The initial introduction to Eternal Eyes is a little long, but works to give the player an idea of how epic the game truly is. Introducing the main enemies, there are not-so-likeable people who want to unleash the Goddess of Destruction, a supreme being capable of destroying one and all, back onto the world. The Goddess of Destruction was trapped away into a small island by an enchanted group of humans called the Eternal Eyes, but after the Eternal Eyes locked her way, the Eternal Eyes were no longer respected for their power and wisdom, but were instead hunted down and shunned by the rest of the world; the rest of the human race was afraid of the power they wielded. The game then turns to two unsuspecting, Luke and his sister Elena. Upon finding a map, they’ll be pulled into an adventure that will take them from their small trading down to defending the world from the Goddess of Destruction.

A terrible translation process can hamper even the most incredible of stories, and while Sunsoft has made the transition fair enough, there are some questionable pieces here and there. For example, whenever there’s a contraction, there’s an odd-looking space between the apostrophe and the next letter. Miniscule of course, but one of the more stand out errors included when a character repeats two windows of dialog over for no reason. Granted, there were no real errors that really hindered the experience, but as a whole the dialog feels too simple and the wording sometimes sounds awkward. It seems to have trouble conveying the type of emotion that’s trying to be portrayed.

Similar to other turn-based strategy titles, Eternal Eyes doesn’t let you do too much in the ways of adventuring. The only real walking around that’s done is moving through towns and purchasing items and equipment; the rest is done via computer controlled movement with dialog, or you simply move to the next battle section of an area after completing a battle. The actual battle area is divided up into tiles, and each character can move a certain amount of tiles before or after completing an action such as casting magic, attacking with the equipped weapon or using an item. When it comes to moving, one problem lies in the fact that since you aren’t given a set of “moves”, you can only move in a single direction instead of, say, up two tiles and then to the right three. While it's more of a preference than anything else, Eternal Eyes won’t allow the player to redo their move segment, leading to points where an awkward position could have been easily avoided (i.e. not being able to hit an enemy with an attack when you would have been able to by moving over a single space).

It can also be irritating when your character is located on one level, and the enemy is not quite on the next level of elevation but only on a slight slant, and even though you are right next to them, it’s impossible to attack them without using magic. Otherwise, the battle engine for Eternal Eyes is rock solid and highly enjoyable. An extra layer of strategy is added through the treasure chests that are left behind by enemies after being destroyed. You cannot pass directly through them, and if you don’t attack the chest (or protect it until the end of the battle) and an enemy does, you will lose the item contained within.

Instead of garnering up experience and then distributing it to the entire party, Eternal Eyes gives experience for each attack that a character dishes out. The plus to this is that this also means that once a character reaches a new level, they automatically earn the upgraded attributes such as increased attack power, magic, etc. and their health points are then fully restored. This is especially handy when battling the boss characters who have hundreds of points of HP and can deal out attacks that slash away half of a given character’s HP on the player’s side.

Watching the extremely cool anime-style introduction to Eternal Eyes, you might be under the impression that the game is some type of Pokémon clone; honestly, that’s the idea that I had implanted when I saw all the cute creatures flashing all over the screen. But don’t be fooled, since Eternal Eyes is nothing like Nintendo’s money muncher. Rather, Eternal Eyes has creatures called “mappets”. You don’t have other human characters fighting alongside you most of the time, so you have to rely on these little critters to get the job done. Fortunately, most of them are formidable fighters who will do well at saving your hide many times. Toward the beginning of the game you start with two mappets, but more of them will join your party as you move forward in the game. Mappets are then enhanced with new abilities and attributes by collecting jewels that are collected at the end of battles. The jewels can also be used during a battle as traps for enemies who mistakenly fall into that area.

Sunsoft has done an adequate job developing an engine to power the game, but there’s nothing at all special here in the visuals department. The spells might have interesting names and descriptions, but once they are enabled in battle, there’s absolutely no graphical flair for casting them. The battles and town sequences are a mixture of 2D characters with an interactive 3D environment, and it works together well. And while the characters tend to get a little pixely when the camera zooms in during dialog sequences, overall there are no major headaches.

There aren’t enough games like Eternal Eyes coming out these days, but when one that’s as entertaining and brings as many interesting new takes on the genre to the table as Eternal Eyes does, it’s definitely worth a look.