Rise Eterna Reviews
Rise Eterna is good enough to give tactical RPG fans something to enjoy while they await big studio releases, but its lack of difficulty and unfortunate UI issues will prevent other gamers from playing through to its unsatisfying ending.
One of the many clones of the old-school Fire Emblem. With Rise Eterna can play quite tolerably, but there is something in it that could attract to the console for longer and justify the purchase.
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Rise Eterna is not terrible by any means. It's a perfectly playable effort to emulate Fire Emblem. But it's also incredibly shallow, lacks character and meaningful narrative, and misfires in several critical areas with the gameplay. On the other hand, since Nintendo and Intelligent Systems are showing no haste in announcing a new Fire Emblem, I guess we've got to take what we can get.
Fans of strategy RPGs with a more classic 16-bit style will likely be drawn to Rise Eterna on looks alone, but beware that the vintage look comes with some quality of play issues that also feel a bit out of date...
Rise Eterna tells the story of Natheal who is basically muscle to a group of bandits. One night, the bandits attempt to invade and rob a city while Natheal keeps guard at their fire camp. The next day, our hero realizes that his pals have not returned. He heads for the village only to see it in shambles and finds a young woman hurt on the ground, somehow still alive. As he brings her back to the camp to heal her, he realizes that she killed his employers in defending her village. With nowhere else to go, the girl, Lua, tags along with Natheal as they head to discover Lua’s mysterious origins.
Makee definitely knew what it wanted Rise Eterna to be. I applaud some of its ideas, like how the developer tried to implement a crafting system and skill tree. But on the whole, it doesn’t offer the same balanced challenges as its contemporaries.
Rise Eterna is a decent throwback to the various classic and old-school titles in the SRPG genre that shows passion and potential. But along the way, the game also inherited some of the issues that have since been ironed out in modern titles or at least redefined. I couldn’t help but wish that the influences weren’t so prominent in the adventure because this game deserves to stand out a little more. Still, fans of SRPGs who are nostalgic for the more old-school and classic gameplay systems will find exactly what they’re looking for here.
Rise Eterna certainly does not reinvent the wheel. Unfortunately, this applies to the story as well as the overall gameplay, which uses genre standards rather than breaking new ground. However, if you have a hankering for an old school classic tactical RPG, then Rise Eterna could just be the game for you.