a girl who seems to do everything magical in the world. All these minor characters have their time to shine and are all pretty good apart from Ricardo. The problem is Ricardo is the comic relief character he is a baker whose cakes are so bad they make them see dead people. To be a comic relief character in this game is pretty tough especially with Zack.

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We looked at the characters, now for the story. As I said the story isn’t that bad, but in all honestly it isn’t that interesting. It relies on a lot of poor jokes like how Ricardo’s cakes are terrible. While some jokes are used well, the cake joke is run into the ground story wise with one chapter of the game built around his cake. I’m all for taking one of the game’s best joke, but it was run so far into the ground it became bland. On a brighter note the story does get interesting, but this is towards the end of the game in latter half of the final chapter when a lot of plot points which seemed to have no correlation to actual story begin to make sense. I think the main problem with the story is that there is no sense of the danger. Yes, the characters discuss and attempt to stop the people from attacking the wedding, but the characters treat it like a Sunday stroll. I think the main issue with the story is that some of the side-quests/stories are far more interesting than the main story. Also the main villain really does come out of left field, I thought I discovered the villain early on and in the end I couldn’t have been any more wrong in my guess.

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Now let’s look at the battle system. If you have ever played Imageepoch’s 2011, Black Rock Shooter: The Game, than you will know the battle system straight away. Battles are similar to other JRPGs in the respect of random encounter, but instead of turn based fights, Time and Eternity has a more active approach to battle. Also in Time and Eternity you fight enemies one at a time. In battles you don’t take turns you have keep attacking, charging your SP and using power skills to defeat your enemy. At the same time you have to dodge or guard against enemy attacks. To help you in battle you have Drake/Zack who constantly fires attacks or heals you when you are in trouble.

So far it sounds pretty interesting if not fun, but you will quickly realize all you need to do is change your SP up to use a magic attack and one shot an enemy. This was something I could do no problem until I reached level 12, but when I reached level 46 I could do it again because of a collection of active and passive skills I unlocked. Near the end I had passive skills which had me start battles with 70SP which allowed me to just do a magic attack and win. Granted I could do this because of the skills I unlocked via gifts. Gifts are like skill trees, as you level up and fight in battle or complete quests you gain “Gift points”, and if you spend them wisely you can become nearly invincible.

In battle you can also use special time magic which stops, slows down or fast forwards time. This is a nice mechanic, but a mechanic that can be easily exploited. After unlocking the time freeze magic and combining it with the use of item called Time Splinter (this item allows you to do an extra time magic attack) in battle allowing you to get around the issue of only three time magic attacks a level. With both time freeze and Time Splinter I could indefinitely freeze and enemy and win any fight with ease.

As you level up you change between Toki and Towa, and this means you have to change how you fight, well to a degree anyway. Toki’s character prefers to use a rifle while Towa prefers to be up close with a blade. This means to do maximum damage you have to use the style that fits the character you are playing.

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The game does have some nice smaller options on show such as the ‘affection’ system this is a slide that goes towards either Toki or Towa depending on what you say in certain events or which one you play more. This system is nice, but its only obvious reward are battle only items which perform dual functions such as items which have the ability to regenerate health and remove debuffs.

Defeat is handled pretty well in the game. In most JRPGs you have to start from where you last saved, but in Time and Eternity you can start the battle you died in again with an option of changing the game’s difficulty. If there was a feature that any developer should take from this game it should be this.

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While the game isn’t brilliant the game’s best feature is it’s graphics. The game uses what it calls “A new class of hi-def animation”. This means that everything in the game is creating using hand drawn animation technique. This really makes the game standout in terms of graphics and gives you a feeling that you are watching an interactive animation rather than playing a game.

Also for those wondering the game does offer both Japanese and English voice options along with English subtitles.

Conclusion

Time and Eternity is an average game. The battle system is nothing special, the characters for the most part are annoying and the story apart from one or two standout moments isn’t that interesting.

Score: 45%

Time and Eternity Information

Developer: Imageepoch
Publisher: NIS America
Genre: JRPG
Rating: 12+
Platform: PlayStation 3
Length: 20-30 hours
Release date: out now
Website: http://nisamerica.com/games/time_and_eternity/

Author: Ash Meehan

Hi, I’m the creator of SG Gaming Info. When I’m not working on my writing or creating content for this site’s YouTube channel, I like to relax and enjoy character driven story games.


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