Eternity: The Last Unicorn Preview

Eternity: The Last Unicorn is labeled as an action RPG, based on Norse Mythology. It has two playable characters. The first is a female elf, who is the fastest of the two, using a sword and a bow. The other is a male viking warrior, who is strong, but slower and likes to use a sword and a shield or a two-handed sword. Both characters are needed in order to play the game from a certain point onwards. There are parts where you need to play with viking or the elf, but for the rest of the game you can choose who to play with.

In a remote past the Holy Goddess Marea gave the elves four unicorns and bonded the unicorns to them. When something would happen to the unicorns, the elves would lose their immortality. At a certain point in time, the Unicorns were suddenly taken away by witchcraft. However one of the Unicorns had survived, but it was cursed by witchcraft and had a damaged horn. A pure young elf was chosen for the task to free the unicorn from the curse and grant the elves further immortality.

In the hands-on demo, I only had the elf available. So I moved around the area. The game restricts you to stay on the paths. The camera position was fixed and I could move around for a large part on the screen without the camera changing position, until the Elf got near the sides of the area covered by the camera, which resulted in the camera switching position. You don't see that a lot anymore these days, probably because it is not ideal. I found my character to be sometimes in a position where she was not very visible, as she was behind a tree or something.  If it did happen, it was just near to the point where the camera would switch. So just taking another few steps solved that, but when in combat it can be a bit annoying, to have the orientation change because the camera switches.
Just in case you are wondering, I played the game with a controller and it looks to be optimal for that as well.

During my play through there were some monsters that were rather easy to defeat. Usually I am not very good at combat, especially when I am thrown into games, but this game did not give me too much troubles. And as at certain points in the game there are some sparkling objects that can be used to replenish the health of the elf, I never needed to use any of the available potions. I used the bow on slower enemies and had them killed before they could reach me. The faster ones I hit with a bow first and with a sword after that, while dashing backwards occasionally to avoid being hit. I can only assume it gets more difficult later on in the game, but obviously I did not play that long to find out.

The game has a number of puzzles that need to be solved, which weren't too difficult in the session I played in, like needing a rope before being able to descent into a hole, or a lever you pull, opening a gate door, which you have a limited time to reach, and needing to pass 3 giant swinging axes first. That last one took me two tries actually, but only because I didn't realize it was a timed event.

There are only certain points in the game where you can save. This is not automatic, you will have to specifically go to such a point and activate the save option.

The merchants interface is rather straightforward. You can buy and sell, there is no bartering involved. There are NPCs that sell to both the elf and the warrior, but there are also NPCs that will only sell to one of the two.
The game supports crafting as well at specific locations. This is also a very straightforward interface. In the game you will collect recipes that allow you to craft items as long as you have the right ingredients. The ingredients you need are listed with the recipe. These can be collected from drops when you kill a creature. The journal will contain a log of the creatures you have encountered and in this log it also shows the collection of items a creature might drop, so if a specific item is needed for a recipe, you can find the creatures that drop it and chase them down until one of them actually drops it.

When you level up, the attributes will be increased automatically for your character, you do not get to spent the points yourself. The same applies to leveling up your weapons. Apparently you can also obtain and improve your skills as you can do with your weapons, but I did not get around to doing that, so I am not sure how that is done.

You can check out the trailer below.

Eternity: The Last Unicorn, is scheduled to be released this year (Steam says Q3, 2018)