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Eternity Warriors 3

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Eternity Warriors 3

According to the inevitably boastful App Store description for Eternity Warriors 3, it contains "three epic heroes", an "unrivalled combat system", some "huge bosses", and "tons of epic loot".

These claims are accompanied by pictures of a lady in her underwear, a beastly-looking enemy, and a big burly man in plenty of cool armour.

Looks and sounds like an action-RPG within a fantasy setting to me, but I won't know for sure until I play it.

Fortunately, that's exactly what I'm going to be doing over the next week. I'll also write about what I think of the game right here on this website - once right now, again in three days, and finally after seven days.

First impressions

After choosing between the big hunky Warrior bloke or the mega manly Monk (the sexy elven lady Mage is currently not selectable), you're immediately chucked into what appears to be the game's meat and potatoes: brawling.

You have a virtual stick to move, and a standard 'attack' button to deal out death. There's also a special button to execute a longer combo which needs time to cool down, and a 'defend' button that - if pressed at the correct time - allows you to counter incoming attacks.

Smashing through the undead hordes with ease, and splashing no small amount of gore about the field of battle in the process, you also find money, weapons, and armour before exiting the stage, at which point you're awarded a rating based on how well you performed.

You're then plonked in a town and can equip different items before you continue with your adventure. One of the items I now have is the Sword of Attack, and I'm hoping to find the Armour of Protect, Bowl of Eat, and Pen of Write later in the game.

There's a social element in these towns too, but I was having repeated issues with network connections throughout my playing time.

I'm enjoying Eternity Warriors 3 so far, though, and looking forward to the week ahead with it.

Day 3: Plot point

The last few days of Eternity Warriors 3 have featured more brawling, more item management, and more network errors.

I've been continuing my quest through the game's fictional world, which has a name that hasn't proven sufficiently memorable for me to be able to remember it.

The questing, however, has been a lot of gibs-drenched fun, thanks to lots of deeply satisfying combat. The countering system keeps it from being very difficult, but you do still have to be accurate with your timings. Combined with the slow motion effect that accompanies it, defeating a whole area of enemies in this fashion is extremely rewarding.

I've also started unlocking new skills for use during fights, and I've been tampering with Fusion: a process whereby you combine a basic piece of equipment with other items to increase its power.

I'm getting plenty of swag during missions, and I can also acquire 'offerings' - randomly awarded items given in exchange for tokens that you collect as you play.

There seems to be a bit of a chatty community here, but I haven't engaged with them too much yet. I'm hoping to get involved with them further in the days that follow.

Day 7: Billy

Assumptions can be a terrible thing. I'd assumed that Eternity Warriors 3 would feature a strong multiplayer component. I was wrong, and that's a shame.

The only social components are chat and guilds, and the purpose of guilds is seemingly limited to filtering the chat down to just your friends and competing against other guilds to see who can play the longest and spend the most money.

It's odd, because at the end of each stage a timer counts down until the level ends, just as you might see in a raid in a traditional MMO. But there's no way that I could find to team up with a pal and rampage through dungeons.

Some of the bosses (which are extremely tough) look as though they've been designed with multiple attackers in mind - but, again, that doesn't seem to be the case.

Without the sort of multiplayer that one might expect, and which the game seems to be built for, Eternity Warriors 3's appeal is limited. And the server issues I've experienced throughout the week don't cast the remaining features in the best light.

Part of the desire to grind through stages for the "tons of epic loot" promised in the App Store description is to show it off to your pals. You can look at the equipment of other players, but doing so means detouring into a sub menu, rather than seeing it in action in a combat scenario.

Similarly, the umpteenth run of a dungeon can be livened up if you're goofing around with pals and seeing how combining your forces works, but when you're traipsing down the same set of dank stone stairs alone for the third time in a row to complete a mission it's difficult to be too enthusiastic.

If you're looking for a solo-only experience, Eternity Warriors 3 is quite good. When the game is working as it should it zips along nicely, and the moment-to-moment combat is thoroughly enjoyable. But if you want something a little deeper, or are simply interested in getting some mates involved, it might be worth skipping.

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Eternity Warriors 3

The combat here is good fun, and it's presented well, but technical issues and no multiplayer damages its long-term appeal
Score
Peter Willington
Peter Willington
Die hard Suda 51 fan and professed Cherry Coke addict, freelancer Peter Willington was initially set for a career in showbiz, training for half a decade to walk the boards. Realising that there's no money in acting, he decided instead to make his fortune in writing about video games. Peter never learns from his mistakes.