Monday, March 28, 2016

Eternal Senia

I try to devote a rant to most Indie RPGs I play, on the basis that they usually can use the extra publicity (though not always; holy shit Undertale got popular fast). I’m not sure whether today’s subject, Eternal Senia, really benefits from publicity the way most other Indie RPGs would, though, since Eternal Senia is free on Steam--does its creator, Holy Priest, actually get any money from the game? I really don’t have any idea. But I do know that either way, ES is a great RPG and that whether or not publicity benefits it, playing it benefits others, so on we go.

Eternal Senia is a free Indie RPG available on Steam, made using RPG Maker. Now, yes, everyone and their mother seems to have dabbled with RPG maker at this point, but that doesn’t mean you don’t still find some quality works coming from it. Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle, though sadly getting harder and harder to locate since its creator vanished into the mists of the internet, remains one of the better RPGs I’ve ever played, an artistic work of video game storytelling that contains within it great emotional power and one of my favorite RPG romances to date, and it was made with RPG Maker. And Eternal Senia joins it as another really great game resulting from the RPG Maker program.

Eternal Senia is relatively straightforward in terms of its plot. Senia is a girl who has entered the Tower of Eternity to save her adopted older sister Magaleta, who is a powerful demon-fighting magical holy nun or something...you know, anime stuff. And that really is basically the game right there--you take Senia up through the tower to save Magaleta, learning about their history and the lore of Eternity as you go along. That’s not to say that there aren’t plot twists and story depth in ES, of course, but it all just boils down to a simple story of the incredible, touching love between these 2 sisters.

What makes this game so great is how incredibly poignant it is. Some RPGs are about the ideas and events of a story most of all (Deus Ex 1, for example), some are more personal, with the characters and their interrelationships being the center of game (Planescape: Torment, for example), and most, I would say, are a balance between the 2 sides (Wild Arms 3, for example).* Eternal Senia falls into the second category, drawing you into the story of its protagonist and her sister, and bringing you massive, massive doses of what is clinically known as The Feels. Seriously, if you enjoyed choking back sobs and feeling your heart itself affected by the tale of, say, Mother 3 or Undertale, then you’ll love this game.

It’s actually kind of remarkable how quickly you become invested in this story of love, devotion, and sacrifice. The game is not long; Steam has clocked me in for a mere 5 hours of playtime, and I played pretty close to a completionist run of the game. Yet in that short time, Senia and Magaleta quickly become characters that you have a vested emotional interest in, and genuinely care for. That’s a feat that a LOT of RPGs can’t manage with a full 50 hours of storytelling opportunity, let alone doing so in a tenth of that time. Only Undertale and Eternal Senia can get me teared up for an ending after half a dozen hours or less, and if you’ve been reading my rants in the past couple months, you know that any comparison to Undertale speaks highly for a game.

It must be said, of course, that the game’s not perfect. Some people have complained about the gameplay itself. Eternal Senia uses a very serviceable and smooth gameplay system, but it’s certainly also not very impressive. Basically, you ram your character into enemies to attack, giving and suffering damage at the same time. Not the only RPG that uses this mechanic (Fairune, Witch + Hero), but I can understand why that would be off-putting. What I don’t understand is how anyone finds your standard RPG combat system any more entertaining...at least in Eternal Senia, I’m actually controlling my character’s actions, even if it’s just running around body slamming stuff, rather than simulating the experience of navigating DOS, like your average menu-based combat system.

Of more significant note, of course, is the translation issue. If you can read Chinese, great! You have no problem. If you’re relying on the English translation, though, well...there’re a lot of technical problems with the translation. Grammatical errors and awkward phrasings are, well, abundant. If you grew up with video games in the 80s and 90s, get ready for a nostalgia bomb of Engrish like you’ve never imagined.

Still...it’s a rather interesting situation, this translation issue. Even though everyone agrees that it’s there, I don’t think I’ve seen a single player of Eternal Senia mention in a review, forum post, or anything else that the translation was a significant stumbling block in playing and appreciating this game. It certainly wasn’t for me! And I’m an English teacher in training! Somehow, the meaning of every line is adequately clear, and you’re drawn into this tour de force of emotion no less for the fact that a lot of its dialogue sounds weird. In fact, I have to wonder whether a small part of how emotionally gripping the dialogue is, could actually be due to the translation...there have been times in RPGs past, such as Final Fantasy Tactics, in which the first, ‘lesser’ translation conveyed the characters’ pathos and ideals much more earnestly than the later, ‘corrected’ translation. Whether or not the subpar translation hinders or secretly helps it, though, the fact is that the dialogue, story, character development, music, and personalities in this game will hit you and hit you hard regardless, so I would urge you not to let this flaw dissuade you from checking Eternal Senia out.

And that’s about all I have to say about this game. Eternal Senia is a rollercoaster of tender emotion, more likely than not to leave you misty-eyed if not outright weeping at its ending, and it does all this while costing you very little time, and no money. Although you can, if you want to show your support, donate via Paypal at http://m963741m.wix.com/senia#!about-us/c21nl (thanks to the Anon who submitted this link!). I certainly enjoyed the game enough myself to donate. I’m told that Holy Priest is working on a sequel,** and I can’t wait to see this story continued. I definitely recommend you check Eternal Senia out; it’s just a lovely RPG.









* Well, I suppose there’s also a fourth type of game: the one that doesn’t bother with either, and is just a pile of boring nothingness, like Lagoon, or Evolution Worlds.


** Thank God. I mean, maybe I’m just setting myself up for more heartbreak by wanting a continuation, but all the same, if there weren’t a sequel in the works, then I’d have a new entry for the top spot on my list of Most Needed Sequels.

10 comments:

  1. There's a donation page at http://m963741m.wix.com/senia#!about-us/c21nl but it's a bit hard to find that page and putting the game on Steam Greenlight so people can vote for it to be sold on Steam costs $100. So maybe the benefit to Holy Priest is very (very) negligible instead of non-existent. The creator said the sequel is on Android (likely exclusive). There are Android emulators, but they probably suck.

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    1. My a href tag broke or something. Whoops. I wanted to link to https://ask.fm/EternalSenia/answers/128895697210

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    2. Huh. Well, that's kind of disappointing. As with the Steven Universe RPG, my insistence on gaming with a machine with superior design for playing games is my undoing. Like you say, I'll probably have to emulate it. Still, thanks for letting me know, and for sharing the donation page.

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    3. I wasn't able to make another reply in the page for the newest Shadowrun rant and thought this was the second-most appropriate thread (since I showed you the donation page for Eternal Senia here).

      The hacker for a bunch of fan-translations (Live A Live, SMT 1+2, and currently working on SMT If) mentioned that he's running low on money, stopping him from paying rent and asked for donations. There's a PayPal donate button on that link at the start of the paragraph it that seems like something you're interested in. Sorry if showing you donation pages of people that make free games is annoying, but I thought you might be interested. (Also you can contact him by clicking on the moose here, if you want).

      Also , Crunchy Roll is planning to broadcast a subtitled version of Persona 5: The Day Breakers, but I don't know that much about the anime or CruncyRoll (there are apparently free guest passes that you could use to watch the anime...). I heard it's meant to be a prequel or something like that, so there probably won't be any spoilers for the full game, but that's second-hand information, so it might not be true.

      I guess that's all I have to say. Enjoy your day.

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    4. That's peculiar. I don't think I have any settings regarding a maximum number of replies to any given rant, and there have certainly been larger numbers of replies on other topics before. I'll look into it.

      At any rate, I've enjoyed some good RPGs thanks to that fellow, and I got into the Shin Megami Tensei series with those 2 titles, so I do reckon I owe the guy something. I'll send a little his way. Thanks for telling me about it!

      I'll probably check out the SMTP5 anime in the future, but only once I'm planning to play the game itself, and I probably won't be doing that until a while after its release anyway. Still, good to know about it ahead of time. Again, thanks!

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  2. do you have the link for the android game???

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  3. If you don't know already, Eternal Senia Sequel has finally been released in English for Android. It's still quite good.

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    1. Yes, 1 of my other readers let me know about that - but thank you very much for making sure I knew! I heard (and if this is wrong, please do correct me) that it's currently incomplete, a first part of a planned whole that won't be fully released until later on (much in the manner of Deltarune), so I was gonna hold off a bit on it until it was a finished product.

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    2. Yeah that's how it is from what I understand it. However there are two things I should mention.

      1)Is that even though the entire story isn't finished, the storyline of the first game is wrapped up(for now at least) and Senia just ends up going on another adventures due to certain events.

      2)Due to the nature of this game and platform, there is a possibility of time limited quests and storyline. There's also a possibility of the game shutting down, but that's unlikely because the non-international game has been up for a year.

      Also the game is grind heavy, and you might want to get a head start.

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    3. Ugh, "grind heavy" are words I never like hearing. I'll take those points into consideration, though...maybe check it out later this year after all. For now, I'm very happily engaged with Tales of Berseria, so I'm in no rush. But thanks for the info!

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