Studio Sai’s action-adventure dating sim Eternights made a big splash on its reveal in June of last year. As a ion project largely crafted by one primary developer, it’s something of a marvel in of its presentation and scope, but Eternights’ twitchy combat and regressive romance tropes hold it back from unqualified recommendation. Whether its strongest aspects tip the scales will largely depend on player tolerances, but it’s still a gutsy game that works hard to earn its finest moments.

In classic dating sim fashion, players take on the role of a basic avatar cipher, a blue-haired male who they can name but is otherwise a slightly immature self-professed “loser” of sorts. A pesky apocalyptic scenario revolving around an anti-aging drug known as Eternights mutates the streets and floods them with corrupted civilians, compelling he and his best friend Chani to venture forth, wield sudden supernatural abilities, and save the world alongside a motley crew of romanceable survivors.

Tentacle Boy Meets World

After violently losing his arm, Eternights’ hero is granted a magical replacement which morphs into a magical sword, as well as some power tools (?) for greater damage during extended combos. It’s more than enough to vanquish monsters during the city-delving portions of gameplay, and its amorphous properties are used to humorous effect in some encounters with Yuna, who refers to the hero as “Tentacle Boy” for…well, possibly several reasons.

Eternights frequently cartwheels across the fence of Japanese dating sim tropes and clichés, right down to the archetypes presented in the game’s potential partners on their homebase city train. There’s pop star ingénue Yuna, brainy yet icy scientist Sia, sporty and sheltered Min, and mysteriously world-weary Yohan. Den mother Aria fusses around the sidelines and serves to guide the early game, which sees the protagonist come to with their empowering disfigurement before stepping up to the savior role for purposes of righteousness and romance.

The game has its charms, and even demonstrates some successfully dramatic narrative beats, but it can often be frustratingly immature. There’s a certain threshold for this structure in the dating sim genre, but there’s limited agency to steer a particular romantic persona, and many dialogue choices are functionally identical. Instead, Eternights focuses on whom the player wishes to court as friend or partner during the adventure, utilizing a simple day/night time-management system with sufficient leeway for mistakes.

Apocalyptic Speed Dating & Simple Combat

That means kicking back with the game’s cast in between forays into the city – and occasionally going on combat “dates” therein – while boosting some basic conversational stats like “Acceptance” and “Expression.” Essentially, just being around is mostly all that’s needed to hustle things into PG-rated snuggle territory, with the most resistant facade melting in the hero's flirtatious AOE. Anyone in the mood for something more explicit should look elsewhere, as Eternights is predictably chaste and reserved throughout, aside from some perverted humor which misses more often than it lands.

It's clear that the game aims for that Persona-perfected balance of work and play, but both sides of the Eternights gameplay coin often fall short. In the action portions, players command the hero through mutated city environs while other characters follow close behind as conscripted s. Basic combat is mostly restricted to a single attack button and combo, which allows players to work up to a stronger strike and activate a simple QTE, the latter of which is required to break the shields of tougher enemies.

A simple rock-paper-scissors elemental system is occasionally used, and perfectly timed dodges throw the action into slow-mo while opening up the more defensive enemies to damage while building up to the next combo. These fundamentals carry the combat for the majority of Eternights and, aside from a particularly noxious series of endgame encounters, it’s accessible and coherent enough in the small doses of its structure while never truly rising above that bar. The QTEs are almost immediately exposed as cumbersome half-baked gimmicks which wear out their welcome as quickly as the first hour.

City of Nightmares

What’s left, then, is the story and simulation of romance, which does fare somewhat better. Eternights’ narrative whiplashes between silly moments and some genuine darkness, with players taking a simple scavenging side quest to retrieve a teddy bear for their crush before being faced with the mounting death toll in city scenes (which they will alternately employ as a dating backdrop). Again, in spite of this dissonance, the game features storytelling peaks which deserve not to be spoiled, but appreciating that story as a whole requires a healthy tolerance for the contrasting tone.

Most of the game features excellent English voice-acting, performances which help sell the narrative and add poignancy to the script. A naughty or childish joke is usually close at hand, but there’s enough eventual depth revealed in the cast and their actors to outshine their clichéd trappings. Everything is further helped along by Eternights’ striking visual style, which alternates between relatively simplistic 3D designs and some superb but lightly animated hand-drawn cutscenes. Many enemies and city scenes are effectively nightmarish, including several twisted Cronenbergian horrors wielding swords made of fused limbs, and one distressing set piece sees a massive wall of smartphones blare out the final social media posts of the plague’s unwitting victims.

Indie Ambitions & Gameplay Diversity

For such a tiny studio, Eternights’ confident aesthetic deserves all the praise it’s already received in previews, even though some may scoff at the simplicity of its textures or limited animations. If anything, this should serve to compliment its utterly convincing presentation; its indie roots are only most apparent on closer inspection, since its ambition and scope are of AAA-gaming caliber. The garish UI is the game’s most glaring problem, with placeholder-like sans serif fonts and a large calendar icon in the HUD which compromises otherwise attractive screenshots.

Besides the two types of "action" on offer, Eternights giddily tosses in small surprises throughout much of the adventure, like simple one-off minigames and uncanny dream sequences. Some light puzzles in certain levels help break up the combat monotony, and developing each relationship offers buffs or special attacks, which lend immediacy to the dating pursuits.

Chani starts off as an irritating sidekick, but eventually evolves a weird self-awareness arc that is somewhat reminiscent of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and his voice actor delivers one of Eternights’ star performances overall. The plot has its ebbs and flows and features a dénouement which is sure to polarize players, but it’s ultimately successful on its own , so long as one forgives the most problematic aspects of its dating concept and tonal curveballs.

Final Thoughts & Review Score

Eternights is commendable but contentious, an intimate apocalyptic action-adventure that reaches for greatness with limited resources. For every unsophisticated story beat or half-baked mechanic, a pleasant surprise or diversion appears to take its place, a dynamic which should motivate almost anyone intrigued by the premise to see the story through. It all makes Eternights a fine first date, but it might not be marriage material.

Eternights releases on September 12 for PC, PlayStation 5, and PlayStation 4. A digital PC code was provided to Screen Rant for the purpose of this review.