Eternal Poison review

The story isn’t a great strength. But you actually hear it from five different perspectives before you’re done, which is rare. And we appreciate the way the plot reveals itself to you different ways, depending upon whom you’ve chosen as your initial main character and what route you take through the demonic land of Besek.

The game’s other weaknesses, and the things that will make this torture for some, are mechanical. First, if you leave all the battle animations on, get ready for a lot of loading pauses (another reason we wish this was on a next-gen console). Secondly, Eternal Poison’s refusal to just recycle the usual cliches comes with its challenges: these battles can be really tough. Many enemies have odd combinations of strengths and weaknesses, so you’ll often find yourself struggling to find the right strategy. This is compounded by the third weakness: too much important data is buried in status screens when it should be more obvious to you.

Beyond that, our biggest complaint is that your captured majin are released after a set number of turns. We’d much rather keep our collected foes forever, as you can in Enchanted Arms and Pokemon and publisher Atlus’s own Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. And when a game’s biggest problem is that it left us wanting more, we’d say that’s a good problem to have.

Nov 24, 2008