Eternights Deluxe Edition

Eternights is the kind of game that sounds absurd on paper and then quietly steals twenty hours from you. It is a hybrid action RPG and social sim set during an honest-to-goodness apocalypse, developed solo by Studio Sai and released in 2023. The core loop alternates between time-limited relationship building with a small cast of companions and fast-paced hack-and-slash dungeon combat. Think Persona's social link structure fused with character action combat, filtered through a very earnest indie sensibility. The combat system is more mechanically interesting than its budget origins suggest. Your protagonist fights with a transforming arm that doubles as a melee weapon, and each companion you level up unlocks new abilities you can chain into combos. Parrying is genuinely important, not just an optional flourish, and learning enemy timing patterns matters in the harder dungeon segments. It is not deep enough to satisfy someone coming off Devil May Cry, but it holds together well and never feels like pure filler between the story beats. The challenge curve is reasonable without demanding a grind for stat inflation. The social side is where the game wears its heart loudest. There are five romanceable companions, each with a distinct arc shaped by the collapse of civilization around them. The writing is uneven, occasionally veering into melodrama it has not quite earned, but the best character moments hit with genuine emotional weight. Choices in conversations affect relationship progression and feed back into combat unlocks, so the two halves of the game are actually stitched together rather than sitting in separate compartments. Whether your choices feel meaningful long-term depends on which route you take, and a second playthrough does surface different material worth seeing. The honest criticisms: some routes feel noticeably shorter and less developed than others, the pacing in the mid-game sags when the dungeon content repeats itself without introducing enough mechanical variation, and the art style, while charming, is inconsistent. A few scenes clearly received more polish than others. The time management system creates real tension early on, but by the final act it stops feeling dangerous. The Deluxe Edition includes the soundtrack and a digital artbook, which is genuinely worthwhile if the game's aesthetic lands for you. For whom? If you have a soft spot for Persona 4's social calendar structure, want something shorter and more self-contained than a 100-hour JRPG, and can tolerate some rough edges around a genuinely sweet narrative core, Eternights earns its playtime. It is the work of a single developer who clearly loved the genre, and that sincerity shows through even where the execution is imperfect. Go in expecting a personal, compact experience rather than a genre benchmark and you will likely come out charmed. Monika, Scout Team