Eternights hands-on preview

（I have been toying with the idea of doing this tricky thing we call “hands-on preview” for a couple of months now. First in March with Bayonetta Origins demo and Resident Evil 4 Chainsaw Demo, but those products came out before I got around to write previews so I just wrote reviews instead. Then there were the couple of 15 minutes long demos of the Ludonarrative con, not much meat on those bones other than making me think “Those sure ain’t no Muv-luv”. Finally, there is another Steam Next Fest here and a chance to try out the obviously by-weebs-for-weebs Eternights. A “Mass Effect style” we-will-give-you-an-action-game-in-our-visual-novel-free-of-extra-charge kind of game that won’t come in 3 months as the time of writing, so why not preview this one.）

The Escapists Youtube channel has been a new favorite point of mine when it comes to crystalized cynical criticism of this industry. One rather early Extra Punctuation there coined the term “Ghost Train Ride” for them tend-to-be-linear polygonal extravaganzas.

A Ghost Train Ride usually have 3 different sections: queues, thrills and gift-shop. Queues usually mean the walk-and-talk segments. Thrills are set-pieces to break up the walk-and-talk. I thought the gift-shop meant menus for stats or something similar when I watched the video but the term actually means arena fights, aka the real meat on those shallow bones. About 2 hours after I heard those terms, the demo for a not-quite-triple-A polygonal game fits those ruts rather nicely.

Eternights is marketed as a hybrid of dating sim and character action. Its release date and Steam demo were announced during Not-E3 2023’s PC Gaming Show. And yours truly just wanted to see how well it can run on the Steam Deck. Funny enough, on the game’s resolution selection menu, big letters say [STEAM DECK] are next to the 1200X800 option. The developers are clearly aiming for Playable if not Verified on launch. It just might get Verified since the text is comfortably visible.

I played the game on Story difficulty with both Japanese text and voice. Voice acting is fine on that front though it can be immersion breaking with the Korean Hangul in the art assets and the English text on them phones during the animated cut scenes. But as a native Chinese speaker who started learning English since as young as 8, over-the-top anime style in English dubbing can still do enough psychological damage.

The about 50 minutes long demo is dubbed Act 1 and it does feel like a glorified tutorial. The player character is a boy in a white shirt. He got dragged into setting up profiles on dating apps by his friend Chani. Here comes the only time for customization in this demo: putting in your name. The game has the Fire Emblem Three Houses kind of not-quite-fully-voiced, by which I mean it’s fully voiced except for skipping a few beats around player character’s name.

The player character then has a nightmare that day. The nightmare serves as combat tutorial, left face button for strike and down button for dodge. Well timed dodge slows down time, Bayonetta style, Right bumper is for heavy attack but the enemies need to take enough damage before this can be triggered. Do not except air jangling, the 2 arenas in this demo can be top-down and it would be fine for the “grounded” approach.

A new day came then all hell really broke loose, like we-have-to-rush-children-into-underground-bunkers-and-lock-them-in kind of hell breaking loose. Player character and his friend Chani happened to share a bunker. Then the door unexpectedly unlocked and the Ghost Train Ride truly began.

First the Queue, in which player character walking in pitch dark corridors with Chani whining all the way. This game certainly earns its M rating for blood and gore in spades, for the joke before horror imagery also involves the red fluid flowing in our veins. Player character literally ran into his first potential love interest, the stone-headed pop idol Yuna, and his head hurt. Yuna saw he bleed from the head and dropped the punch line “You all right”.

From then the game threw in the Thrills, if all breaking points can be seen as thrills. The first Thrill is mandatory stealth, piss easy kind. The monsters are all glowing red, it’s sharp contrast to the dark corridor. Not pushing the left stick too far is the tutorial given here. Then a clearly not on the poster NPC got killed a monster, a chase ensued. Click the left stick and run through an obstacle course is what the tutorial said, and yours truly died once here for not clicking the stick and caught up by the monster.

The chase ended with the “party” hiding in lockers, the choice here is share one with an old friend or the potential lover. Yours truly chose the latter, since that’s the goal for this type of games isn’t it? As the monster passing by, there is a rhythm game style QTE to hold one’s breath. The game’s Playstation priority is on display here, since the tutorial video clip shows the shapes of PS controller face buttons instead of letters everyone else use. Another thing being the game just refuses to let you leave menu by pushing right face button, menu button in and menu button out.

Dialogue options were peppered in, some went nowhere. Others added to different stats, which does not mean much in this short demo.

Eventually the 3 young survivors were told by a drone with nice lady voice to get on a train. The heavily armed vehicle on rails is likely a hub in the full game, but this demo does not show any hub function there. Other hubs were shown in the game before the ghost train took off, the player character’s apartment with special attention paid to a box of tissue and the underground bunker with special attention paid to a bunch of porno magazines. This game seems to think masturbation is essential…

The train platform here is the Gift Shop. Player character got his left arm cut off, met someone could be either a goddess or a she-devil and gained the weapon to fight back. The main event is a boos fight. One must time the dodge well then got enough hits in to break the boss’s shield, which led to QTE activated by the left trigger. Both timed button push and button mash are involved, thankful no stick pushing in the demo. QTE is not mandatory like them old God of War. The boss life bar is reduced to zero mid QTE in my playthrough and it just jumped to the end screen “encouraging” people to pre-order the game.

Well, I cannot say I’m in any rush to pre-order this game. Friction-less first act of any game won’t prepare one for some late-game frustration and RPGs are usually the worst offenders on that front. Yet if this game gets nice buzz after launch, maybe the first week discount could be worth it.