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Preview – Curse of Eternity [Demo] PC

Curse of Eternity is an action RPG with ‘souls’ elements like no other. So many other titles have come to try their hand for a slice of the pie with this genre, often falling into mediocrity due to overly ambitious gimmicks or a lack of polish. Curse of Eternity doesn’t fall into that trap, however – it doesn’t even really give itself the opportunity. Oddly, instead of trying to do much different to stand out, it aims to be itself. It is possibly the simplest game of this type I’ve ever played and sort of just revels in that. With basic exploration, incomplex combat, and a plain graphical style, it’s really easy to fall into this one and get sucked into the grounded gameplay loop, like getting stuck in a giant bean-bag chair. Pulling yourself away becomes a lot of effort, even if you weren’t all that comfortable in the first place.

With an incredibly generous two-hour demo (and that’s only playing one class out of the available three), we can see much of what is on offer here. The puzzle solving, weapon types and elemental upgrades, the levelling system, boss fights, and so on. It doesn’t shy away from letting the player take in as much of those first few areas as they please, including all of the many secrets and side-quests. Whilst I was hardly blown away by Curse of Eternity, I still weirdly crave to play more of it. There’s something very freeing about just being allowed to play without the pretence of a drawn out story, cutscenes, or the need to constantly run back and forth between NPCs. This game just says ‘go’ and lets the player do exactly that. If it looks like something that might engage you, I highly recommend at least taking it for a trial run so see the first few bosses because their designs are a lot of fun, even if they could be considered a little underwhelming challenge-wise.

Demo available for all during the first Steam Next Fest of 2022 (Feb 21 – 28).