Eternal Anima Preview – Let’s do the time warp again

Y’all know by now that I’m a pretty big fan of a JRPG. I’ve played most of the heavy hitters and finished a large chunk of them – one day, Tales of Xillia, one day – so I obviously jumped at the chance to join Marvelous Europe and play their upcoming JRPG, Eternal Anima. There are a lot of key players in the development of the genre involved, but how is this new title shaping up?

Eternal Anima follows a suitably over-designed fellow called Wade and his companions in a trip through time periods to fix things or prevent events from occurring. The game focuses on the idea of inheritance and how this concept bridges eras of time. This focus then bleeds through everything from the narrative to the gameplay, often in quite marvellous ways (pun not intended).

In narrative terms, it allows for the story to take place across different eras of time, allowing for a variety of different characters to be encountered and to join the party. This was neatly displayed by the preview that was a segment based in the past, but with a high technology robotic character called M.O.S. If this sounds a little familiar, it should, because the director here was involved with Chrono Cross, but it just lends more to the overall feel of the classic JRPGs that this is a love letter to.

The gameplay is where this focus on time and inheritance really shines. The past is engaged with by inheriting wisdom through finding relics of previous heroes of the world. Examining these relics shows the player a neat little story sequence of the old hero then provides Wade with their weapon and abilities, further growing your toolkit for the battles. In this demo it granted Wade a bow to attack at range, for example.

But the battles, oh boy, the battles! Future Sight allows the player to see the entire turn ahead before deciding on character actions, and I really mean the entire turn. It tells you which enemies will attack, who they will attack, and the damage they will dish out. So, your goal each turn is to negate as much of that received damage as possible by placing your own character’s actions along the timeline. Simple, right?

Well, not exactly. The complexity and strategy here comes through the several ways you can negate this damage. You can defend, of course, or heal the party member if their predicted damage will KO them. Or, if you hit an enemy with their weakness, their turn will be delayed on the timeline. Delay them enough and they fall off the end of the line and break, nullifying their turn.

It’s an evolution of the turn order and timeline-based battle systems seen in other games, but there’s a unique and refreshing twist to this back and forth between you and the enemies. Placement of your characters in a turn and your choice around what action to take can really make or break a battle – even against standard enemies. The boss fights, of which I fought one, are then even greater challenges of strategy as the stakes (especially in the damage you receive) are far higher.

Additionally, the battlefield is divided into lines called the Vanguard and Rearguard, which affects both you and the enemy. Opponents in the Rearguard can then only be attacked with ranged attacks or by defeating the Vanguard, so thank goodness for Wade acquiring the bow in this demo (almost as if this were done on purpose).

A final gameplay element that I have to highlight resolves something of a bugbear I have with a lot of turn-based JRPGs. Due to the nature of the turns being mapped out in advance in this game, if you have to resurrect a party member in a turn, they can’t just be knocked down again in that same turn, as the damage is already attributed. You wouldn’t believe the amount of frustration this normally causes me and it’s delightful to see it handled in such a clean way.

Visually, Eternal Anima is a treat for the eyes. It’s following a similar trend to that of Bravely Default and Octopath Traveler, pairing high resolution with a storybook art style to achieve that “classic JRPG” look. This extends to the character designs that are over-designed in the most delicious way. I mean, just look at Martii and say they don’t look gloriously over-the-top. Also, the music and full voice acting are stellar from my short hands on session and I look forward to more of it, especially if it maintains this consistency.

Eternal Anima is, even from a brief preview session, one to watch for JRPG fans. The choice to use time as a core function could have felt like walking down the same path as classics of the genre like Chrono Trigger. Instead, Eternal Anima seemingly allows these concepts to permeate everything from the narrative to the gameplay to the aesthetic, and the result is something that looks and feels simultaneously classic and fresh. I cannot wait until 4th March 2027 to play more.

Tags: Eternal Anima, JRPG