Eternal Anima offers time-bending JRPG excellence with a cute cast of characters

While I like a JRPG from time to time, turn-based combat isn’t my favorite thing ever. I’d prefer to be fully involved, brain whirring and button-mashing skills combined. When I saw how the recently announced game Eternal Anima shakes up the format a little bit, I was pretty excited, and that excitement feels justified after my recent experience trying out an hour of gameplay. I was left feeling satisfied that the game would do well with both JRPG fans and more casual players like me.

As seen in the trailer, which the devs unveiled at September 2026’s Nintendo Direct, Eternal Anima is a top-down, turn-based RPG that utilizes both the fantastical parts of magic and the time travel elements of sci-fi. In the preview material for the upcoming Switch 2 game, which was about three hours into the game, the theme leaned more heavily towards the fantasy side of things, with the exploration in an area called La Boset focusing on a forest with rivers.

Map exploration allows you to collect resources, solve puzzles, and of course, fight. Vaguely floral and faunal enemies are abundant. The selling point of Eternal Anima’s combat is the timeline bar at the bottom. Because the main character, Wade, has powers that allow him to see and affect the future and past, you’ll be able to see what every person on the battlefield is intending to do, similarly to Final Fantasy X. Unlike FFX, though, every time you make a move, it’ll adjust the timeline accordingly. You can even prevent someone from acting by knocking them off the timeline completely.

At first, I wondered if this might make for boring combat – after all, isn’t the fun of turn-based combat finding out what your enemy will do? As I quickly found myself very absorbed, I had to wonder why it worked so well. Eventually, I worked it out: rather than feeling like you’re taking a risk and waiting for the consequences of your actions, you start to look at battles like a jigsaw puzzle that you have to piece together. It feels like there is an objective correct answer, a mathematical absolute best outcome, and it’s your job to find it. Then, once you lock it in, you’re more invested in whether things really did work out for the best.

The clinical nature of Eternal Anima’s combat is intriguing in contrast with the storyline. As opposed to that logical, slotting together of pieces, the story feels more wild and emotionally charged, in the best way possible. There are tons of characters, each with their own ambitions, skills, and desires, and they all clash with each other. Repeatedly. The storyline, at least with Martii in La Boset, is deeply political, with the debate about how to save the world, or if it’s even ending, feeling pretty relatable to IRL political struggles.

All of that is true without talking about the whole Psychometry powers thing that Wade has going on, though I really love this aspect of the game. The highlight of the entire preview for me was unlocking the new weapon using the powers. A glowing sword on the map showed me that I had a new hero to learn from. “His body was gone, but his deeds lived on”, the cutscene told me of Fletcher, whose archery abilities Wade was about to pick up. It was an impressive way to introduce the new class, and really added to the story in a way that cutscenes can sometimes fail to do properly. Needless to say, it was hype.

The one thing that was less great was the art style. Eternal Anima offers a sort of trick of the light that makes it look 2D-HD without actually committing to it. A particular eyesore is how the characters look amidst the background, which to me felt a bit cartoonish in a way that distracted me from the world. Some people might find the art nostalgic, so this could be a matter of personal taste. I did, however, love the character portraits when someone’s speaking. They’re all super cute and do incredible work to bring the characters to life in my book.

Overall, you should definitely pick up Eternal Anima when it comes out if this is your genre – it could be one of the best JRPGs next year. Even if it’s not, you should still consider it. The combat is refreshing; it has a great way of building up the world and characters, and the marriage between the sci-fi and fantasy elements feels really interesting – though it’s been done before, Eternal Anima so far does it with a light touch, making you feel like it’s a natural thing rather than being shoehorned in. It’s coming out on the Nintendo Switch 2 and PC on March 4, 2027, so check it out then.