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Edge of Eternity was originally released on Steam in 2021 and came onto the PlayStation 5 the following year. This is the second game made by Midgar Studios and it takes a lot of inspiration from the Final Fantasy series. The graphics are not as cutting edge, and there are some rough edges, but it’s a promising RPG that is still getting tweaked at the time of this review.

The game begins with the backstory of airships appearing thirty years prior. At first, they were friendly and shared their technology with Heryon. For a while, Heryon prospered as a result, then suddenly the airships attacked and obliterated Junor overnight. The remaining nations formed an alliance in order to unify and stand a chance against the invaders. Now, a new threat is ravaging the people, a disease called the corrosion.

The main characters in this game are Daryon and his sister Selene. Together they are searching for a cure for the corrosion to save their mother and the world. Selene is a priestess and convinces her brother to defect from the army to join her in saving the world. After witnessing many of his squad mates getting killed and occult rituals firsthand, Daryon doesn’t need much convincing, even though defecting is punishable by death.

Throughout most of the game, it’s just Selene and Daryon. Other party members come and go, but at the end of the game (there are eight chapters), you’ll have five party members. Only four party members can be active in battle.

The battles are turn based and the turns are determined by a speed stat. The faster you are, the more attacks you can do. Other stats include HP, MP, attack, defense, magic, resolve, and incantation speed. As you win battles and gain experience, the equipped weapon will level up too. The higher level your weapon is, the more crystals you can embed into them. Crystals will further boost your stats and grant the user magic spells to use. In battle, there are physical abilities (attack, move, defend, flee) and magical abilities if you have spells equipped. There is also an item menu which lets you use battle items that have to be assigned beforehand. Unlike other JRPG games, you have a limit on how many times you can use items in battle. You cannot spam health, mana, or resurrection potions.

As your party fights in battles, and especially if they lose, the party’s stamina will diminish. You can increase your party’s morale by sleeping at a camp site or staying at an inn in town. If you stay at an inn, you can watch unlocked party interactions which are usually humorous in nature. Unfortunately, these scenes are not voice acted. I never let the morale get too low, but I imagine their accuracy decreases if they're exhausted.

While you’re in town, you’ll want to purchase any and all crafting recipes available. They will come in handy for crafting more powerful weapons and armor. Many recipes are only available at specific towns, so grab them all! Another worthwhile activity to do in town is to fuse gems to make them more powerful.

Inside towns and new areas, you’ll come across “quest givers,” which will offer you quests and rewards upon completing them. The quest boards are area specific, so you’ll have to return to the same one you accepted a quest from to receive its reward. The quests are typically hunting related and you’ll have to kill a certain amount of creatures to earn the reward.

The natural environments are beautiful and the corroded areas are undoubtedly gloomy. The best way to travel through the vast world is on the back of a two-tailed cat-like creature called a Nekaroo. I wish cats would obey like them in real life! An added bonus to riding on a Nekaroo is that they’ll often sniff out treasure to dig up and hand over to you. There are some quests that will require riding a Nekaroo.

I enjoyed the background music and had it stuck in my head on numerous occasions. The soundtrack is available on Steam for $6.99. It features 74 tracks! The voice acting is also well done and I missed it where it was not available.

This review is based on the PS5 version and sadly I have experienced some glitches that required rebooting my PS5 to resolve. There’s a multi-wave battle where you have to protect a town and in the final wave the battle would slow down to a crawl and was unplayable. Thankfully, rebooting the PS5 solved that problem. Another annoyance includes awkward camera angling that has to get adjusted mid-battle. Lastly, the boss battles are crazy unbalanced. PC users have the benefit of being able to use cheat commands, but console gamers are at the mercy of waiting for another balancing update. From what I gather online, the final boss was easier before a recent patch and in my game, the third phase is unbeatable with my level 60 characters and on the easiest difficulty level. In the second phase of the last boss, he launches an attack that one hit kills your entire party. In order to survive the attack, you have to destroy one of the few crystals and have party members inside of the temporary shield before it goes away. Timing seems to be luck as you don’t know when this apocalypse spell is coming. Thankfully, you can restart the battle from the last phase you were on without having to start the fight from the beginning.

There are some moral issues worth noting as well. In battle, you’ll have to fight enemies by issuing attack orders and watching them being carried out. The battles are not very gruesome and sometimes, you’ll be fighting against robots. The cutscenes are a bit more gory as you’ll witness people being offered to gods as living sacrifices. Language is another concern with words like b*stard, d*mn, h*ll, sh*t. The Lord’s name is taken in vain too. There are some sexual jokes made and there is some “Barbie doll” nudity where there are no details, but the female character is naked.

While Edge of Eternity has some rough patches, I still enjoyed playing this game. I highly recommend sticking with the PC version since you have more flexibility to use console commands if needed. I’ve seen the base game for as low as $12 on Steam and that’s a great bargain for the amount of gameplay you’ll get.