Seinarukana -The Spirit of Eternity Sword 2-
Story
A journey across infinite worlds.
The Time Tree. Countless branches extending through space, each a world of its own.
In one such world, a boy holds within him the soul of an ancient god yearning to break free. He tries to live a normal life, but must constantly struggle against the destructive urges threatening to overwhelm him. Little does he know that his closest friends also carry the burdens of an age long forgotten. With this destiny comes power; Eternity Swords with incredible might and Guardian Spirits manifested from their very souls.
The gods are reborn, friend turns on friend, and an ancient war erupts once more. Thrown into a world not his own, Nozomu must fight to bring his friends home. He must also discover the true nature of the being within him before it consumes him utterly. Thus begins a journey that will shake the very foundation of the universe.
Features
- An epic fantasy story that spans an infinite multiverse.
- Over 50 Hours of tactical RPG game-play.
- Six unique endings to unlock.
- Three difficulty levels to test your skill.
- Deep combat that challenges you to find the right path to victory.
- Build an army from 19 playable characters with hundreds of diverse skills.
- Conquer over 100 strongholds and build powerful Artifacts to aid you in battle.
Steam User 47
I would say this is not a real review at this point, and will be updating it as I get further into the game. I'm only writing this now because literally no one else has written a review yet :/
First thing first, this is a visual novel(VN) so if you don't know what that means or don't like visual novels you probably shouldn't start here, mostly because this is a sequel to another game, Aselia the eternal. For the longest time I thought it was only thematically a sequel but that isn't the case, it is a true sequel. You could play this before Aselia, but I loved Aselia so much I would hate you if you did that :[
Special note: this is the All ages - Special edition, If you want the adult scenes purchase it on j-list.
If you are still reading this and are like "I don't know about VNs but that combat system looks interesting", after 3 hours of gameplay there have been 2 choices and only scripted battles. From my experience with the prequel the battles will be much more important and take up a larger portion of the game, but if you just want the strategy game portion and are the type to skip cutscenes, there is a lot to skip.
If I haven't dissuaded you yet let's actually get into what makes this game good so far. I really love how much detail the Eternity Sword games have to their world. It takes it's time establishing it's characters and their relationships, what they eat, how they live, the language they speak, the day to day chores. This was what grabbed me so hard about Eien no Aselia and that level of detail is here as well. It would be annoying if the sped through the first chapter to get to the fighting faster, because the characters motivations wouldn't be as developed.
That said I feel there are a few things that take me out of it. There was one scene that confused me because it jumped away from the protagonist to see a conversation we wouldn’t know about, which is fine, except the protagonist was on their way to that room and it seemed for a bit he was listening in to it but he wasn’t and it made me kinda glitch out (
I also felt that certain characters we see in chapter one should have spoken in Phantasmagorian (their special made up language) so we wouldn’t know anything about what they were up to the first time through, but oh well.
The art has a similar style to it as the previous title but it shows that it is a newer title in how clean the art is. Art is too subjective for me to say it’s good or bad, I like the designs of all the charactors, if you want to see for yourself the art check some videos.
The music isn’t anything really special, but the use of the music is on point and I would suggest playing it with the music as it really helps set the emotional moods and makes it more immersive.
All in all it is a worthy successor to Eien no Aselia, and I’m looking forward to finishing it.
I streamed onto youtube the prolog and chapter 1 with a friend of mine, if you wanna see some of that to get a feel of the game check it out here:
Steam User 21
Seinarukana is a lengthy game with 6 possible routes. It's about 50% visual novel and 50% SRPG, imo. Your choices and gameplay matter for which route you get. With that said, each route simply focuses on a specific heroine in your harem, and the mechanics for getting the end you want is fairly obvious. It's technically a sequel to Aselia the Eternal, but other than taking place within the same universe (er.....multiverse) and a couple small easter eggs (Tokimi is still best girl) this is completely stand-alone, and you won't lose anything from skipping the first one.
On the strategy side, units take turns traveling on points along fixed lines, with each point having small stat modifiers and healing/leveling/etc. taking place in towns. In this series, units are generally squads of 3 characters, with an 'attacker,' 'defender,' and 'supporter.' When your squad of 3 sprites meets an enemy squad of 3, they proceed to take turns beating each other up within that 'encounter' in a different screen. The vast majority of your tactics lies in how you organize your squads and their abilities (and there is a dizzying plethora of abilities) rather than how you move them, although that's important too.
I personally enjoyed the story of the first game a bit more. The dark tone and sense of desperation that persisted for so much of Aselia was addictive. Additionally, the harem cliches are slightly stronger in this one, which is always a bad thing in my book. However, I still enjoyed the characters, and I don't want to give too much away, but while I like the Iliad better, the Odyssey has some charm as well. So in the end, it's an apple and an orange.
The SRPG side is significantly improved from the first game. They got rid of the stupid mind mechanic and added something called combat mana. The outcome of each encounter is no longer predetermined. Your typical encounter now plays out in 10 turns (each side takes 5), so skills no longer have multiple 'actions.' Your skills cost 'combat mana,' and your characters only charge 2 combat mana per turn, so if a skill costs more than that, it won't occur. You can change the positions in your squad every turn, and the AI NOW CHANGES POSITION TOO! This adds a small element of luck since the enemy behavior differs from squad to squad.
Unfortunately, a few issues from the first game are still present. In particular, the awkwardness of constructing buildings and manually leveling up your characters to prepare for unknown threats while trying to finish a mission as quickly as possible has not gone away. The weirdest part of it is that in the first game, you were often trying to survive the onslaught of an enemy horde on your decrepit villages, so towers were ubiquitous. In contrast, in Seinarukana, every mission is an offensive campaign, your buildings will only last for two or three missions max, but it offers a smorgasbord of defensive buildings. I literally built defensive buildings on one mission in this entire game, and even on that occasion, it panned out that I was just overreacting and didn't need them.
tl;dr
- Story was good but not amazing? Like a 6-8/10
- Tactics is a lot better, but still has a couple of flaws.
- If you enjoyed the first one, it's almost guaranteed you'll like this one too.
Steam User 13
First off, this was translated by Aroduc so if you like previous translations from Seiha then get the game. I know that on the blog for the translation there were complaints about removing flavor text from the second page of abilities to display what the ability does. I PREFER the way Aroduc translates because having what the abilities do is FAR MORE IMPORTANT imho than random flavor text. That bein said, Aroduc does try to localize sometimes so if you are a 'purist' then you probably won't like it.
Second, this is one of the only game heavy VNs licensed in English in existence right now. So if you want a VN with good gameplay, BUY this to send a message to the industry for more. In addition, if you are put off by typical JRPG games due to grinding, this game does not require heavy grinding but rather smart gameplay.
This game is still a VN however, as evidenced by the very long intro (2-4 hours before a real battle) and numerous dialogues in between each campaign. Plot wise it follows the standard 'call to action' -> 'journey' -> 'climax' -> 'denoumont' format of fiction. It does try to put in a few mature real life scenes. It follows the setting of introducing characters in a school setting to try to connect to (I guess the target audience) and then transports them to the actual story setting like Muv Luv does.
With regards to the gameplay I would describe it as a simpler Madou Koukaku/Nobunaga's Ambition without empire building and better battle mechanics. Madou Koukaku is an anime fantasy themed Total War like SRPG (except not translated into English). Nobunaga's Ambition is a Total War like game as well.
For a more mainstream comparison, imagine controlling armies on the world map from Fire Emblem Awakening and having turn based Rock paper scissors combat instead of a tactical grid.
Do note that this game took a long time to get onto Steam from release so art assets are dated somewhat. I think the art looks fine as it is. As a disclaimer, if you are looking for Eushully like quality or more modern art quality you will be dissapointed. I would say the art quality is a notch above Recettear and around the same as Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon.
Lastly if you are looking for the non all ages version you should buy from other sites. Or honestly you should just go and buy Sakura Dungeon or something because that will get you want you want for far less effort. I think the all ages version is fine so far and they added new scenes for the all ages version.
Advice for playing: - Turn off combat animations in settings after the first campaign (cutscenes prior to that won't make sense without animation). Save frequently! If you lose a battle you have to restart the campaign. Also build artificats early on that increase Mana conversion rate, you will want it later.
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Aside: I kinda wish they made a 2D campaign map though, Madou Koukaku had a prettier 2D map and honestly for indier games like Nobunaga's Ambition or Seinarukana 2D looks so much better than 3D and it's cheaper too. Oh, and if you are reading this JAST: I would love a translation of Madou in English because machine translation is unintelligable.
Steam User 12
Giving a thumb since robopanda333 make the patch.
Story and logic IMO, is inferior to aselia (Ex: all alternate world speak japanese; while aselia the MC need to learn the language).
Battle again IMO, aselia have better elemental order and skills.
Overall was hyped knowing it was translated, but was kinda disappointed that it didnt meet my expectation plus screen resolution problem. i would recomend playing aselia than seinarukana sadly.
Steam User 6
Don't Expect the Greatness of Aselia
My desire to promote Visual Novel - Turn-Based Strategy hybrids is at war with the part of me that's saying if I were making one, it wouldn't be like Seinarukana. I give it a very reluctant thumbs-up after being on the fence for most of the game. No technical issues, whatsoever, is the absolute extent of what Seinarukana does better than Aselia, in my opinion.
Starting with plot. As for the two main heroines, I found their flaws to be front-and-center, overshadowing their strengths. Nozomi struck me as possessive, clingy and jealous, while her main competition Satsuki struck me as bossy, overly flirty and self-absorbed. These two don't stand up too well when compared with Aselia and Esperia. Other options presented themselves, thankfully, and I went with Katima. I was on the fence between Katima and Ruputna, but once I realized Ruputna wasn't the girl from the intro I immediately went Katima all the way. Glad I did; Ruputna is as dumb as a box of rocks. However, the personalities of the other four romance options aren't very fleshed out. One of the biggest flaws of the plot is that there's just too damn many characters, and that causes dialogue and events to be spread pretty thin among the cast. They get lines here and there, but they're predictable and insufficient. They could've done without Naya and Narukana, just to name a couple. Maybe the reason for adding them would become evident if I played their routes, but it's not happening. Katima's route I can barely call satisfying. I picked up a few cutscenes specific to Katima and a very tiny ending scene. Seriously? After watching a great deal of the second half of Aselia change based on the romanced character I picked, I was astounded to receive so little in Seinarukana. Could be that the game wanted me to pick Nozomi or Satsuki... and then listen to them needle one another about who's got a better grip on Nozomu? Screw that. Then on top of the romance mess, the plot gets far too grandiose. Without giving specifics, it tries to do too much and gets convoluted, Person X is a pawn of Person Y who's actually dancing to the tune of Person Z the entire time... so let's just beat the hell out of everyone finally stopping with the creator of the worlds. It goes far into the realm of ridiculousness.
Then comes the battles. I'll start by saying I was content with how Aselia did things up until the final dungeon, which was huge and had far too many nodes, making it a complete slog (and the main reason I played 2 routes instead of them all). Well, that final dungeon slog was how I felt about just about all of the battles in Seinarukana. The maps were much larger, and my army is still moving at one node at a time. Skills became a lot more complicated, which meant diving into character skill screens a lot more to make sure my team wouldn't get slaughtered. Battles were an absolute slog, and I wished for a SKIP button for the battles as they've provided for the dialog. Still, with enough planning (not to mention completely shutting off all animations, which is probably mandatory), I slogged through in hopes the plot would reward. That's when I ran into the bosses. They're cheap as all hell. When I got my ass handed to me in Aselia, I could always trace the fault back to me. When I got beat by Seinarukana, however, it was a result of the game providing insufficient information. A lot of early-ish bosses require specific skills and builds to beat successfully. While I certainly don't expect pushovers, the player needs a bit more information than that. Currently, it's a matter of going with a generic setup and hoping it sufficient, and if it isn't, I'm forced to reload and optimize my team to suit the boss. That's not the way strategy should be, in my opinion.
What kept me from a thumbs-down review was that around 3/4 of the way through, the game pulled an FFT and provided the player a "T.G. Cid" character that can literally solo the rest of the game. Nothing could stand in her way, even the final boss. She was my Easy Button, the next best thing to a SKIP button for battles, and you better believe I pressed her relentlessly. The game never punished me for it.
In the first game, after I completed Esperia's route I wanted to jump right back in and complete Aselia's route right away, and I did so, astounded at all of the new content. I hoped for the same with Seinarukana, but after completing Katima's route, I'm done. I don't want to jump back in. I don't think slogging through battles (from Chapter 8 and on only; I have the perfect save point too) is worth two (likely small) cutscenes with heroines I don't even like.
Steam User 2
Good game. The world-building itself is pretty engaging as it tried to expand on what Aselia the Eternal introduced and although the plot is less original and heavy in comparison it's still good enough. Other fun part is how the scale of plot and perspective on things significantly grows with each chapter in more or less surprising way. Some problems are well pointed out in other reviews but I'd still recommend the game if you care about the tactical gameplay aspect or want more world-building after the first game (or both!).
Steam User 2
This kind of game are too rare, so thanks for translating it.
it is basically a mix between a visual novel and a Tactical RPG, so be aware there will phases with lots of talking/speaking.
As Aselia was the first of this kind of game I played, it is always a bit hard to compare the next ones as it does not seem so new.
I did not yet finished this one yet, but to sum up quickly, from my POV:
- the story is not as good than Aselia (not " way worse", but not as good)
- the battle are more developped
- The game seems longer (perhaps because I let the "auto" mode (1 notch faster than original speed) instead of clicking)
Anyway, I would recommend it.