Eden's Last Sunrise

This is one of those times when I'd like to give a "meh" review. I decided on thumbs-down because the game's prior rating was so high; had it been low, I'd have given it a thumbs-up instead. There are a lot of pros: The story and characters are really compelling. It's a fascinating world and I enjoyed learning about it as the game progressed. As a visual novel, it's superb, and I highly recommend it. I really love how they mixed science fiction and fantasy. The music and voice acting are good, but not exceptionally so. The graphics have a retro feel, but it works. The art style is nice. But there is one very big con: The tactical gameplay (which is most of the gameplay, aside from a simple strategic layer), just isn't interesting. It has a lot of complicated bits and moving parts, but it inevitably turns into this: 1. Walk toward enemies 2. Attack 3. Enemies attack back 4. Repeat 2-3 until they die or you do There's a bit of flavor to it, depending on whether you're attacking with guns, or swords, or magic. But functionally it ends up pretty much the same: attack, attack, attack. Occasionally you get some area-of-effect, particularly with spells; but the positioning usually makes it not that helpful. I don't think I'm playing it wrong. I play a lot of tactical games, I've been winning the fights, and I think I really am playing pretty well. It's just that the game really doesn't offer the depth it's trying to. There are a lot of complicated options that aren't really [i]live[/i] options because they are strategically unwise. I think the biggest problems are the following: 1. Weapon ranges are too short: You can only shoot someone from about one move away, so having a gun isn't really an advantage. 2. Too many enemies are melee: There's no point taking cover when everyone is using swords. I get that the locals are primitive, but how about some bows at least? 3. No overwatch: I can only fire on my turn, when enemies are going to be either in cover or already in my face. 4. Buffs and special actions aren't worth the action economy; it's almost always better to just attack. If I'm gonna take an action to get a stealth buff that only lasts until I attack, I want it to be full-on [i]cloaking[/i], not just a little numerical defense buff. If I'm gonna spend my turn taunting enemies, it should both force them to attack only me, [i]and[/i] make my defenses stronger (in this game, it does neither). If I get an anti-magic field, I want it to stop all magic completely, not just debuff it a moderate amount. Otherwise, it simply isn't worth the action. 5. Ammo runs out too quickly, and I can't find a way to reload? What, you only carried one magazine? 6. At least early on, there are no live options for equipment changes. Each character just has their starting equipment and that's it. You [i]could[/i] unequip it, but you have nothing worth replacing it with. (I assume this changes later, and it would be forgivable on its own; after all, it's largely true of XCOM too. But it doesn't help.) 7. If I change a character's class, I don't see how to get the equipment needed for that class; e.g. I can make my Enforcer have a secondary class of Agent, but I can't give her a gun!? It's a lot of surprisingly [i]subtle[/i] mistakes, but it adds up to an overall disappointing experience. I found myself looking forward to the story, but not to the fights. I suppose it would be a lot to ask a small indie developer to give me XCOM-level tactical combat, but I was hoping for something a little more than "attack, attack, attack". I'm writing this review after only playing through a few fights, so it's possible it gets better later. But even so, the first few fights were not encouraging in terms of their tactical depth.

It's really good. Most indie tactical RPGs tend to have some major flaws, and it's common to see reviews ranging from Mixed to Mostly Positive for many of them. But then comes Eden's Last Sunrise, which surprised me. Not only is it good, but it's also very well-rounded. A good, original story? Check! Main and secondary class system? Check. Multiple endings and replayability? Check! Time management system? Of course. Final Fantasy-style card minigame? Check!!! Persona-style character relationship system? You guessed it ;) Of course, none of this is overwhelmingly deep, let's not forget this is an indie game. That said, it undoubtedly deserves many more fans, so go for it or at least give the demo a chance. [quote] [i] Follow [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44959158-Critiques-Sans-Frontiers/] our curator page [/url] to discover more underrated games like this one. [/i] [/quote]

It took me a moment to realize this was the same dev who worked on the Reconstruction series lmao. Honestly, I love it, even if its on the easier side of tactical RPGs but I love it. And I'm definitely pushing for multiple playthroughs and enjoy this game to the fullest.

Another good game from an underappreciated indie dev. I almost never play these tactics-style games, but the main gameplay loop does a good job at easing you into its mechanics. Switching a unit's class can be done at any time as long as they meet the stat requirements, which encourages you to experiment with different builds. The story gives you two completely different paths to choose from: spacefarer or dweller. I can only speak for the spacefarer side of things on my first playthrough, but the overall story is great. It focuses on science vs nature, and what you would do to save your world if a mysterious anomaly was coming to destroy it. The characters are even better than the story: I loved Skint and Tez most of all, but there should be an option out there for everyone to connect to. This game even includes some cameo characters from the Tenth Line, which were cool to find. The biggest problem I have here is the slow battle speed. My first playthrough took around 20 hours to complete, and a speed up function would have shaved a few hours off of this total. Battles can start to feel a bit tedious by the endgame as a result. Enemy AI can get confused sometimes, too, becoming stuck on high ground when they can't find a good path to their target. I have some other questions when it comes to balancing and battle design choices, like why only a select few abilities can target empty tiles when you might want to, say, lay down miasma tiles for an enemy to walk into later. Secondary classes also don't have as much of an impact on your builds as they could, instead only changing a few abilities. But at the end of the day, the battle system is relatively fun. Combat in this game is on the easier side of things unless you turn the difficulty up to max, but I don't mind that. I'll probably be coming back to this game later to do a dweller playthrough on ng+. It's worth seeing the other side of the story and its characters at least once, even if the gameplay could use a bit more tweaking to make it feel less repetitive.

Большой микс жанров - Тактическая РПГ, Пошаговая тактика, Стратегия, Карточная а так же прилично диалогов и немалый сюжет. Интересный микс в котором требуется не мало времени чтоб разобраться. https://youtu.be/cnPpMxK1XJc

Doesnt look like the developer is still supporting the game with, and a tactical combat game where you cant adjust the animation speed is just a terrible design. Especially since some of the AI take forever to think about their turn, then slowly walk 6 spaces, then slowly do their attack. I couldnt get through more than a couple of battles. Which is devastating as the story seemed awesome and the mechanics looked cool. But fights were taking 4-5 times longer than they needed to due to no ability to speed up the combat animations. Very disappointed, was looking forward to trying this game.

I love this game. I played it when I really crave a tactical RPG at the time and the game just gave me what I really need. Let's start with how the game is when you play it for the first time. You got to choose which faction you want to be, the spacefarer or the surface dwellers. Still, after I played the game I will say that playing as the surface dwellers actually gave more benefits to you because along the story because you would not know who to trust hence making your future decision more interesting. Also, as surface dwellers you got Kesh, a sunspell which is an OP class no joke, and also Jess, a lovely bodyguard who are really good at melee. Next, for the core tactical gameplay, it is really fun. There's some sort of stuff you can do to do extra damage ranging from ailments to enemy resistance. Having 2 weapon slot plus 1 item slot and even having 2 class on 1 character can make a character do lots of stuff based on how you want them to be. For example, I make Jess become a Bloodthrob, a melee class and a Sunspell, a magic class. With Large sword and a magic crystal, she is a killing machine because she can attack anyone regardless how far they are. Then, there comes the liberation system. You liberate a region by assigning your troops to a task each region provide. Once you liberate it you will gain resources from it. These resources can later be used to upgrade your weapon and armor. It is a pretty cool mechanic that I never encountered in my life at all and I like it. Also, the characters in this games are loveable. I like that there is a socialize option in the game so you get to spend times with the character and know a lot more about their backgrounds, problems and all of that. I don't know if there is anything that will happen if you don't socialize with them because If you are like me, you will always try to max their trust. Speaking with them can also change your perspective of them, from character you hate to character you envy, from character you are scared of to character that you love. It will happen. [b]Ending Spoiler Ahead!!![/b] There is some things I want to address though like having a character to appear and gone in a milliseconds on the bottom edge of the screen when placing the troops on the battlefield. Second, the true ending is not as pleasing like the normal ending because hey, at least in the normal ending I got to see the characters speak to me and have some heartwarming moments. Also, the status effect should be shown a lot more clear on the character's hud because the only way I knew a character status is by looking at their aura which is hard to remember. So that's pretty much it. It is a great tactical RPG and it is obviously an improvement to the developer previous games. I look forward for the developer's next game and I hope he can continue to deliver us many more great games.

To be honest, I don't know how to feel about this one. I can repeat what other people have said: the characters are well-written (Mahk my beloved), the story is compelling, and the gameplay is enjoyable. But I don't think that fully encapsulates some of the mixed feelings that I have. What I experienced in the final route was far more personal than I was expecting, and I don't know if that's a good or bad thing? This review is going to be a reflection on the true ending and why I don't I have it in me to hate this game. Spoilers from here on out. [spoiler]Coming into my 5th and final playthrough, I was already burnt out from over 80 hours of gameplay at this point. Every route I had experienced so far had an unsatisfying conclusion, which motivated me to see what the true ending would be. Some issues I had with the story at this point were that the characters, while individually fleshed out, never felt like they had the opportunity to interact with each other much due to how the game was structured. Once you got on a route, the main party members of your faction felt shafted in favor of that route's faction leader and their plans. I also wished that your party members would exert more of their agency instead of fully trusting every decision you made as their commander. In some routes you are doing things that your party members would probably hate you for (enslaving dwellers, planning to exile/kill all spacefarers), but rarely do they voice their concerns, and even when they do, those doubts don't lead to anything. Needless to say, I had high expectations for the final route of this game. In it, you unify both spacefarers and dwellers through the knowledge that you've gained through multiple playthroughs. I thought that without the restrictions that the other routes had, there would be room for development and interactions between factions as characters grapple with what to do after being told to wait until the anomaly comes. I definitely didn't expect every character, especially the faction leaders, to so readily trust you and band together, nor did I think that this route would be the shortest, skipping straight from week 10 to the final days without any cutscenes in-between. A few battles later and I see the final scene with all of the characters vanishing...then the game just ends. None of the issues I had with the story or characters were resolved. I find it difficult to just exclude this route from an evaluation of the full game because of its impact. The title screen is empty now, and a new game is treated as a hypothetical scenario rather than canon. If every route before seemed to be about escaping, ignoring, or fighting against the anomaly with varying degrees of success, this one is about accepting the anomaly, and I didn't know how to feel about that.[/spoiler] [spoiler]Now for a badly timed segue into something completely different (but still relevant, I promise)! Did you know that Eden’s Last Sunrise is based on the Reconstruction series that the developer created over 10 years ago? I’ve never played any of these older games, but I do know that characters and themes from those games make a return. Knowing this, I started to look at the Last Sunrise in a very different light. I see Eden’s Last Sunrise as a second chance and sendoff to the Reconstruction series as a whole. The developer with his newfound experience took characters, new and old, and told their stories the best he could. He offers them empathy through their complex emotions, compassion for all no matter their deeds, and mercy by essentially “freeing” them from the story. These characters were born in a doomed world, and all of their attempts to fight against the anomaly aren’t without sacrifice or consequence. Maybe, in the developer’s eyes, the only way to really give them peace and end the time loops was to allow them to transcend the bounds of the story itself. To accept the anomaly is to accept that all stories must come to an end. For us, it also means accepting that death is inevitable. The difference between us and these characters is that our stories haven’t ended yet. Even when we close the book on a lifelong project of ours, we can always make something new. A new day will come, and we can still watch the sunrise. And you know what? Maybe I’m wrong about all of this. I don’t know what was going through the developer’s head when making this game. This is the most charitable reading I can give with a bit of context. I still have issues with this game, and the Last Sunrise feels like it was meant more for the developer than the player. But I can’t bring myself to hate this game. Ending a story is never easy, especially one that you’ve been working on for over a decade, and I respect the developer for being able to end things on his own terms instead of letting the series stagnate. I can’t deny the fact that I got a bit emotional after seeing the narrator remind us that all things must come to an end. It felt like the developer was finally leaving the past behind and reassuring himself that things would be okay. So while the Last Sunrise wasn’t what I personally expected, which left me feeling unsatisfied, it will stick with me for a long time. I know I’m arriving to this party extremely late. It has been 3 years since this game was released and since then, the developer has released Dragon Detective which I plan to play in the future. I also haven’t played through the Reconstruction series, which may have made the true ending feel more impactful. At the very least, I’m happy that the developer was able to achieve some sort of catharsis with the end of this project, and that he is still making games to this day. [i]“And, don't forget...All things must end. It's time to go. Have you left your mark upon the world? Are you ready to move forward?”[/i] [/spoiler]