Eclipse of Illusion Review

Eclipse of Illusion is a standard, straight forward JRPG with an intriguing title and a sadly mediocre plotline. The combat system runs smoothly, but is repetitive and becomes mindless after a point.

Eclipse of Illusion is the latest JRPG by KEMCO, and overall it seems to follow the basic pattern of countless old school Japanese role-playing games. The main character has a secret past, has friends forced onto them that they eventually warm up to, and then it’s revealed that one of the friends has a past even darker than the main character. The game’s stock plot is not necessarily a bad thing, but on top of being rather run-of-the-mill, it gets a little confusing after a while, especially since it’s only explained briefly via the game’s fast pacing. Eclipse of Illusion is definitely a game I could get behind playing on public transport to pass the time, but I wouldn’t put it on my list of top picks.

In the beginning you are told that there was a tragedy that left some non-descript town in complete ruin. No survivors, no one knows what happened. While this story is being retold, the visual display shows some kind of a mech suit, heavily armored, firing lasers with the screen continually flashing red. However, the rest of the game has varying levels of technology interspersed throughout, so it is difficult to give it a time frame as far as technology is concerned.

Now, we have several plot lines meandering about in this game. First, there’s our leading lady, Raya, who eventually comes across three other party members that force her to be their friend. We find out later that one of these party members, Theo, has a Summoned Armor. A Summoned Armor is an ancient suit of armor that you can summon to use in battle and fight for you, so for a while it is the party’s main mission to travel around and find these summoned armors for each of the party members. Later a second plotline reveals itself and you find out that Theo and Raya have a slightly more intertwined fate than you may have previously thought, even if you don’t count their painfully obvious tsundere relationship (Raya is that stereotypically cold, aloof female, and Theo spends most of his time insistently professing his affections for her until she eventually warms up to him). For the third storyline, there is a strange cult developing that worships death. More specifically, the members of the cult celebrate people dying ‘happy deaths’. The paladins of this cult roam the world giving people they run into these ‘happy deaths’. The paladins become enemies of the party because of their senseless killing, so whenever you come across a paladin they function as mini bosses.

The combat also has a few strange elements. Besides suddenly changing languages whenever you enter combat (the lines said by the main characters are still in the original Japanese), there is something else about the combat system that is surprising. There are a huge number of different items you can collect and farm from mobs, including all sorts of potions, tonics, and status items, not to mention the armor and accessories that you have the option of upgrading whenever you enter a new town. As for leveling your characters, Eclipse uses a customizable class system reminiscent of Final Fantasy VI. After choosing or changing your class, whenever you level up your characters will permanently learn an associated skill or ability, and in Eclipse of Illusion you are able to carry these skills like items and designate four of them to take into battle with you at any time regardless of your current class.

Summoned armors are another big part of combat; however they were something I only used during boss encounters because though they pack a punch, they have a limited amount of ‘energy’, which is their expendable resource. Once that energy hits zero, the armor is un-summoned, and can’t be used until it has been recharged, which ends up being a real pain to accomplish.

At the end of the day, it’s not a tremendously engaging game, especially with its turn based combat system. Turn based is a great system of course, but in this particular game if you had to think on your toes a little more, for example with a combat system reminiscent of Final Fantasy X-2, then as a player you’d be a bit more engaged. As it stands I was able to pretty much easily muscle through every battle I came across without any game over screens simply by spamming my most powerful abilities. There is even an auto-fight button that attacks enemies for you if you want the game to play itself for a while, which would be convenient for level grinding or farming items if you needed to do any of those things. While I was playing, I didn’t find I needed to do anything like that though. So, all-in-all, not a horrible game, but it’s convoluted story and boring combat, make this a title that’s good for passing the time on a long line, but not much else.