Neverness to Everness (NTE) Full Review
It’s been a little over a week since my first impressions review of NTE, and I’ve since sunk an unhealthy amount of time into the game. I’m now hunter rank 36, city tycoon level 25, and have seen most of what the game currently offers. My opinions haven’t changed drastically, but I feel a lot more confident talking about the game in depth now. So let’s get into it.
What is Neverness to Everness?
If you didn't read my first impressions review, NTE is a modern paranormal fantasy open world gacha game. What a mouthful. It features Genshin/Wuthering Waves style combat, driving, and urban exploration. It's being developed by Hotta Studios, the developers behind Tower of Fantasy, and wow what a glow up.
Sound
Overall, the sound design is “extremely acceptable.” Nothing really blows me away, but nothing pulls me out of the experience either. There are highs and lows in equal measure, so it all averages out. The character attack sounds for their weapons and fighting styles are all fine, but I have difficulty praising them aside from "they fit the aesthetic of how the character attacks". Like, none of it is bad but none of it is mind-blowing. In the year of the God-Emperor 2026, that should be the norm. Bad sound design is basically a thing of the past. Especially for these Chinese studios with significant funding. I would like to praise the music though. It's easy on the ears in a modern jazzy way. A lot of the overworld music reminds me of Persona, which may be coincidental or intentional considering the setting. Regardless, it really is an absolute joy to chill out and vibe to.
It's not just the overworld music that's good either. The combat music and the songs on the in-game radio are just at a similar level of quality to the overworld music. Even the music jingles for the different shops are catchy. I think the weakest link in terms of music is actually the music minigame. The combo of rock music and playing totally-not-just-Stepmania doesn't really do it for me. The rock songs aren't bad, but "Heroic Appearance" and "Destiny" felt boring and soulless to me compared to "Mayoiuta" (which to be fair, is a cover of a Bandori song) though I think "Everlasting Dazing Summer" was decent as well.
Graphics, Enemy Design, World Design, and Character Design
Let's talk visuals. The game doesn't really look THAT much better than something like Genshin, which came out back in 2020. You might think "Unreal Engine 5 = great graphics", but you're mostly getting upgraded particle and environmental effects and better world textures (though that's a tough comparison in a modern setting versus fantasy setting to some degree). You get better physics in certain aspects, but I'll come back to that when I talk about character design. It does look fantastic. The lighting is good, object density and draw distance is excellent, and all the small effects are great. I love the comic-like smoke from the tires, the petals falling from the cherry blossom trees, how far off you can see into the distance, and the almost comical effect of lighting transitions between morning, day, evening, and night. The sun speeds off across the sky and the lighting changes in a second or two. It won't help immersion whatsoever, but it is visually striking.
Enemy design is strange territory. On the one hand, they want to push this paranormal, almost eldritch enemy design for a lot of the monsters. There are plenty of weird and semi-creepy monsters, but to me this feels at odds with some of the other enemies who are exceptionally colorful, normal humans, and the goofy real-life oddities. A vending machine with black and red energy appendages, a ballroom dancer with no body, normal human delinquents, a cardboard castle with full on cannons, legally distinct Ghost Rider, a bunch of paper airplanes, and what I can only describe as "spirit ghost koi fish" feel like an odd mashup. I'm not complaining. It's not bad. But the wide range of enemy aesthetics just seem a bit bizarre.
I really like EXISTING in Heathreau City. It reminds me a LOT of Tokyo. There are skywalks that serve as crosswalks but with steps, the yellow ridged plastic squares on the floor that are designed to assist people with vision impairments, random small alleyways, places with seemingly pointless cones, and everything else. It all reminds me of Tokyo because of the density of stuff and the overall modern design of the buildings. Of course that's not even mentioning the northern part of the map which evokes a feeling of the Japanese countryside with the wide open fields, small buildings, and plethora of cherry blossom trees. It really gives that GTA 5 Los Santos feeling. The southern part is all built up, while the north is more rural. If you've been to Tokyo or Kobe, you'll feel it too. Of course, this could be largely influenced by cities in China, but since I've never been to China nor do I have any particular interest in going myself, I probably will never know for sure.
I like the unique aesthetic of the characters. They all have a striking look in one way or another. Almost everyone's outfit suits a kind of archetype. Jiuyuan (my main) has a femme fatale aesthetic, Daffodil looks like a badass, Skia wears a suit with a vest and pistol holsters and gives that police detective vibe, Haniel looks like a teenager who loves music and she (as far as I know) IS a teenager that loves music. Not everyone's outfit really makes the most sense. I don't know why Chiz is wearing that outfit as a bank manager. I don't know why Hathor wears those clothes even though she's a biker. Let’s stop dancing around it: this is a gooner game. I’m not even saying that as an insult. It’s just objectively part of the aesthetic direction. A non-insignificant number of the adult female characters in the game have giant assets. Nami from One Piece big. There are only 2 female characters that I'd consider to be adults without bazookas: Aurelia and Chiz. Unfortunately for those that prefer men, there are only 3 adult males. And one is a furry, which will limit his appeal to the mainstream. However Chaos (that's the guy's name) is on the horizon so people who enjoy looking at guys, rejoice. I think his design is pretty neat.
Gameplay
Let's start off being positive. I think the exploration gameplay, even without Nanally being Spider Man, is great. Climbing up and around buildings provides you with points to glide, and unlike many other games of this genre, gliding doesn't cost stamina. I love spawning in at the Midas Arc Workshop phonebooth and gliding to wherever I need to go on the eastern half of the city. I enjoy getting in my legally distinct Toyota Corolla 86 Trueno and driving around the city, or puttering around small alleyways on my scooter. The city has lots of places to find activities. Whether it's gathering the various collectables, fighting enemies, or just going for a nice relaxing drive, it's all enjoyable and relaxing.
I think the combat mechanics are excellent, if not a bit beginner-unfriendly compared to Genshin. In Genshin, characters apply elemental effects with skills or ultimates. In turn, using a different character's skill or ultimate will apply your new character's elemental effect which can combo. In NTE, there is a similar system but it is slightly trickier to apply. Characters apply effects via swapping in, rather than a skill or attack. The shimmering effect around a character portrait or on the esper energy gauge next to your health at the bottom of the screen tells you when you can swap characters to deal damage. At present, you can have up to 2 effects combo for a 3rd effect. These timing windows can be pretty tight, so being mechanically prepared to do your combos is critical for maximizing damage. At my stage in the game, maximizing damage is more or less unneeded, however it does speed things up significantly. The dodge timing in the game is fairly forgiving and enemy attacks are more-or-less telegraphed for easy critical ripostes. So far we don't have a ton of different team comps, but there are a few solid F2P choices for those that don't like spending money. In addition, pity banners are guaranteed, so saving for certain characters and building a team comp around those characters is more feasible. I do suggest checking Prydwen to see how a character can be optimized, if optimization matters to you at all. If you find the game difficult, it may be due to a lack of synergy, albeit it could also be due to a PEBKAC.
The Cycle
Dailies in NTE thus far haven't been very difficult or punishing. It feels like Hotta Games has seen improvements other games in the open world gacha have made, and implemented them starting from version 1.0. That's great. I don't feel like spending all of my free time grinding out dailies. Keeping on top of dailies takes me about 10-15 minutes per day max. It could be more or less depending on how much I feel like playing NTE. Using double (80 energy rather than 40) energy for small instanced content for double rewards right from the get go is a step in the right direction in terms of player comforts. In addition, since you can run instanced content for the whopping cost of 0 energy, the event dailies that are currently ongoing only add a few extra minutes to the daily cycle.
The only thing that takes a non-insignificant amount of time is the bank heist. The bank heist is an RNG fiesta. Will the items you need for your bi-weekly missions spawn? There's an item I need that I have never seen, nor do I know what it looks like. I legitimately don't know if I'll complete all these missions. In addition to that, the Fons (world currency) cap per 2 weeks is 1 million Fons. That's a lot of cash, but if you're running solo, you'll probably get somewhere in the ballpark of 100k per run. That averages out to about 10 runs at least per 2 weeks. 10 runs at roughly 12 minutes means you'll be dedicating about 2ish hours per 2 weeks total to max out your income from the bank heist. Luckily the unique currency doesn't expire, and there are no limited items in the shop.
The last recurring thing you'll have to deal with is your city stamina. This resets weekly, and you can refill it with the city stamina item or with one of the currencies (this is a topic I'll mention again later as a negative however) but it provides a good chunk of change every week. As you level up, your cap for city stamina will go up, but rewards will also increase. Personally, I question this decision because it feels absolutely redundant. Increasing the stamina cap, increasing the stamina drain, and increasing rewards feels pointless when you can just boost the rewards but everything else stays the same. I digress however. City stamina can be consumed in a variety of ways through a few different activities. There are rewards associated with doing the different activities, and some even have exclusive rewards. The only one I can remember off the top of my head, is that if you max out your fishing experience, you can get a unique outfit which is only available to others that maxed fishing. Those that know me from Final Fantasy will know that I absolutely LOVE video game fishing. On top of fishing however, you can do quite a few activities and some legally distinct homages to other games. These do have some issues, such as the Owner's Selection activity after stage 1-5.
Miscellaneous Pros
Some of the character outfits and all the vehicle skins can be purchased for Fons. This is great. There are some that are cash shop only, but I think that's fair considering how these types of games USUALLY are.
Progression is pretty simple and straightforward. Whether it's banner rolling or improvement for your characters. Most if not all things relevant for character improvement can be teleported to. This last point is nothing new, but for banner rolling, the rolling can net you some neat rewards. Not all the rewards are winners, but they do have cool cosmetic extras for rolling on the banner. Unfortunately these don't carry over but you can't get everything for free in a gacha game.
All the cars feel different. Not every car is worth buying or anything like that, but for what it's worth, it seems each car handles differently in terms of gear ratio, top speed, acceleration, cornering, and turn radius. They also have different upgrades available which I think is super cool. The driving is very arcade-y, and as a former Wangan addict, I think it's fun to drive around Heathreau and just exist, as I mentioned before. I'm certainly looking forward to getting more money to buy more cars.
The player housing is fairly customizable, and since there are a few properties to pick from, you can choose which one you want to be your "main" home. They have different degrees of opulence and size, so naturally furnishing them can be a fun little activity all on its own. I like a bit of interior design. I have a good amount of hours in House Flipper after all.
Problems
Currency
There are too many types of currency. The bank heist has a currency, upgrading equipment has a currency, there's the free and paid cash shop currencies, there are credits for you to roll on the limited or standard banner, there's the police currency, the weapon banner has a currency, the two dupe exchanges, the Abyss mode currency, the hard mode boss currency, and of course there's the normal in-world currency of Fons. That brings us to 13 different currencies. Do I think that's slightly excessive? No. That's VERY excessive. That's not even mentioning the fact that the limited character banner has a SECOND currency apparently. There's the limited banner generic currency AND the limited banner only-this-time-it's-only-for-this-banner currency. I've never seen the second variant since I'm more or less F2P. Now for the sake of transparency, I haven't played a gacha game for a while, but I did start playing Umamusu when the global release came out. That game has 3 or 4 relevant currencies. Once you get familiar with the different currencies of NTE, it's not a big deal, but initially it's a lot to take in.
Menus and Bloat
There are ALSO too many menus! Looking at the escape/phone menu, at my current stage in the game, there are 23 buttons, plus the 4 on the main bar at the bottom, and the profile info/edit button. The UI suffers from extreme bloat. The phone menu has nearly 30 separate buttons, many of which overlap heavily in function.
The biggest offenders are the shop systems, event systems, and character-management menus. “Mall” and “Fair” could easily be one menu. “Character,” “Formation,” and “Bond” should be consolidated. Tutorials are split across multiple locations for no real reason. Even social and feedback features are fragmented into separate tabs.
The result is a UI that constantly feels cluttered, especially when trying to track down notifications or specific progression systems.
Of course this doesn't even mention all the menus IN the other menus. There are just too many menus and toggles. Of course having such a bloated pause menu doesn't help, but I personally feel like the problem is only exacerbated. Or alternatively, allow players to customize the pause menu icons to move things around, so more relevant things for each player are on the first home screen of the phone. I'm on PC so I don't care THAT much about things that I just use hotkeys for, but when I have to hunt down a rogue notification (btw I hate notifs) I don't wanna have to scroll through looking for one.
Writing and Dialogue Skipping
I mentioned this in my first impressions review back on Wordpress, but the initial writing was awful. The Marvel-style quipping killed ANY tension that had been built up. Any serious moment was not given any time to breathe and let the player understand the weight of what was going on. I'm very happy to say that was only early on in the game. Chapter 3 was exceptionally good at giving moments their proper time. It was rare for there to be something stupid, and when it was stupid, it was usually Nanally or Sakiri. I've since skipped anything with them, since Nanally and Sakiri seem to be largely comic relief characters that add nothing of relevance or weight. Unfortunately they still appear to add their pointless and unfunny jokes after chapter 1, but because their screen time is drastically reduced, they're more bearable. Starting with chapter 2, the story is greatly improved by their lack of screen time. In addition, a lot of the side stories are great references/homages, and some of them are really heartwarming or saddening. Lots of emotions going on after you finish dealing with Nanally and Sakiri (unfortunately Nanally plays a pretty big part in Haniel's story). But despite the drastic improvement in the quality of the writing and storytelling, the game still suffers from the fact that you can't advance dialogue more quickly. As previously mentioned in the first impressions review, I read fairly quickly. I read much more quickly than the voices go, and I only really let characters I really like read their whole lines. I'm not listening to an audiobook. I'm playing a game. I like the story. I want to enjoy the story. I also wanna get back to playing the rest of the game. I'm a working adult and I have limited free time. I also have other games I want to play. Let me advance the dialogue.
Parting Thoughts
Overall, I'd say that if you like the idea of modern fantasy and open world games, NTE could be a great game for you to enjoy. I think you can play at a strong level even if you're F2P, and I don't think I felt pressured at any time to spend money. Full disclosure, I did buy the premium battle pass, because I have spent so much time playing since I got home from Golden Week. Genshin and Wuthering Waves are the closest comparisons I can draw. That said, Hotta Games has a pretty mediocre track record at best. I think Tower of Fantasy was quite bad in terms of plot and monetization, so NTE is a shining star when compared side-by-side. Some things I'd like to see in the future are more A rank characters. Not everyone has to be a banner S-tier god. In that way, I think Genshin was really good. They released decent lower rarity characters to fill out other teams with. ToF did not. If you do decide to start playing now, I suggest holding off on the current banner and waiting for the next one. The free characters you'll get from the normal banner free rolls are sufficient for the time being. Go check out Prydwen for more advice. They're much better at guide writing and tier lists. That said, as an Umamusu fan, oshi > meta.
Also Hikaru Tono (Mambo/Machitan/Matikanetannhauser) is in the game. Glory to Cygames.
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