Eternal poison is a SRPG developed by Flight-Plan and published by banpresto in Japan and Atlus in North America, and I personally think the game is mediocre, but why is that the case?
Story:
It's probably one of the best thing about this game, it may not be excellent or great but it's good and interesting enough, the character may not be deep but because everyone acts towards everyone else in a passive aggressive way, the character and their interactions suddenly become a lot more interesting.
The voice acting has a lot of familiar voices if you play a lot of JRPGs from that era. if you the like the dub of the OG Persona 3 and Persona 4, you will like this game’s dub.
Music:
The sound track was not composed by one person, but rather 3 people and because of that, it had a lot of variety and a lot of good music here are some of my favourites.
My biggest problem with this game OST is that it has a lot of excellent songs that will only play in rare occasions, while the more bland songs will be the most frequent ones, even after playing this game, I always comes back to the OST, I just really like it.
Graphics and art style:
The game has a Gothic art style, because of that, your enjoyment of the art style will depend on how much you like Gothic art style, personally not a big fan however I don’t mind it.
The CGI is nice, the attack animations are well done but in-game graphics and the character spirits not so much, It uses the same technique used in games like Donkey Kong Country and SaGa Frontier 1, in which photos are taken from the CGI models to make in-game sprites, but it doesn't work well here and I would much prefer if the spirits were pixel based, like other Flight Plan games from that era such as Summon Night 4 and Dragon Shadow Spell.
Gameplay:
Most enemies in this game are Majins, they are basically demons and if you overkill them, you can make them part of your team and make them fight alongside you, you can also make them a skill that you can equip on weapons or just sell their body, and here's where my biggest issue with this game lies, to get the 4th and 5th Campaign and get the full story you need to capture all Majins which is really annoying to do, specially because you can't replay maps, if you at least could replay them it wouldn't be an issue.
Because the enemies are supposed to have equal power to your party, they are really tough and maps are not well designed, meaning the best strategy is turtling, not only that but the AI will only become hostile if one of your characters are close to a them, this basically means that the optimal way to play this game is to slow progress the maps and fight one enemy at time, this is further incentivized by the lack of time limit or any sort of time pressure in this game's maps, so there's literally no reason not to do that, I know there are people who play games like that and enjoy them, I personally don’t, I think it is boring, but what makes this even worse is that this has been an issue with Flight Plan games since their first SRPG that they ever made, the japan only Black matrix on the Sega Saturn in 1997, reading a review from it, made by Kurisu he also noted the Dumb AI in his review meaning that even after 10 years and multiple other SRPGs that they made this issue still persist and they never bothered to fix the dumb AI.
Another mechanic that I don't like is that most equipment required certain levels to be equipped, personally I don't understand why some games have that, if feels pointless, if I have the money why can't I buy it, why not only show it in the later in the campaign instead?
As I said before that I personally like it when a SRPG doesn't let you grind, and I still think that is true however SRPG that doesn't let you grind should be careful to not make the game easy to softlock, considering the setting of eternal poison and the gameplay mechanics, it doesn't make sense as to why the game doesn't let you grind, unless they didn't want you to get overpowered but as I said before you can already trivialize this game by just playing it slower.
Another thing that I hate about this game is the fact that you can save on the preparation screen but can't go back to base (Isopolis in this case) which means that you can softlock yourself easily, in fire emblem path of the radiants the game let you go back to base in the preparation screen even if it doesn't make sense in the context of the story.
Pros
- + Great Music
- + Entertaining Story
- + Well made CGI
Cons
- - Bad AI that incentivizes Turtling
- - Ugly in-game sprites
- - Requirements for the 4th and 5th campaigns
6
Gameplay
Gameplay could be great and fun if only they change a feel things, like not make the AI dumb, make the enemies less spongy and allow for Grinding, at less we are left with a subpar game.
6
Graphics
Some people might enjoy its art style more than me, but it doesn't change the fact that in game sprites are inexcusably ugly, specially for a 2008 game.
7
Story
It's alright but nothing deep, but I love that character hate each other for no reason.
9
Sound
It's a great OST, that has a lot of variety, but mostly rock inspired music, it fits the game, but far the best part of it.
6
out of 10
Overall
In conclusion you might enjoy eternal poison if you like to play defensively in SRPG, Gothic style games and play a game glued to a guide to collect all Majins, if not stay away from it.
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