// KOTAKU — GAMING
New RPG From Final Fantasy, Persona Vets Borrows From The Past To Ask How We Can Save The Future
If, on one end of the spectrum, you have Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and the Persona franchise returning turn-based RPGs to critical and commercial acclaim once again, and on the other you have modernized nostalgia packaged as HD-2D RPGs, then Eternal Anima sits somewhere in the middle. It’s a game that finds its own niche in the current, revitalized RPG field, even if it can at times feel a bit too much like a greatest hits compilation for the genre.
An all-new Japanese RPG developed by a team of industry veterans and notable outsiders at Marvelous, Eternal Anima is thematically driven by the responsibility that comes with inheriting the world and then passing it on to the next generation. How do the actions of our past ripple into the present and future, and how do those past choices shape the world that exists today?
Eternal Anima‘s director, Katsuhisa Higuchi, was a programmer on a number of early Final Fantasy games, also worked on Chrono Trigger and more recently served as a director on Capcom’s first two Monster Hunter Stories games. Kazushige Nojima is another Square Enix veteran, having worked on the story for Final Fantasy VII and VIII as well as the Kingdom Hearts series. The game’s narrative, meanwhile, is based on a concept submitted by acclaimed author Keisuke Makino, who has contributed to both Persona 5 and Metaphor: ReFantazio.
The story follows Wade, a man with the ability to see the history of objects merely by touching them. He lives in the world of Urvis Ael, where the truth about the past has been lost, and attempting to uncover it is forbidden. Hunted as a dissident, he journeys into the past, where he begins to discover the truth about how the world became the way it is. Perhaps by changing the past and exploring the continent of Ambulis which, in his time, has been submerged underwater and lost to history, he can fix his present and change the future (according to the game’s developers, you will later explore other continents facing similar strife, named Wistregen, Himeshiro and Rotala).
At an hour-long showcase of the game shortly before Tokyo Game Show last month, we were given a chance to check out a demo. It started off by placing us into an early adventure for Wade and his still-small crew of comrades not long after they arrive on Ambulis roughly 200 years in the past. The area they enter is called the Somber Woods, and it’s a place befitting such a name: far from a luscious forest, it’s an environment that’s dying around you. The planet’s Anima—essentially its life force—is being drained due to human exploitation of natural resources, with those sworn to protect it resigned to prayer and a belief that simply willing the land to solve the issue will suffice. No need to act or make changes to save the climate, it’ll be fine!
Our characters from the future, however, know what will happen. The continent will not be saved, and the world will die, all due to their inaction. They’re here to change its course.
So far, so typical for RPGs of the 1990s in which the fate of the world is at stake, but it’s how the game evolves beyond these tropes and integrates this thematic concern into all aspects, including gameplay, that makes Eternal Anima stand out. With our characters aware of how the future will play out if nothing is done, the game makes the ingenious choice to integrate this foresight into battle. The result transforms combat into something more like a puzzle, as instead of merely strategizing the best move, you seek to alter the predetermined trajectory of a fight.
The game employs a “break” system similar to that seen in games like Octopath Traveler, with the twist being that you know what move an opponent is going to make before they do it thanks to Wade’s Future Sight abilities. Above your command menu is a progress bar where you can see when and what move every opponent is going to use next. With this knowledge in mind and an awareness of their weaknesses, explicitly targeting them wil