REVIEW: Eternal Destiny


Title	Eternal Destiny
Developer	Office 5656
Publisher	Degica Games
Release Date	April 21st, 2016
Genre	Card Battler
Platform	PC (Steam)
Age Rating	N/A
Official Website

Eternal Destiny is a card game in which you get cards from 3 different races and do battle with the forces of evil to save to the world. I’ve always been a fan of card games, since I spent a good portion of my time in high school playing Magic the Gathering with friends, and before you say it, yes we had Magic the Gathering back then. Anyways, I was pretty stoked when I saw this game was coming to Steam and had to give it a shot.

The story begins on Earth at the end of the Millennium of Humans. History has stopped and a battle has begun between the human Cybers, Demons, and the angelic Kells. There is no end to this war in sight so the people have placed their faith in the Infinita Sacrament, an artifact with the power to change the world. The Agency was formed to search for this artifact and end this destructive war. Can you, as a new agent, secure it and take control of the Earth’s future?

While the story is pretty interesting, it’s not very deep. This is pretty much to be expected of a card game like this. There are some pretty funny exchanges between the characters and some decent fan service scenes throughout the story. Degica Games did a pretty good job with the localization. I didn’t notice any crazy grammar errors and everything is well written. In the end the story is engaging enough to keep you playing through the game, but just don’t expect anything life changing.

Most of the game’s graphics are pretty simple other than the artwork on the cards themselves. Which of course in a card game is the most important part. The artwork on the cards has various types of monster girls, giant robots, and much more. There are over 600 cards to unlock and I only unlocked about 130 of them by the time I completed story mode. I found almost all of them very pleasing to the eyes. I am very glad Degica games decided to include the mode that featured the original art, it would have been a shame for everyone not to have a chance to enjoy it. In fact I logged quite a few more hours after I finished up story mode just so I could get more cards and see more of this fantastic artwork. The dungeons and backgrounds for the in game cutscenes are very basic but good enough to get the job done.

The in game music is decent, though there isn’t a whole lot of it to speak of. You have your basic main menu theme, a battle theme, and a couple of themes for the various in game events. The music fit the tone of the events well with upbeat silly tunes when the characters were having lighter conversations and darker music when serious events were taking place. The battle music is pretty good as well. It is fast paced with a little bit of Metal thrown in there to get you pumped for battle. There’s also a bit of Japanese voice acting when cards are summoned into battle, take damage, or get sent to the graveyard. These voice clips are all very basic, but they do add to the atmosphere of the battle.

The most important part of any card game is the mechanics. Eternal Destiny is pretty good in this area except for a few minor quirks. Each player will start with 20 cards to summon into battle. You will need MP to summon cards onto the board. The players will gain a certain amount of MP at the start of each round; this is usually specified in the battle conditions at the start of the match. There are some cards that will give you bonus MP for having them on certain types of spaces or just in play. Battles take place on a 5 x 5 board. This means both you and your opponent can have up to 5 cards in play on the game board. The spaces will sometimes contain the name of one of the three races. Play a card on those spaces of the same race will net it a huge bonus in attack and HP. You can however still get a bonus if you play card on that space with an attribute that matches that race, for example Demon cards will still get a bonus if played on a Cyber slot, Cybers will get a Bonus if played on Kells slot, and more. You can also play cards on top of cards already in play to boost their stats. If their attributes match they will receive a bigger bonus. Sometimes play the exact same card on top of a card in play will evolve it into a more powerful version of the card. In addition to their normal attacks all cards will have some special abilities. These can be activated on your turn at the cost of some MP and have various effects. Some will boost attack, allow you to attack multiple cards at once, heal your HP, and much more. This sounds complicated at first, but once you actually playing the game, it’s very easy to grasp.

After your cards are summoned onto the field you can attack your opponent with them. They will not able to attack on the same turn they are summoned, unless they have a special ability that allows them to do so. You can choose which card you want to attack by simply dragging the card you wish to attack with on top of it. If you attack an empty space on the opponent’s side, they can choose a card to block with. Any damage that exceeds the amount of HP the card chosen to block it with will be directed onto the player. When a player’s health reaches 0 or the player runs out of cards, the match is over. In story mode be sure to check the victory conditions, as they will vary. Sometimes you will have to reduce an opponent’s HP to zero and other times you will have to send all their cards to the graveyard. The biggest issue I found here was that sometimes you will get a condition that says you must not receive any damage in order to win and CPU will get to go first and summon a card they can attack with out of the gate so, you basically had no chance of winning. If you’re doing PVP battles, however, this is not an issue, since no cards can attack out of the gate. So you cannot summon a crazy OP card on to the board and kill the other player before they had a chance to do anything. Some of the victory conditions in story mode make it as much of puzzle game as it is a card game in order to defeat your opponents. I don’t think this is a huge deal, but it feels a bit out of place at times.

You can obtain new cards via packs you purchase in the in game shop. All of the F2P aspects have been removed for the PC release, so everything here is obtained with in-game currency. You can also obtain new cards by exploring the dungeons. There are various ones to choose from and these are updated daily with new ones to explore. The game can feel like a bit of a grind in this area, as these do not pay out nearly as well as story battles, but there are multiple endings to the story, so it’s not really a huge deal to play through story mode again either.

All in all I really enjoyed my time with Eternal Destiny. The battle mechanics are addictive and the artwork on the cards is top notch. The story is a bit plain, but still good enough you will want to see it through to the end at least once. I’ve spent right around 30 hours with this one and there are still tons of cards I want to collect. Even with its few kinks, if you’re a fan of card games and don’t mind a lackluster story, I don’t see how you can go wrong with this one for its $9.99 price tag.