I decided to write a review for this game after reading some negative reviews and the devs' reactions to those.
I've been following this game for quite a while, playing Early Access and beta builds. Most of the things in the recent negative reviews are (or used to be) true, even though they mostly depend on personal taste and subjective expectation. Parts of the game can get grindy, the story isn't exactly Shakespeare, the music wasn't composed by Hans Zimmer, the facial animations aren't on Square Enix level.
But I think that's the point: this game was made by a small studio, not Square Enix, but I've had so much more fun than in several Final Fantasy games or other (J)RPGs. I think the visual quality, the size of the game, the offline-MMO feeling that you get while playing: that's AMAZING for a game from a small studio.
The visuals are great, the voice acting in on point, I even liked the humor and sarcasm of certain party members (which I very rarely do in these games). The game shows lots of ideas and ambitions to be beautiful to look at, to do something new and unique that isn't your cookie-cutter JRPG (combat system, equipment, gems, skills) and to include MMO-style aspects like a crafting system, for which you gather ores, herbs, lumber from the environment as well as monster drops.

What's most important to me is that you can literally see how much the devs love their game and how much effort they put into it. How very much they appreciate and value community feedback.
Shortly after release, they launched a patch to address exactly those issues that were predominantly mentioned in negative reviews, like animation quality and nightmare difficulty scaling.
During early access, I submitted feedback on the community page to express some suggestions that would improve the game in my opinion, for example I thought that weapons had some pretty bad scaling, because they lacked a main stat that would reflect the weapon level. Shortly after, I got a dev reply and an update to the beta branch that would include a reworked power stat on weapons. Honestly, I find it awesome to see a dev team looking into community feedback that much and to witness them constantly trying their best to improve the game. Someone complained that special attack animations aren't skippable and I agree, but heck, I can see QoL stuff like that changed within a couple of days, just because the devs read those feedbacks.
I love that and think that the devs deserve a lot of praise and support for what they have to offer.

Even though I can absolutely see the point in most negative feedbacks here (and upvoted them, because they do indeed point out weaknesses), I believe that the game currently appears underrated and I can only tell you that the fun and appreciation I already had playing the game was totally worth the price tag - and I can't wait to re-play and complete it now that it's released. If you can see the game for what it is and not confuse your expectations with an AAA Final Fantasy that sells for double the price (and then turns out to be FF-XIII-2), you'll find the game amazing, too. If you really dislike certain aspects of the game, I can only suggest to leave some constructive feedback and let the game rest for a while - but do return at a later point. You might be surprised.

at first i had a negative review of this game because i couldnt finish the tutorial due to a bug but the developer reached out to me and helped figure this out spent two days of his time to help my fix it and now it works

Update after a short play session;

The new camera is an upgrade, however if you like to place selene on the backline like I do the camera is generally just a little too zoomed in in order to actually select a target unless you want to select the frontmost enemy. I solved this by dragging the camera a bit and selecting my spell+target before it zoomed back in. Nothing crazy but I could see it getting annoying after a long session.

Game runs much smoother now all the way from lowest to ultra, however lowest has a ♥♥♥♥ ton of graphical glitches. Things like walls shaking in place or textures being super ♥♥♥♥♥♥. I'm pretty sure 99% of computers at this point don't need to play on lowest settings so it's not a big deal, also could have been a problem on my end and not something everyone would find.

I would really like to see more boss fights with things like multi phases or summons etc, as it is bosses don't generally feel terribly different than regular fights outside of maybe some cinematic things like the big bull that chases you and fights you multiple times which I enjoyed.

Overall i'm very excited to see where this game goes still. It is clearly still alpha, with many things like panning your camera through walls etc but as far as early access' go the rate at which this game gets updates and the quality of the updates are very good and i'm already satisfied with my purchase! Also there is a neekaro skin available now, it's nothing mind blowing but for the price it's well worth your money if you like the game or the skin.







What I think this game does well;

Elemental weakness' and resistances feel very impactful.

Weapon choices are more than just a choice between stats on the weapon itself, you have to see what crystal slots come along with it and what crystals you have to put in them as well since this is how you gain abilities in this game.

Visually stunning game on max graphics.

Story is, so far, on par with most JRPG titles.

Nekaroo's, the only mount available as far as I know, are a fun and interactive take on a mount. You can run around the world searching for items that your Nekaroo will lead you to, compete in npc races, or simply get from point A to point B in a much quicker time frame.

Each character looks and feels their role. By this I mean that Noct...Sorry Daryon feels like a physical attacker with some good debuffs and ok elemental attacks for situations where physical damage simply isn't a wise choice. Selene is your mage and after getting some incantation speed her casts are nearly impossible to interrupt unless you time them very poorly. The new character (forgive me for forgetting her name) is an assassin, dealing elemental attacks as well as basic attacks in a 2 hit manner similar to Daryon's abilities.

Supports mods. Currently there isn't much, but I imagine when the game is fully released we could be looking at skyrim level mods that could add many more hours worth of content.

Side quests and hunt quests, while generic, feel worth while. I got quite a few upgrades to my armor from doing these and sizeable enough gold rewards along with them.

Level differences between you and your enemies are extremely noticeable. When I first started out I ran past most fights to rush to the first "boss" and was promptly slapped in the face for it. I then went back and fought everything I could find until I was the same level as the boss and had a MUCH easier time dealing with it. The same goes for the "roaming" unique monsters that I was able to find. One level down you can manage, but more than that and it's probably better to come back later.

What I feel this game could improve on significantly;

Camera angles. While I think the point is to make combat feel very open as well, I find myself always manually panning the camera to the side so I can avoid having a wall in my face when I cast a spell, or having an easier time selecting which enemy to attack. Maybe an option to disable the rotational camera and have a forced side view of the field would be a reasonable enough answer here?

Controller felt quite annoying to use, whereas keyboard and mouse felt quite good. This isn't too much of a negative, it's just odd for JRPG's which tend to emphasize console releases over PC releases. I assumed I should use my controller to play it since it's a JRPG and found that it was much more intuitive on keyboard and mouse.

The energy system is, i think , made to give a sense of realism or raise the importance of your towns as you can do probably 20 battles before you're almost forced to return to town. This is a minor gripe but it feels like it counters the main point of an open world game; endless exploration. I feel the food buff gives enough value in going back to town where you could get rid of the energy system and make food buffs time based instead, possibly stacking with more applications of it as well.

Crafting and gathering feels like a massive amount of work for little reward early on. I found myself ignoring it and just fighting everything I could and then buying the materials needed to craft from a vendor rather than collecting them myself.

Chests start off feeling very rewarding, and then start feeling useless very quickly. Probably around level 10 I started feeling like I was getting nothing of importance from chests. Maybe the random crystal that was really good, but that was probably every 50+ chests. They feel more like chests for the sake of chests than something that could really help you if you take the time to explore every nook and cranny to find them.

The game still has a number of visual glitches/bugs. This doesn't bother me much since it's alpha, it's just something to put on the list so potential buyers know ahead of time. The dev team has recently put out some very good performance patches for both cpu and gpu usage and the difference is night and day. They could still optimize more, but i went from lagging on lowest settings with a medium rig (gtx 970 and i74790k) to playing on high with little to no stutter/fps dips. I'm under no illusion that my pc should play it on it's highest settings without lagging, as you can have a much better PC than I do now, but I do feel my gaming rig is pretty average, and as such should be able to play medium settings seemlessly which it seems to be able to now.

Daryon and Selen's faces look... weird? In cinematics. Definitely room for improvement there.


TLDR; The game has room for improvement, but the dev team has shown that they're listening to feedback and improving the game steadily. If you're a JRPG fan I recommend buying into the alpha as you'll likely save some money compared to the full release, and the game currently has about 10 hours worth of playability ( past just grinding mobs to well... grind mobs ). If you're not a JRPG fan my recommendation leans more towards waiting for the full release as I think even non jrpg fans will enjoy it then.

P.S. Keep up the good work! I can appreciate a dev team that is putting out regular updates and seems to notice the feedback given by the community. I have high hopes for this one! :)

The best words to describe this game are "comforting" and "relaxing".

It doesn't do anything too crazy within the JRPG genre, but that's ok...

8/10


I think the unfortunate problem this game has is that it looks too good. I think people see the gorgeous graphics and the beautiful world and they assume it's an AAA game made by a studio with tens of millions of dollars behind them. This is an INDIE game made by a SMALL studio.

Another unfortunate problem is that during Early Access it had a ton of bugs and people had difficulty running the game well or at all and got hurt by bad reviews early on. Then for some reason, it was pushed into full release probably before it was ready. This led to a whole host of more problems with complaints about the game not having enough depth as well as persistent bugs.

If you look at their 2021 and 2022 roadmap, the truth is this game probably shouldn't have come out until 2023. However, someone has to pay to keep the lights of the studio on and they probably needed to make sure they made some sales. Additionally, I think whenever people see a game that was a funded Kickstarter they are worried it will never actually be released.

As for me, since I picked up the game relatively late and didn't even start until Jan 2022, I think I missed all these annoying problems the game originally had. I was able to enjoy a mostly bug-free experience without any optimization issues. I am a little sad that I will miss out on some of the 2022 roadmap things since I don't usually come back to a game after I beat it, but we'll see.


Here's the real deal.

This is a good JRPG. It has an ok story, a beautiful world, and good enough characters. However, this is definitely not Final Fantasy XVI --- and shouldn't be compared to that. The gameplay is much better than Tales of Arise --- which I still contend is a bad game that is just pretty.

However, it does start -very- slow with the inability to move around very quickly for the first few hours of the game. This makes it feel very drawn out early game. Once you get access to a more permanent mount early-mid game, the world opens up more for you. Honestly, I think this was done on purpose. This isn't a game that is made to "sprint to the finish". It's obvious to me that the devs want you to enjoy the world. It's ok to get lost and backtrack and do some side quests and some bounties and other stuff. You are expected to want to craft things when you can, which can take up some time as well.


I spent ~52 hours on this game according to Steam. My save game file says 56 hours though, so 56 hours is probably my true playtime. I got the majority of the accomplishments just playing the game through casually in my "Main + Extras" style. I enjoyed it a lot.

If you are like me and felt Tales of Arise was "missing something" and don't understand how it almost won game of the year --- then Edge of Eternity may be for you. You just need to go into it with these things in mind.

1) Do not sprint to the finish.

Take your time, enjoy the world. You can save anywhere so play a few hours here and there. If you try to do 10 hours in your first sitting or something, you won't like it.

2) Temper your expectations.

This isn't a huge studio that is pumping out AAA games with millions of dollars behind them and 100 different teams working on it. This is a small studio that is trying to make its own love letter to JRPGs -- and I think they've succeeded. You will notice some clipping of hair through clothes. Sometimes expressions may seem weird. The camera may do weird stuff at some times. Give them a break. Enjoy the experience.

3) The game starts very slow, give it time to build.

This isn't quite as deep as something like Trails in the Sky First Chapter where it takes 20 hours to build the world. However, the beginning is very slow and you may feel like nothing is happening. You just need to give it time, don't trash it too early. I consider myself pretty patient, but I almost quit the game in the first 10 hours or so from a perceived lack of progress.


Edge of Eternity is a good JRPG, which falls just short of being great. That said, it is still worth a play and you can really see the potential this studio has to make another JRPG taking the experiences they learned from this one. I think this game should be considered a success and hope that this studio is given the opportunity to make more games like Edge of Eternity and/or give it a sequel or trilogy or however many continuations it needs. I hate the word "polish", but that was probably what the game needed more of before release... however, that is sometimes only reserved for big studios with the deep pockets to make that happen.

I see a lot of ridiculous people throwing comments like this is a AAA game or better than AAA, which is misleading. For an Indie game with a small team, they have done an impressive work, but no this is nowhere near AAA, yet. Falsely over-complimenting it is not going to help them improve, which is what a game in Alpha needs to do. If this is already AAA, then 50% of the games out there are AAA.

The game has good concept in terms of mechanics, but could do with better polishing in execution. The graphic interface is not exactly comfortable, like the symbols above the enemies are pretty small, so you need to focus a little to see them properly. Save point can also be improved by making the save file selected being more obvious, like using an arrow or highlighting a greater portion of it to make it clearer. The tutorial explanation can also be broken down into several steps or pages instead of throwing everything into a picture, which makes it look crowded and messy. The sister AI also gets stuck a little too much when moving around the map.

All these may sound like nitpicking, but are what differentiate between professional and amateur execution, when it comes to overall user experience. I can't say much about the story writing as I am not very far into the game yet, but so far the backdrop seems to hold good potential.

That being said, it is still very impressive for a game in alpha and I look forward to it being developed fully! You can tell a lot of thoughts have been put into the game mechanics and I like it. Hopefully the developers can keep it up and we can see more good RPG developers from European countries in near future :)

When I looked at the game it looked like Final Fantasy. When I looked at the steam comments and someone reported and issue and in under 1 hour the dev responded with an actual timeline for the fix for the issue. I work in IT, and dev teams NEVER respond with a solid answer on a fix let alone that fast. I purchased it that day. Updates keep rolling out sometimes twice a week. Game is a true gem among early access.

P.S. Music from Yasunori Mitsuda

I want to like this game so badly. It ticks all the right boxes for a JRPG: intersting battle system, strong story, and strong characters, How could this possibly go wrong?

Well, for starters, and by far the worst part, is that in chapter 3 and chapter 4, the battles become annoying, not interesting. The key problem is that the battles all require a high degree of movement, but movement takes an entire turn. In many cases, you end up spending 70% of the battle just running. Presumably the developers are going to add yakety sax to the sound track to help.

Beyond just the movement, the timing for attacks and reaction is just too tight. It happened way too often that I'd start a basic attack spell with Selene, and seconds later the boss would start their super ultimate death spell, targeted at Selene's location. Selene would finish her cast, but then die horribly before getting another chance to move.

The locales are beautiful and very well done. Unfortunately, there's nothing to do in all that vast expanse. You've basically got a quest hub model here...without any quests. Good thing you level up so fast so you're not missing anything anyway. The towns, while beautiful, all feel generic and soulless (except for that one with the mine that you save in chapter 2).

Also worth noting are the puzzles. which are horrible. They make no logical sense, and are required for progression in chapter 4.

On the plus side, skill progression is another key aspect of JRPGs, and one that Edge of Eternity does well. Leveling makes you stronger, but skills come from crystals that you slot into weapons. The crystals also give you stats, and so getting the right combination of skills and stats is a constant challenge. It also helps that crystals are frequent loot. I found myself compulsively optimizing for +1 speed (to avoid the ultimate death attack), and had a lot of fun doing so.

Finally, the story. Despite the hubs, this is still just the same old hallway quest you know and love. Fortunately, the story is halfway decent (so far). The characters, despite being the chosen of God and/or Satan, are interesting and have good chemistry. The quest itself has enough turns to be interesting, although by chapter 4, feels nowhere near over half completed.

Ultimately, the flaws are superficial, not structural. If the developers can stop tripping over themselves by trying to be clever, there's an awesome game potentially here. Make movement cost only 75% of the action bar and eliminate the puzzles, and all of a sudden the game becomes fun again. There's other stuff (like the empty open world) that will presumably be fixed in time as well.

If these things are fixed, the game is an easy recommend. For now...the problems remain and destroy what is otherwise a fun game.

81 hours spent, just finishing msq and all side quests (as much as I can get).
RPG and JRPG lover and actively working with game development especially on music and audio (Composing Mixing and Editing)

First of all, I can say that I like this game, the concept and fundamental lore is quite interesting.
I am really looking forward to what will happen next, and I'll be happy to purchase the Edge of Eternity Part II.

BUT, I have to be honest, I can't blindly recommend this game NOW, not like this version 1.2.
If you are a RPG and JRPG lover, this project is worth to be supported.
If you are a Gamer or Consumer purchasing for experience, you should purchase this game later.


Roughly rating:

Perspective A - for acknowledging that this is an Indie game with a tiny development crew
Basic Lore and Story - 8/10
Experience of Storytelling - 5/10
Character - 6.5/10
Graphics - 8.5/10
Music - 8/10
Audio - 6/10
Battle and Gameplay - 8(concept)/10 6(experience)/10

Perspective B - for rating an ordinary commercial RPG game
Basic Lore and Story - 7/10
Experience of Storytelling - 3/10
Character - 5/10
Graphics - 7/10
Music - 5/10
Audio - 3/10
Battle and Gameplay - 6(concept)/10 4(experience)/10

I think that the developers should known better than any other that the lack of polishing and so many critical bugs.
anyway I'll leave it here while the memory is fresh just in case the developers didn't recognize the problems exists.


---POSSIBLE SPOILERS---


1 Lore, Storytelling and Experience

The Concept of the world is interesting, it's really something, but through out the game there's so many problem that brought down this good start of this fantasy world.

The areas and the cities, the organizations, the forces and powers, all of them have to some extent not extraordinary intriguing, but at least worth your notice kind of design and concept, but later on it is neither untold, not extended to what they deserved. The cities are interesting but they are so hollow, like a set of a CM stage and nothing more. It's a pity that they don't have the resources or simply decided not to work on the building of the world lore more.

I noticed they have tried to implant some details of the culture the geography though some dialogues, but the execution is really not good. And the poor performance of characters just make it worse.



2 Characters and Characters development

It is clear that they just don't have the resource of time to make it better.
Main Characters are fine, the designs are fine enough. But the cutscenes are just horrible.
If I was reading a comic or a vocalized novel, rather than watching those cutscenes, I‘m sure I could have at least 100% much better experience, especially the last chapter. The cutscenes there were so bad there they made me feel so hilarious that completely ruins the story climax for me, such a pity. The lost of some characters was a nice plot, but thanks those hilarious cutscenes, when I should be touched and sad, I was just feeling embarrassed and it leads to unsatisfied.

Some behavior of Daryon, the rages through some of the lines, is really annoying and confusing.
It seems to be directly caused by the lack of foreshadowing, either there was more happened before or between but no time to make it, or simply that the writing is what it is. The similar experience goes with Alpharius too.

NPCs are bad, just hollow, I'd prefer that by cutting down plenty amount of meaningless unnecessary dozens of dialog bubbles NPCs and just focus on a selected few of important NPCs for each area and city, through them goes the side quests, and through those interaction you know the lore the world the culture better, little work much better experience.



3 Graphics

Graphics is good, pretty good, despite of some weird lighting effects, reflections and bugs.
The Art design is really doing a good job, better than commercial average good job.
Some Japanese commercial RPG developing company should be ashamed of themselves, with their resources and budgets and what they achieved.

The only point to be criticized is the lack of systematic or open world designing experience I suppose. or rather insufficient resource or time. For example the world map, It's easy to tell how it was done by "finish area A, draw a path, glue them to area B", But I'm quite sure they can do much better job in the next part.



4 Music and Audio

Music is decent and some tracks are just masterpiece, the reason I think we all know, there's no need to discuss the details. I rated 5/10 via commercial game perspective is because the insufficient amount of total track numbers, could use at least 10 to 20 more tracks.

SFX is good enough, but still with plenty of polishing to be made.
For example the whole set SFX of Fallon’s gunshots, it's unacceptable that they couldn't have done better.

VA (I've been constantly switching between JPN and ENG) is fine, though I consider in some cases the problems is due to the game itself rather than the performance miss of VAs, I'm pretty sure the VAs know what they're doing, but they wouldn't know how the game would actually present it. So when it was actually implanted into the game and played as what the game can offer or meant to be, as mentioned above (Story progress and Cutscenes problems), the combined experience is somehow damaged, really a pity.

There's also some problem is with the mixing, unnecessary reverb for UI SFXs in caves and cathedrals (I think they've been using Wwise for interactive audio, if so the cleanup and doublechecking work needed will not be that much tiresome as far as I can tell)

The DB or volume balancing is not fully standardized. I can tell they did pay attention to this in the early chapters, you can feel that everything is balanced or at least adjusted. I can only suppose that it was the lack of resource and time that they cant afford to keep up to the end. ENG VA balance is not perfect but will do as I can tell.But the JPN VA volume balance is obviously worse than ENG, can use some work here (simply checking the files will do).



5 Battle and Gameplay

ATB turn based is good. UI needs much more polishing.
Puzzle solving via battle movement is quite refreshing, pity there's just that much and mainly in the first half of the game.
I played with gamepad, the most annoying thing is when I'm riding my nekaroo exploring, and fetching resources by the way, since button X determines both Interact and Sprint, it's really just tiring and bad experience. Try it once I think the developers would understand what I mean.

Powerstone? Crystals? merging is fine, not bad, I think I've spent at least 5/80 hours merging and rerolling perhaps.

Crafting is a pain, I really hope I can check my crafting recipe in my menu, it means if I get a new recipe in someplace halfway in a mainstory quest, I dont need to run all the way back and teleport to a crafting desk so I can check that do I need or is it worth it to craft this for the coming boss right now.

And I really need to sort the recipes while Armor Crafting, sort by power and sort by body parts, it's a mess now, too messy that I'd rather not bother crafting armor even before final boss fight.



6 Overall

Please do better and I know you can and I believe many are looking forward to.

Edge Of Eternity is fantastic, I truly enjoyed my thirty hours of gameplay and I'm eagerly awaiting Chapter 4's release as of this review.

I could write a novel but I'll try to keep it brief and helpful!

The Good:

• Very Decent Graphics, the world looks quite stunningly beautiful in certain areas, and at worst looks very near AAA quality.
  
• Interesting, well written story with the main quest line voiced by experienced VA's.
  
• Dynamic and realistic characters with a unique and engaging personality. You'll quickly find yourself actually interested in the characters and their journey.
  
• A nice blend of turn-based combat common in JRPG's and open-world style gameplay in which you can go to nearly anywhere you want. There's a path to follow, but you can go off it and spend ten hours killing random things, collecting stuff, and leveling, like I did.
  
• Powerful customization for your weapons. See 'Longer Explanations' below for more on that.
  
• Interesting skill system. You don't learn skills from some trainer, you unlock them via crystals you socket in your weapon. See 'Longer Explanations' below for more on that.
  
• Interesting Gear. Every weapon, crystal, and piece of armour has different base types, qualities, and modifiers that all affect the stats of the particular item vastly. Weapons also have a level system, increasing the stats it gives as you level it up by using it. In practice it means items are rarely the exact same, so you'll always be getting small, or massive, upgrades. I went from a sword that gave +23 Attack to one that gave +47 Attack from one battle! See 'Longer Explanations' below for more on that.
  
• Crafting System. Yup, it's got crafting of weapons and armour, and gathering! This pairs especially well with the interesting gear mentioned above. You can choose what base item to craft, then augment the crafting with different reagents to pick what focus your item has; Physical Attack, Magic, or Defense. There's also reagents you can use to make it more likely to be a higher quality and better modifier. You can craft some pretty awesome gear with a little luck, and it's very random so it's quite addicting actually.

A note before I get to the bad, this is presently being developed by a small team and is an early access game. I'm going to include anything I didn't like for the sake of being thorough, but you'll see a lot of 'because it's in early access'!

The Bad:

• There's a problem with AMD cards' graphics drivers which causes terrain to load weird, and collectable stuff to not show up. It's fixable by using an older graphics driver and they're working on a fix, but no luck as of yet, so if you're running an AMD graphics card you might run into some problems unless you run an older driver version.
  
• The story isn't complete. They're releasing the story in parts called 'Acts' so they can divide the areas up and have people playing previous ones while they work on the next ones. Due to this the story isn't complete and you eventually hit an end, but it's really good and I don't want to wait!
  
• Each Act unlocks more content and reveals more systems, which is neat, but it can feel a bit disjointed sometimes. The best example of this is when you unlock ***BOMBS*** in Act ***3***, they're tools you can use to deal damage and give an effect - common in most games, but you don't see a single one up until that point so their introduction is very sudden. This comes about because each Act is being developed and improved upon individually, so each one allows them to explore new things and unlock more content along with the quests, but as it's early access they haven't done extensive final polishing or balancing for earlier Acts.
  
• While there's a surprisingly large number of enemies and the map is quite big, with huge sections unlocking in every new Act, it's still early access so there isn't a whole lot to do once you've finished all the quests, other than collect stuff and fight enemies. More repeatable quests or additional random events would make the world feel more alive. But again, it's early access, and this has way, way more than some full releases has already.

Longer Explanations

Equipment
In Edge of Eternity each character has lots of equipment they can equip, some is class specific, while others are equippable by anyone. Each party member has their own specific weapon type. All gear has 3 general focuses; physical damage focused which increases the damage of your normal attacks, magic damage focused which increases the damage of skills, or defence focused. The stats on every piece of gear are randomized to a degree and weapons can be leveled up to a maximum level, which differs based on the weapon, through use to raise their stats dramatically.

Sockets
In Edge of Eternity every weapon has a different pattern and number sockets that have one of five different colours in which you can put the same-coloured crystals. These sockets generally offer % buffs to physical or magical damage or defense, but they only apply when a crystal is in that particular slot. These bonuses often don't look like much but they can quite significantly change your stats. From the center socket on any weapon you can only pick one branch of sockets, and the next socket in line only unlocks when the previous one has a crystal in it. With each socket having very different bonuses and colours and each branch having a different number of sockets this allows for a lot of customization on each weapon, and a great deal of specialization. For example there's one sword in the game with a branch with only three slots for crystals, but it gives +10% Physical Damage, a different branch has room for six crystals but it only adds up to 3% Physical Damage; both are totally viable and useful options depending on what you're going for and which character you're dealing with.

Crystals
In Edge of Eternity there are five different colours of crystals that can be placed into the same-coloured socket. Each crystal has different stats, like +Attack, +Magic, +Speed, etc that are given to you when you put that specific crystal in a socket. Some crystals additionally have skills.

Skills
In Edge of Eternity none of your characters learn any skills themselves, instead you get skills from the Crystals socketed on each character's weapon. There are many different types of skills of different elements with varying effects like your typical elemental damage skills, healing skills, buff skills, and other interesting ones. These can only be used if you've got a crystal with that skill socketed in your weapon, though, so it's something you have to balance when you're deciding what crystals to socket in your weapons.

Closing Thoughts

Edge of Eternity is a truly interesting game that I can't possibly recommend enough. It's a bit rough around the edges in some parts but it shows a ton of promise. The game has a very Final Fantasy-style feel to it but it's absolutely, without a doubt it's own unique game. There are some truly amazing moments in the game that really make you realize how much promise this shows. There's a pretty short, pretty easy sidequest right near the end of Act 3 that you could skip over and never even notice, but it's my favourite quest I've ever done to this day, in any game ever. I've played more RPG games than I can count and grew up on Zelda, but this one little quest that you could so easily miss changed the world in the most subtle of ways and it was so emotional I couldn't help but cry for a little while.

It's not perfect, I'm not going to say it's perfect, none of the developers say it's perfect; but it shows promise and they're consistently working on it with a very clear and open schedule and regular updates. This isn't one of those 'Early Access' cash-grabs where the Developers run, they're in it for the long-haul and it's clear to see just how passionate they are to make this t

This game is already fantastic, and has the potential to be so much more. If bugs annoy you, don't play this game yet. It IS unfinished, and I've spent 9 hours in the game and am barely past chapter 1.

The combat is unique and entertaining, the gem system is fantastic, and the story is actually gripping.

Voices don't match mouths, the loot isn't always super descriptive, and it can be tough to figure out how certain things work, but that will hopefully be improved with time.

Overall, it's a fantastic "Final Fantasy" style game that is really already shining and will hopefully be polished even further.