Edge of Eternity was an incredibly janky, unpolished JRPG inspired by the classics like Final Fantasy. It was too ambitious for its own good and very buggy, but it just had so much heart and love poured into it I couldn’t help but fall in love. I had the chance to play the demo for Midgar Studio’s follow-up/sequel, Edge of Memories, before it launches on Steam June 15th, and while the jank is still present, so is the heart.
In Edge of Memories, you play as Eline, a Soul Whisperer who wanders the land relieving people of their troubles. On her travels, she comes across a party member from the first game: Ysoris, who begins to tag along with her, much to her chagrin. The pair head to a nearby village, help some people, and discover that Eline has a dark secret she can’t remember… This demo only contains the game’s first chapter, but it’s a fascinating setup, and I’m intrigued to see where the story goes. The voice acting overall also feels like a big step up from Eternity, with some great performances, particularly from Eline. I love her banter with the deeply unserious Ysoris.
As the title of this article implies, Edge of Memories opts for an Action RPG combat system as opposed to the previous game’s turn-based stylings. I was a bit worried about the shift initially, but the moment I got to control Eline, those fears completely disappeared. Movement is fast and fluid, combos are satisfying to pull off, and perfect dodges feel amazing to pull off. This is the beginning of the game so it’s fairly easy, but the boss certainly presented a decent challenge, and I ran out of healing potions by the end of the encounter.
It plays a bit like if you put Tales of Arise, Kingdom Hearts, and Devil May Cry in a blender. You can only play as Eline, but you can call upon party members to execute special moves when their abilities are off cooldown. Battles are fast and stylish, requiring you to really pay attention to enemy animations to respond accordingly, and use light or heavy attacks depending on how armored they are. Your combos are determined by what order you press the light and heavy attack buttons in, resulting in wildly different moves. As a general rule though, starting a combo with a light attack will be faster, while starting a combo with a heavy attack will let it pierce armor. I would like a bit more incentive to vary up my moves though, as it’s easy enough to determine which combo will deal the most damage and just spam it over and over. Something like a style meter or stale moves would go a long way towards encouraging a player to use the whole breadth of their moveset.
I’m also not sold on the alchemy system yet, but this is again very early on in the game. At camps spread throughout the world, you can rest a bit and brew up some potions to heal you in battle. Healing is guaranteed with any potion you make, so your choice of ingredients determines what additional buffs you and your party will receive. You can increase defense and stuff like that, but I mostly stuck with a haste buff because I like to go fast. I hope as the game progresses we’ll get more buffs to play with as well as mix and match.
The feeling I’m left with after this demo is simply wanting to play more ASAP. This is shaping up to be an absolute banger of a game, and I genuinely can’t wait for the full thing. Currently, the game only has a release window of 2026, so hopefully we won’t have to wait long until the game comes to PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
