Eternal Poison Review
Eternal Poison is a PS2 RPG from Atlus, a studio that is known for releasing some unique looking titles. You will be playing a group of characters that is traveling through the land, which really looks like Europe, but isn't apparently. Your mission is to rescue the princess that got kidnapped by the monsters that appeared when a mysterious monster city rose out of the ground. I promise you you'll be lost as soon as you press start, or actually play prologue, which after you've completed that will throw you back to the main menu, even after it says would you like to save game, but it really doesn't save a game, and it will then allow you to play the actual game.
The graphics are a mixed bag. The cutscenes look freaking amazing for a PS2 game, but then you see the in game graphics, and there are points where you think that you are playing a PS1 game. The character portraits during dialog sequences look pretty good. The battlefields and the towns just aren't all that much to look at.
The music and sounds, where to even start, you are going to have this metallic click every time you do an action, which is awesome if you were to never choose an action. The music just doesn't really seem to have that much oomph to it. Both music and sounds make me feel like Atlus was running tight on time and just went through their unused assets and pulled out the first things they can find. It doesn't help that when there is something spoken in battle, or at the shop its almost always the same phrase or two. My recommendation DO NOT play this game unless you mute it.
The controls drive me nuts. You can toggle between characters with the L1 and R1, but if you accidentally hit one of those buttons and try to select the wrong character to do actions, you're going to find yourself lost until you figure out the progression bar at the bottom. When in a town, your buttons DO NOT do anything, unless you are in front of a door, a person, or interact-able object, its as if all a sudden your controller morphed into the equivalent of a very old joystick.
Through the game you'll have the ability to capture the monsters you face and then use them to your advantage or break them down for components. There is no going back through battles, so there is no grinding allowed, been really protective of a character so that it doesn't level, well then you're not going to be able to use it later because its going to get its ass kicked. I recommend that when in your first battle select options, if you can find them and turn off the animations, which turns off the animated 3 second sequence of your active character swinging their weapon before returning to the battlefield, unless you like flashes of color and a break from gameplay almost every minute or so. There is also something really strange about your characters when standing around, they just kind of sway or twitch non-stop. You'll also see that there is a swaying cursor for item selection when trying to purchase stuff for your party. The only fun part to the game is the bar game that you can play, though I defeated every one of them on the first try, so that didn't really last all that long.
I wish that I could recommend this game, I've always been a fan of Atlus products, but this game is so far past salvaging that I have to say, stay away from this product. There are so many other RPGs out there, I'm sure you can find something better than this one. This game gets a 2.8 out of 10.