I had REALLY been looking forward to the launch of the new urban fantasy gacha game Neverness to Everness. It had been the game I was waiting for and I’d anticipated falling down, down, down an NTE rabbit hole until summertime or beyond.

I’m sad to report that this hasn’t happened. I really really WANT to love the game the way Bhagpuss is loving it, but some things can’t be forced.

My dissapointment can be sorted into two buckets.

Bucket #1 is a lack of polish, at least on the Playstation 5 version. Mostly we’re talking Quality of Life things. There are a lot of places in the UI where you have to drill down a few levels to get to the task you want to work on, but then backing up takes you all the way out of the UI and you have to drill back down again to pick the next option on a list. Doesn’t sound like much but it just adds a certain amount of friction and frustration to getting things done. Then there are the voiced dialog segments where you can’t skip forward as quickly as I’d like to. For whatever reason when a character starts talking, but I’ve already read the text on the screen, hitting the “next” button doesn’t do anything immediately. Eventually it does, but I like to advance at the speed I’m reading and it is all much slower than this. Sometimes even after the character has finished their line, I STILL can’t proceed unless I wait for 10 seconds or so. More frustration. Lastly I’ve encountered some bugs that make certain quests uncompleteable, but maybe that’s just me being unlucky.

I’m guessing all of the above will get cleared up as updates roll out and rough surfaces get smoothed down.

The second bucket, though, I don’t have as much hope for. This is the content. I expected something like an anime-themed Grand Theft Auto that had my character and their friends going on adventures and getting into trouble. Instead I got what feels like a babysitting simulation. My character is a young adult; let’s say late teens-early 20s, based on appearance. But they’re surrounded by children who behave like annoying shogun anime children. They tend to be tropes. The shy young boy who is really smart, the way over-excited young woman. The mysterious but child-like character that can’t stay awake and talks like she is an infant. Others who fixate on getting desserts constantly. They’re all pretty annoying.

But the worst… the absolute WORST, is this character Taygedo who is an otter with a tv for a head who says one thing over and over again but somehow everyone understands him, and he just… ugh, just thinking about him is irritating me, and he seems to be a main character, at least in the early game. He says something like “Togee-dogee” over and over again while being manic. That’s him at the top of this post. He needs to go away.

Now let me be very very clear… bucket #2 problems are very personal and highly subjective. You might find all these characters to be just delightful. A lot of people, I’m told, actually LIKE kids. Can you believe that? I don’t understand it but let people like the things they like, right? 🙂

It’s not all bad. I love the style of the game, and the music is pretty good. I like the main character just fine; I took the female MC and she is voiced really well and isn’t the least bit annoying. The city itself is fun to wander around in. It feels very ‘alive’ as you overhear conversations going on around you.

I’m not giving up. I’m hoping that as I get deeper into the story I’ll meet more adults and have to spend less time with Taygedo and the children. If you thought Paimon in Genshin Impact was annoying, let’s just say you ain’t seen anything yet!