When I reviewed Midgar Studio’s Edge of Eternity, I felt it was an inspired love letter to the JRPG genre with its unique idea of combat but filled with standard-fare JRPG elements.
But it’s great that the small team behind it is still pouring their love into that passion project with the “New Beginning” update — available now on PC via Steam and due out on consoles by the end of summer.
The most significant part of this update is the endless battle tower: the JRPG generally does well.
That’s right! The “New Beginning” update adds the Lighthouse — a 50-floor procedural dungeon nestled in the heart of Edge of Eternity‘s early open-world location called Solna Plain.
This vast tower of terror is open to the player from the start of Chapter 2. It features lots of valuable loot for your party and can be wholly overrun by enemies and level bosses every ten floors.
“We’ve taken care to create five distinct ambiences, with different biomes of creatures, environments and levels to suit all players,” says the Midgar Studio dev blog.
It also says that the team knows that over the past three years, a large part of the hassle with onboarding new players stems from Edge of Eternity‘s hours-long Chapter 0, which was heavy on drama and exposition and very light on the game’s stellar combat system and beautiful open-world splendour.
Elements of the intros will now be broken into three distinct sequences of nightmarish dreams split between Chapters 1, 2, and 3.
Another problem we had with our initial review was that traversal between story elements and during missions and side quests could be very long voyages until you could ride atop giant cat creatures.
More players have agreed over the years, which is why the team has moved the earth — literally — to shorten travel times for several objectives that make up your primary quest in Chapters 1 and 2.
Once you have access to mounts, they can also move faster now, thanks to added dandelions scattered around the world that increase your movement speed.
After a year spent listening to feedback and working on these updates, Midgar Studio will step back and observe. But they also plan to bring a brand-new world map and loading screens in the coming months, fix bugs and develop new ideas to ensure this charming experience lasts… an eternity.
