tl;dr: It's aight.
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♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, this game. Mind my time played -- I bought this game solely so I could support it, I went through it with a friend of mine, so I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who's watched it being played.
So, as far as I can tell, it's a visual novel and a 2D action game with a "leveling" system that's probably not actually a leveling system. Our hero, Adam, discovers he's an Eternal, an immortal being who basically experiences humanity throughout history, traveling the world first from England and then to everywhere else. He discovers his superpowers, and there's a ton of biblical references everywhere. We haven’t seen the strategy RPG components of it yet, but I’m kinda ok with that, because this is still an incredible acid trip and I’m sure I’ll continue to think it’s an incredible acid trip the more of it we experience.
But the biggest component of this game is its presentation, this game's presentation is INSANE. Every female character is AI voice-acted, with gigantic breasts. The animation is janky sloppy 2000s-era Flash animation puppetry, but with no consistency or cleanliness to it, which makes it all the more distinctive and memorable. The environments are all stock photos. The gameplay keeps changing like some kind of amorphous mass. The scenes where he interacts with any woman, ever, are uncomfortable as ♥♥♥♥. It feels like all of these scenes are just vignettes, where we keep seeing his life change and evolve over time, but because it doesn’t seem like it’s going anywhere, I wonder if maybe that’s the point: It’s meant to be a vehicle for you to watch this man and all of these other monsters’ experiences existing alongside humanity. Adam's entire life is a depressing cycle of growing to love someone and losing them, over and over. He lives, someone he loves dies, he moves on, over and over. They're all AI-voiced, or voiced by random people, and so I’m simultaneously incredibly attached to and invested in them, but also can’t help but feel a sense of disposability with every one of them. Maybe that’s the feeling the creator wanted to convey, considering the game’s themes of the cheapness of human life and our indelible, original sin. Except, the moment I start thinking deeply about this game, I'm ♥♥♥♥♥-slapped with yet another crazy visual or floppy musical number with admittedly awesome music.
In Japan, Adam's dressed as Ryu and he learns martial arts. In Vienna he's dressed as Guts (complete with wrist crossbow) and he fights a giant crab monster. His martial arts teacher is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Fu Manchu from Kill Bill or The God Of Martial Arts from True Legend. The writer's idea of Japan is casually confused with China. He learns to be a ninja from the Iga clan, and we watch a cutscene that explains what ninjas are. Your first horse is named Conquest. Almost EVERY asset is a stock photo, including every male character that isn't named. Every gigantic-breasted woman jiggles in full Live2D glory. Every song is AI-generated, except maybe for one song that might have been pulled from Witch On The Holy Night.
The writing is simultaneously edgy and sophomoric, but also has something amazing cooking underneath it. You can feel *some* kind of passion here. Passion for what, I have no clue and I'm still confused by it. But the passion IS present. In a way, it almost takes MORE effort to make something this ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up, and I think that's probably what makes it so oddly engrossing; that it's clearly the product of raw effort and the impossible, unbreakable iron will to create, but maybe not of competence. But in the same way you watch a children's school band performance, or a man's first day at the gym, you can't help but cheer them on through every squeaking note or every failed rep. Whoever the ♥♥♥♥ the developer of this game is, this is HIS VISION and no one else's. Everything in this game is his idea. He's like Hideo Kojima, if Hideo Kojima were actually Tommy Wiseau. Or maybe the other way around. There's definitely a fine line between genius and insanity, and Mr. Eternal Studios doesn't just walk it, he does a bunch of sick flips up and down it in much the same way his puppet characters dance.
The influences are all over the place, too -- Anime, religion, history, even bollywood. But the inconsistency IS the consistency, and in the same way you can't tell what will be on the next page of a middle schooler's Final Fantasy AU crossover fanfiction, so too does this game refuse to show its hand until finally the page is turned, and like the aforementioned fanfiction, it's so much worse but so much more amazing at the same time than you could have ever possibly imagined. This is the Finnegan’s Wake of video games, something this modern-day James Joyce of gaming wants you to experience and feel rather than play.
The main antagonist poses as Dracula in and creates the legend of the Impaler of Wallachia, and ends up retelling the whole ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ story of vampires in Transylvania. You play dress-up with Vlad Tepes' daughter, who is just the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Doomer Girljak meme, but in a hot black dress and corset with gigantic breasts. You betray the Iga ninja clan by castrating every whoremonger in Kyoto. Suddenly, you're watching a history lesson about the Ottoman Empire's reaction to Vlad the Impaler. Later, you're watching a history lesson about Elizabeth Bathory because the evil demon-possessed girl with gigantic breasts needs to drink her blood. All of her servants are made out of edited pictures of celebrities. One of them is just John Travolta in Pulp Fiction with his face slightly darkened.
You hang out with native Americans in the settlement of New Amsterdam. It's a racist caricature (but a fun one, I guess) that hits you like a freight train with the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ "INSIDE OF YOU THERE ARE TWO WOLVES" meme, delivered completely in context without a shred of irony. Adam and his native American bro are smoking pipe weed the whole ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ time they get this explained to them. New England native Americans didn't build teepees in real life, they built longhouses. But the game decides they build teepees, because every native American is Cherokee. Adam meets a gigantic-breasted native girl from another tribe (naturally she's also AI-voiced) who warns of the greatest threat of all -- The English. You might think I'm spoiling this game for you, but I assure you, the game's most absurd components have to be seen and cannot be explained.
And it SLAPS.
This game SLAPS.
I haven't been this entertained, more than anything else, by a game in a LONG time, and I think that’s incredibly important. It takes some real ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ nuts and strength of conviction to actually wake up and choose to create, and I cannot stress enough how worthy of praise this developer is for having the will to bring this... THING to its conclusion. This is Poe’s Law incarnate, completely unable to discern if it’s the world’s highest-effort ♥♥♥♥ post or to be taken without a shred of irony. Never mind polish, never mind quality, this is Sheera The Vampire Samurai meets Sergeant Kabuki Man meets Santo Vs. Dr. Death. If you can handle its jank and absurdity, this is a game you use to play Mystery Science Theatre 3000 with your friends, laughing at it, and then suddenly laughing WITH it as it delivers a completely outta pocket tongue-in-cheek line that reminds you, it's *in on the joke*. It must know how ridiculous it is, and yet it keeps going, further and further over the line and back, unashamed of what it is:
A beautiful, glorious mess.
With gigantic breasts.
