I am here to bring to light a niche game that deserves to be in the spotlight. That game is Eternal Return, a MOBA battle royale game. The idea struck me as strange when I first heard of it. I am no stranger to the MOBA genre. I have played League of Legends, Smite, DOTA 2, and even Pokemon Unite; it seems like a game I should try. Despite hating the battle royale genre, even after playing Fortnite, Apex Legends, and Warzone, I am surprised to say I am a big fan of Eternal Return. The game has an urban fantasy setting, with the game and story taking place on Lumia Island, where the characters you play as are called test subjects. The game can be a bit complex; once you get the hang of it, it becomes a tense survival game.
When you spawn into the game, the first thing you do is get your items. If you play any other MOBAs, you would have to buy them from the shop, but in Eternal Return, you craft your items. Just like in other MOBAs, your items decide your character’s build. The game has a day and night system, lasting about 3 minutes. You want to run around the map gathering the materials to turn your grey rarity items into purple items. The faster you finish crafting your build, the better players better than me will tell you; you need to complete your build before the second day, about 3–4 minutes game time. The general rule is to prioritize your build first over anything else, especially when crafting your weapon. This leads to a fun interaction of people walking past each other and emoting in the few minutes of a battle royal game. The speed comes with learning the map and following a route the game helps you with. The primary incentive for finishing your build quickly is so that you don’t get picked off by someone else who finished their build first.
The actual game begins once your build is done. In Eternal Return, you have 3 main objectives. You can farm minions or, as the game calls them, hunts, contest objectives for rare materials to make legendary items, or go for kills against other players. All this while keeping an eye out for consumable items to create food and drink items that refill health and SP. At this part in the game, the survival begins. It is a race to not get killed by another player. You also have to keep leveling up your character to not fall behind in levels. As a newer player, in my opinion, this is where the complexity of the game comes from.
The easiest way to survive in the game is to go around killing animals, or as the game calls it, your hunts, for experience to level your character. But with the way the game’s designed, you will need to fight for objectives to be competitive. 4 rare materials allow you to create some of the best items in the game: mithril, tree of life, meteor, force core, and the VF blood sample. The game gives you many options of what you can build with one of those items, and what you make largely depends on your character and the type of build you are going for. There are a lot of items in the game to build for your character, and from what I can see from the game’s listings of different player builds, the game has some player expressions. From my own experience, I play a character named Yuki, or as I call him, a “generic anime protagonist.” I have experimented with a tank build, a critical hit build, and attack damage build.
In the game, you have a system called masteries. Almost everything you do levels your masteries. Simply moving around increases your move mastery, which increases movement speed. Taking hits increases your defense mastery, making you take more minor damage from basic attacks. There are a handful of other masteries in the game, and it is vital to maintain them if you want a fighting chance in the game. It is an important system that does not get explained enough, in my opinion. Still, it is impossible to play a game without leveling multiple masteries. One of the essential masteries to maintain is weapon mastery, which is achieved by attacking NPCs and players. Weapon mastery increases an offensive stat depending on the category of weapon your character uses. This, along with your character’s level and the rarity of your weapon, is a significant factor in whether or not you can win a fight. Battles against other players come down to 2 build styles, deal enough damage to burst your opponent or have enough defense that you cannot be killed and fight the long game.
This is all to say that Eternal Return is an excellent free 2-play game on steam and the windows store that I recommend people try out. It is complex and challenging, yes, but I like the challenge. The game has a fantastic cast of unique characters from its modern setting. One character is a baseball pitcher who throws fastballs. If you played League of Legends, borrow a mechanic from Draven. Eternal Return is a game I constantly return to despite being abysmal at battle royale games. It is an experience that should be enjoyed by others who like its creative idea.