Hey all. Today I’m reviewing a title that’s a Dungeon and Dragons like action RPG, and it really tries to be difficult and challenging like a Dark Souls type of game. It’s Curse of Eternity. One could even say that in many ways it’s a bit of a clone of Dark Souls, although one without many of the advantages that the series offers.
Plot: Curse of Eternity is set in a medieval fantasy world where most of the population is enslaved to an evil demigoddess. The plot is thin enough to almost be nonexistent. It’s so bare bones that it mostly exists in order to set up the world so that players can dive into the game and start adventuring. It does that but not much else. Nobody is going to play Curse of Eternity because of its plot.
Gameplay: Curse of Eternity is billed as a hardcore action RPG, so I was expecting it to play a bit like Zelda, or maybe like Shadow of Mordor if it focused on the combat.
My initial thoughts on the title were this: “Okay this is a pretty basic tutorial. Oh, a stamina bar, well okay, I can deal with that even if I’m not a huge fan of the gameplay device itself. And there’s a dodge mechanic. Let’s open this chest like it says to do. Oh god no…” What I found in that chest was a set of potions that immediately confirmed to me what type of game I was playing. The key thing that tipped me off to what this title actually is was the fact that the potions refilled at checkpoints. I instantly knew what game this was, a clone of Dark Souls.
Frankly, I don’t understand why developers think that copying the mechanics of Dark Souls makes for a great game that’ll sell crazy well. Yes, Elden Ring was fantastic and had revived interest in the overall series and that extended far beyond the core group of players who love Souls titles, but before that it was more of a cult hit.
For example, 2009’s Demon Souls was a cult classic that players either loved or hated. It had a very niche following. The gameplay itself wasn’t exceptional. What got it such a following was the sheer difficulty of succeeding. Movement wasn’t fluid, the combat wasn’t spectacular, and it was very much handed out piecemeal in comparison to most titles.
Curse of Eternity by contrast takes that difficulty and then also tries to capture the feeling of Demon’s Souls but fails miserably. For example, the perk system that you can customize when leveling up isn’t particularly great as it’s pretty much a talent tree. Movement and combat were even more of problem as they were anything but fluid. For a title that requires you to make precision moves in order to fight and beat incredibly overpowered monsters and bosses, having janky controls is unforgivable. If the gameplay was smooth and responsive, then Curse of Eternity might have been able to get away with its punishing difficulty. But even the best players are going to get killed from time to time because of the bad controls.
Art: The art is very polygonal, and it looks like it’s from the GameCube era. There is really no excuse for a modern title to look so generic. I realize that it is made by a small indie team, but so are a lot of games these days that look far better than Curse of Eternity.
Music: Looking at some of the trailers, I was expecting a great heavy metal soundtrack which would really have helped to set it apart from other titles. However, there was not much of that. The music was pretty generic and uninspiring.
Overall: Curse of Eternity is a Souls-like clone that isn’t really innovative or polished to the degree that gamers should expect from a modern title. If you really want to get a Souls fix and don’t feel like booting up one of the older Souls games, then you might enjoy it. But Curse of Eternity really does not offer much in the way of gameplay or uniqueness for most players.