Back in early October, I did an initial blog on my impressions regaring a Japanese-developed visual novel known as Aselia the Eternal. Since that time, I’ve written two columns on the subject for Games Are Evil — one about the game itself, the other about how it creates a convincing, coherent-feeling game world mostly through words — and there’s still a huge amount more to say about it. So I’ll brain-dump it all here and you can sift through at your leisure.

The first thing I want to say is that it’s a pity more people won’t play this. I can shout its name from the rooftops all I like, but I know for a fact that most of you reading this are not even considering picking it up and trying it out. This is the one failing of the video games medium becoming so broad and wide-ranging in recent years — no-one has time to play everything, so the vast majority of people concentrate on the recognisable names, the new releases, the triple-A blockbusters and the “indie darlings” of the moment, leaving titles like Aselia to — relatively speaking — flounder. Take a look at this great article by Rowan Kaiser, for example, in which he suggests a variety of games to give a gaming newbie a “crash course” in what the medium is all about. Everything on that list is, I’d argue, mainstream or at least “well-known”, and yes, I include titles like Journey and Papo and Yo in that description. They’re all “safe” options — and that’s not a particularly bad thing, especially when trying to introduce someone new to the medium — but a lot of people don’t ever step out of this comfort zone because there’s no real need to.

On the plus side, however, this means that the fans of these particularly niche games are almost infinitely more passionate and willing to discuss them than someone who has completed, say, Assassin’s Creed III. (There are exceptions, of course — I know I follow several people on Twitter who are obsessed with Ezio di whateverhisfullnameis and the overly-complicated lore of the Assassin’s Creed series to an unhealthy degree — but I’d argue the people who care that much are in the relative minority.) And, of course, there’s the fact that titles like Aselia represent “mainstream  PC gaming” in Japan, so if you can actually speak Japanese (I’m working on it… slowly!) you’ll find like-minded people out there.

But anyway. If you have played Aselia the Eternal (or indeed any other visual novels) and want to enthuse about them with me, please feel free to do so at any time.

Now. To business. Indulge me a moment while I explain what it is that makes Aselia the Eternal particularly noteworthy or at least “interesting” to look at.

First of all, a little history. Aselia the Eternal was originally released in 2003 on PC as an 18+ eroge called Eien no Aselia – The Spirit of Eternity Sword. In 2005, it was stripped of its erotic content and released on PlayStation 2 as Eien no Aselia – Kono Daichi no Hate De (Aselia the Eternal: At the Ends of this Earth). Rather than the excision of the erotic content making it a “gutted” experience, however, the game was rewritten to make it more friendly to a wider audience. This “all-ages” version was later backported to PC in 2010, and translated into English by JAST USA in 2011, leaving us with the version we have today. JAST took the decision to translate the “all-ages” version rather than the 18+ original due to content which would have proven “problematic” to get around the censors — specifically, there are a number of characters who look very young (despite, as with most eroge, character ages not being made explicit anywhere), which makes erotic content involving said characters out of the question to Western audiences; and also, the original carried an “evil path” through the story which featured graphic scenes of violence and sexual assault — also deemed unpalatable to Western players. 

The upshot of all that is that the version of Aselia the Eternal you can buy legally today is not compromised in any way from the vision of its writers, but equally it does not feature any content that you might not want anyone viewing over your shoulder. In other words, this is not a hentai game; rather, it is simply a Japanese visual novel/strategy game/RPG type thing sans bonking.

It’s the peculiar blend of genres in its gameplay that makes Aselia the Eternal an interesting one, though. Initially appearing to be a fairly conventional visual novel involving a cast of high school students, a pair of (foster) siblings with a mildly questionable relationship and the occasional innocuous-seeming choice that you just know will have surprisingly far-reaching ramifications, the game gets truly interesting after about 5-6 hours of pure exposition — 5-6 hours that will determine whether or not you’re in it for the long haul. The game’s player-protagonist Yuuto as well as several other characters get spirited away to a mysterious fantasy world, and a battle for survival begins. From this point on, you’ll be splitting your time between the number-crunching of a strategy RPG and the plot-heavy relationship manipulation of a visual novel. The two aren’t necessarily clearly demarcated, either — the game frequently breaks in mid-mission for 30-60 minutes of plot advancement — but this actually works in the game’s favour as it tries to tell its story, and stops story feeling like a “reward” and instead like everything you do is part of the ongoing narrative.

It helps, of course, that the actual gameplay in the strategic side of things is extremely solid. Here’s how it works.

As you progress through the game, you gain control of a wide variety of female “spirits” of different colours, as well as the protagonist. Differently-coloured spirits have different specialisms — blue spirits are good at direct attacks, for example, while green spirits tend to have higher HP and defense. Red spirits, meanwhile, are good at magic, while black spirits are a bit of a “jack of all trades, master of none” class, with good HP and defense, decent attack power and some useful enemy-crippling abilities.

Your forces are split into four “squads” of up to three units each. The unit in the first position of the squad is the Attacker, the second is the Defender and the third is the Supporter. The Attacker’s job is to… well, attack… the Defender’s job is to soak up damage and prevent critical hits, and the Supporter’s job usually involves casting spells of some description, which might be direct attacks, buffs or debuffs. Each unit has up to three equipped skills for each of the three different squad positions, for a total of nine skills at any one time. I say “at any one time” because as they level up, abilities get overwritten — sometimes this is your choice, other times, “Limited Skills” mean that you must overwrite a previous level of a skill when you earn a new one. Only one skill from each category may be “set” at once — this is the one which will be used in battle — and each skill only has a limited number of uses before the unit needs to return to a friendly town to rest and recharge.

You move around the “campaign map” via preset pathways, one “space” per turn. If you move onto an enemy, you attack them. Before the battle resolves itself, you can see the lineup of the enemy squad (including HP and abilities), and you then have the opportunity to rearrange your squad members and set the abilities you would like them to use in the upcoming battle — this is an immensely important step that can mean the difference between life and death — and then it’s into combat.

Battle unfolds in several phases. First of all, the attacking side’s Supporter casts an “Attack Support” spell if it has one set — these include buffs or some healing spells. Then the other side gets to do the same. Then the attacking side’s Attacker gets to make an attack, which is usually intercepted by the Defender if there is one, then the Supporter, then the Attacker finally. Certain skills allow units to target specific units other than the Defender — this can be particularly useful if the Supporter has a nasty spell ready, but not many HP left.

Following the first attack, the Supporter gets to cast a Divine Magic spell if they didn’t already case an Attack Support spell. These are mostly offensive in nature. Then the defending side gets to attack, then Divine Magic. This then repeats until all the units involved in the battle have expended the number of “actions” for the skills they have set. Certain skills may be used more than once per battle, and this can be used to your advantage — if, for example, the enemy Defender can only use their damage reduction skill once per battle and you have a powerful attack that can be used twice, that second attack will connect and do “critical” damage.

There’s an added twist with the Attack Support and Divine Magic spells — blue spirits have the special “Ice Banisher” ability when in the Supporter role, which can interrupt certain spells. Naturally, there’s a trade-off — blue spirits are also the strongest Attackers, so having one in the Supporter slot means that they’re not doing damage, but making effective use of Ice Banisher is essential to survival as the enemy gains access to stronger spells.

It’s a system that initially appears rather complex and confusing, but becomes second nature after no time. It’s actually a very elegant system that forces you to think carefully about which characters would be most useful in dealing with the situation in front of you, and requires that you manage your army carefully to ensure they’re strong enough to take on the challenges ahead of them. It also means that there are often a number of ways of getting past seemingly insurmountable challenges — that boss who is giving you grief may hit hard, but he only has two uses of his attack skill before he’s left unable to damage you, so if you can just keep your green spirit alive for two turns, you can then exact bloody revenge at your leisure.

Pleasingly, there’s no grinding in Aselia the Eternal. While you’re wandering the game world, your captured towns are converting their stored “mana” to “ether” at a rate dependent on how many Ether Refinery buildings you’ve constructed. The more towns you have, the more mana in your pool, but mana can’t be used in its raw state — it has to be converted to ether first. Once you have ether, however, this can be spent on constructing new buildings or, most importantly, levelling up spirits and the protagonist. To do this, they must be located in a town which has a Training Facility constructed, and their entire squad must rest while the individual unit trains. You gain access to various different trainers with different specialisms as the story progresses, putting an effective “cap” on your progress as you go through — but sometimes you hear rumours of trainers in far-off locations, and can enlist their services if you send a squad to go and pick them up.

So Aselia the Eternal would be an interesting strategy game even if it didn’t have the plot attached to it. What makes it a remarkable experience, however, is how the plot makes you feel about those units scampering around the world map. Because you get to know all the people in your squads in various story scenes, not just the main characters, you care about them and you don’t want them to die. Letting a unit die means that you’ll never see them again in the story, because there are no revive skills until very late in the game. When you see how many little subplots involving these seemingly “unimportant characters” are weaved into the overall narrative, you’ll very much want to be “that guy” and reload every time someone kicks the bucket. After all, Halion promised you that she’d bake some special treats for you in her shop when the war is over… you can’t let her die, now, can you?

And goodness me. The Feels. Aselia the Eternal has them by the bucketload, particularly when it comes to chapter finales. This is a game that doesn’t hold back on the emotional manipulation at all, and does its very best to make you feel terrible about every virtual life you take. The overarching story is at once both epic in scale and very personal to the protagonist, and the romantic subplots are expertly weaved into the narrative as a whole rather than serving as the sole focus as in some other visual novels.

I have one more chapter of the story to go, and I’m very interested to see how it concludes. Hopefully that will happen sometime this week.

But I feel I should probably stop there, as I’ve wittered on for over two thousand words. I won’t tell you to buy and play Aselia the Eternal because I know that probably 95% of you aren’t going to, but if, on the off-chance, you do, be sure to come and enthuse about it with me sometime.