How Eternights intertwines its dating and hack ‘n’ slash gameplay

Hi readers, Jae here, founder of Studio Sai. Today I have some exciting insights to reveal about the importance of the relationships you make in Eternights and how they can affect your combat options, help you defeat monsters, and ultimately face the apocalypse with you. Studio Sai was founded on the principle of making games that emphasize the forging of relationships, so you can tell this is an incredibly significant element of the game for me and has been throughout development.

Eternights’ combat is inspired by a lot of hack ‘n’ slash greats where you unlock more and more special moves and combos as you progress through the game. You have a special skill gauge that receives a boost every time you execute a “perfect dodge.” Those perfect dodges will be your fuel when unleashing a variety of skills and counters onto your enemy.

What we’ve done with the combat in Eternights is have companions fight with you. Each companion has their own supporting skills that can be used in battle, such as Yuna’s various healing abilities, Sia’s ice attacks to debuff enemies, and Min’s barrier skills to increase your resistance to enemy attacks and hazards. Companions can also unlock new elemental attacks for your character, which you can use to break elemental shields that some tougher enemies might have and use super effective elemental attacks that are advantageous against an enemy’s element.

Now, this is when relationships become vital to succeeding in combat because to get these supportive skills, you need to increase your relationship rank with each companion. This unlocks a variety of skills and upgrades abilities relating to each companion’s specialism.

You can increase your rank with different characters by improving your relationship XP with them. You can do this via a multitude of activities, sometimes platonic, sometimes romantic, if you choose. Some examples include scavenging different areas for items that are important to each companion, training with them by completing their special minigames, spending time with them and getting to know them through your dialogue options, and exploring the city and fighting with one companion specifically. The catch is that the end of the world is nigh, and you only have limited time to manage all the activities with your companions. Some of these activities can only be done in the daytime or the nighttime, so you’ll need to choose your activities and plan your calendar wisely.

Before you can reach deeper relationship ranks with a companion, you also need to increase your own character’s traits based on what your chosen companion would admire. You can do this by picking dialogue options that signify that trait and providing more XP for it. For example, with Yohan, he admires courage, so you’d need a specific level of courage by interpreting and choosing the most courageous dialogue options. Yohan provides great buffs to your character and other companions, which is another good reason to date him.

I’m so excited that Eternights launches September 21 this year and is available to pre-order on PS5 & PS4.