Eternity – The Last Unicorn
I was really excited because this elicited memories of the movie from my childhood. I was looking forward to a unicorn and some game play that would bring back days of innocence and having no clue what I was actually doing. What this game is, doesn’t satisfy my childhood itch to save a unicorn and definitely doesn’t bring back any innocence. It is determinedly unsatisfying game play that brings annoyance and irritation.
The graphics are pretty good. I like the clarity, the colors, and I really like artwork. All of that was done quite well and is very pleasing to look at while playing. The storyline borrows heavily from Norse mythology so it’s nothing overly imaginative but it’s still decent, and it’s nice to read a little between certain sections of the game instead of sitting on a load screen with nothing going on. The methods for which you advance from one area to the next involves crafting and having the right ‘ingredients’ to make the keys. That and a little bit of crafting in the game to make potions round out the positives.
After that, the game is just awkward and unsatisfying in several ways. The screen is single direction locked, reminiscent of PS1 games. I do not enjoy jogging leisurely at the screen unable to see what I’m going towards. Let alone having to do that back and forth between the same areas repeatedly before finally being able to move on to a new area.
Next the combat setup is awkward and unwieldy. Targeting of enemies doesn’t work well and until you finally get the bow which provides you with ranged attacks, you have only 2 attacks. The faster, normal attack and a power attack that requires a moment of buildup. That makes sense in an ‘Adventures of Link’ sort of way I suppose. You can also heal yourself but not only does it expose you to harm during combat from which you can’t defend, it also has a specific set time to take effect. Most of the time you’re dead before it happens.
Lastly and as I briefly mentioned before, the game play requires that you “run” back and forth between locations several times and you can either walk or move at a slight jog. That’s it. It’s so slow when you’re running back 3 or 4 screens you could take a nap. Aside from that the game forces you to move around in somewhat linear fashion, different paths barely going off the same main trail. All of that adds up to my being very annoyed and I just didn’t find the positives of the game enough to overcome the negatives.
I could forgive one or maybe two of these issues, but when all of the required interactive and challenging game play is on the wrong side of that line it’s not going to go well. In this case it was just too many old style issues that aren’t present in games anymore to be good enough. It’s a good option if your dream is to one day save a Unicorn regardless of how rough the game really is, but otherwise I would not recommend this game.
