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Eternal Poison

• By Ivy Yup
• November 25, 2008 09:38 AM PST
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Atlus is loaded with fantastic strategy RPG titles, and their latest release of the Japanese title, Eternal Pink, literally keeps us waiting for more.

THE BOTTOM LINE: If you're looking for a fast-paced game, this is not one of them. Although the load times can be excruciatingly long, there are quite a few things worth waiting for--especially if you can appreciate good storytelling and artwork.

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As a strategy RPG, there are a number of things that you can expect: lore, turn-based game-play, playable characters with individual stats and skills, and of course, a town full of NPCs to buy, sell, and exchange information in the Halls of Besek. A mini-game, Stones of Fate, is also available from Iryth the barkeeper, and completing each puzzle will unlock additional gothic-themed concept art located in the gallery. You can also recruit additional party members to aid you in the fight against the demonic Majin or extract skills from captured Majin which involves grinding the grisly demons into a large cauldron through a mechanism involving a series of blade-like teeth. This sounds like my kind of game, already.

Each stage begins with simple conditions: vanquish all enemies to achieve a victory or face defeat at the death of the main character. The enemies usually outnumber allies, so it best to lure an individual demon alone rather than attempt to take on two or three at once. Every character gets one move and one action/attack, or may choose to wait and take no action, enabling combo actions in the next round.

For every skill or attack used on an enemy, an animation sequence follows which takes quite a bit of time to load. Fortunately, animations can be disabled, so if you are tired of looking at the same cut scenes prior to every action and just want to dive right in, be sure to turn them off from the options menu. Alternately, they can be re-enabled just before deploying your party to the next stage if you have the patience to wait for them to load. It will, however, slow the pace of the game considerably, and I definitely did not have the patience to even consider enabling them again. It's really a shame because the animations are beautifully rendered (from what I've seen) but they ultimately got in the way of the overall flow of the game-play.

Another minor annoyance includes having to wait for the screen to load when checking the enemy status screens for its individual strengths and weaknesses. Referring to this lexicon is rather essential to exploiting the enemy's weaknesses while keeping your more vulnerable allies at a safe distance away from getting killed in one turn. At times, it can be difficult to keep track of each vulnerability, making it an incredibly crucial step in the careful planning, positioning, and flanking of the opponent. With over 100 possible monsters to encounter, it is unreasonable to commit all of this to memory, and persistent players have no choice but to sit and wait patiently for the screen to appear.

I must admit that strategy RPGs are generally not my favorite genre, but Eternal Poison has changed my perspective on this genre a bit. The gothic-anime art direction and voice acting are impressively well-done, and although the painfully long load times hinder the general flow of the game-play, the overall game-play, soundtrack, voice acting, and art direction makes up for the technical deficiencies.

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