Dated visuals, dreadful story... Why is this fun?
In Eternal Ring, you take control of Cain Morgan, the blandest, most boring, unemotional main character I've ever come across, in a quest to find the most powerful magic ring in the world, the Eternal Ring. I don't want to reveal anything else about the story, simply because I hate spoilers, not because there's some amazing story I don't want to mess up for you.
Combat is real-time. You can acquire a small variety of swords to fight with, ranging in speed, strength, and reach.
Magic is executed in this game rather well. When you defeat creatures they drop gems dependent on their element (ex: Earth Gem, Fire Gem). You gather these gems and can use them to barter with or you can use them to create magic rings.
The quality of the magic ring you obtain is dependent on the level of the gems you use. Higher leveled creatures means higher leveled gems. Eventually, you can make some pretty cool rings. There are a lot of possible magic effects, I'm not entirely sure of the exact number, but I would guess about 150. It can be pretty fun to experiment with making new rings.
Now, I'll give you the good, the bad, and the ugly of this game.
The Good
*Interesting magic system
*Strangely addictive
The Bad
*Graphics
*Melee combat
The Just Plain Ugly
*The story
*The dialogue and voice acting
Now, the final scores.
Graphics: Meh. (6.5)
Gameplay: Strangely fun. (7.5)
Sound: Poor sound effects, worse voice acting. (4)
Story: Not good. (5)
Replayability: Pretty much not there. But it was pretty fun for one play through. (6)
Overall: 5.8
In the end, Eternal Ring isn't good, per se... But it's still fun, at least one time through.