My Playtime: 31.3h (100% achievement, finished the game)
Grindy Achievement(s): Yes (~5 achievements).
Optional Achievement(s): Yes (~28 achievements).
Difficult Achievement(s): No.

Eternal Edge + is an open-world action RPG where you have to explore five regions, finishing quests and dungeons to finish the game. It gives you the freedom to explore all regions in any order that you want, although each region is gated with stronger enemies that might be hard to beat until you get the best gear from the last region.

Pros:
- A lot of events to do
- Hidden chests to find

Cons:
- Empty and vast areas, requiring you to walk for minutes to reach the place that you want
- Bugs
- Stiff and boring combat; most enemies can be cheesed as long as your gear is good enough

Specs
Steam Deck: AMD Zen 2 4c/8t 2.4-3.5GHz, 16 GB RAM, 8 AMD RDNA 2 CUs

No.
As an open-world game, the world is just too empty, and you need to walk miles to no end. Plus, combat is just too boring and easy.

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Eternal Edge +'s visuals are nothing to boast about. The UI is also there just for the sake of it. The fonts look out of place to the UI sometimes, even though they are large enough to be read. Some enemies are just palette swaps with the ones in the early areas, although there seems to be some effort in making them look a bit different. Anyways, it's not bad, but I can't say the visuals are that good either - it's just enough for the price point offered at a sale.

The story is just bland. You get a prologue to tell the reason for your adventure and then the story comes to a halt until you almost reach the end of the game. However, the ending is just as bland in comparison. It tries to introduce some twist at the end, but at that point, it just gives more confusion rather than curiosity. Moreover, I was pretty much done with the game at that point to care more about it.

Gameplay
The game is an action RPG with an open-world mechanic. You'll explore a vast region to search for chests and find the city in the region, which will be where you get most of the quests in the region. The game is quest-based; areas that are vital for the game progression require a certain quest to be completed, which won't be offered to you until you finish a series of chain quests from the most important person in the region. There are also other side quests, of course, but they are mostly just standalone quests with no prerequisites. Finishing quests will give you EXP, which will help you to increase your level.

Levels can be easily increased. Mindlessly killing enemies will take a longer time to level up, but you can finish quests or world events for the faster route. The world events are marked by a blue light in the area. You'll be tasked to either kill all enemies, survive, or even protect some people. Finishing them will also give you some chests, which contain various items. Opening chests hidden in the world will also increase your EXP, which will take most of your time if you are thorough. As long as you finish everything that the game has to offer, you'll cap your level in no time.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2970878183

Despite having a lot of things to do, the in-game areas are bland. You can forage items to craft, but they are spread too randomly. Well, you'll get enough items as long as you forage everything that you see, but that's beside the point. The areas are just too vast and empty - walking from one point to another will take too long. I even fell asleep from time to time and still could reach my destination with almost no problem.

Sometimes, it's hard to figure out where to go next. The game was quite vague on the quests - you can only finish one region if you can find the right quest giver. There was a time when the quest giver was located in a secluded location with their quest mark not marked on the map. Sometimes, the quest marker also won't mark your destination correctly and mark a random location in the map instead. You can get stuck if you don't know where to go - you might even have to explore the whole region again that way.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3287857443

Combat
Enemies are tough at the beginning, but a joke at the end. They hit hard; one enemy could even three-shot me with their attack, and I had to dodge carefully to make sure I survived the fight. It was challenging to beat them since I also needed to figure out their attack patterns. Everything changed once I cleared one area and got a powerful gear. I was over-leveled by the time I finished one area because of all of the EXP that I got from exploring everything, and with the gear that gave me a high attack stat, it didn't take long before I could one or two-shot most enemies. Moreover, their attacks barely hurt me, and with the stronger enemies being recycled most of the time, it was never a problem to kill them all since you already figured out their attack patterns.

The game appears to let you explore the area in any order that you want at one point, but the enemies are not scaled with this. This might contradict my previous point, but let me explain a bit more. Some enemies can one-shot you if you don't gear up properly even if you can one or two-shot them. Moreover, some of their attack patterns can be hard to distinguish since they will instantly attack you. I probably could go through it if I want, but it won't be fun to explore an area and die in just a few hits because of a silly mistake. The stats are just so unbalanced to either make the enemy too easy or too hard.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3289518176

Dodging is a joke. The iframe it gives lasts way too long, and there is no way of knowing whether it's gone or not. This might be helpful against enemies that either have a hard-to-deduce attack or spread attack, but it also makes the game boring. I would prefer the iframe to be fixed and the enemies made more challenging instead.

The first boss might be tough, but you can cheese it as long as you have enough potions. The rest? Well, I could just stand right next to them and slash my sword until it dies without worrying about a thing. Well, there is one boss with a unique mechanic, but sadly, there is only one like that besides the first boss.

Length and Difficulty
I finished the game in 31.3h. It also counted the times when I had to grind to get all the achievements. The ultimate weapon requires a lot of materials that can take some time to finish, although it's not really needed to finish the game. It's easy to finish the game as long as you explore everything.

Issues
The game sometimes doesn't save on campfire unless you move the cursor position a bit. There are also places where you can fall endlessly until you die. Lastly, jumping feels awkward.

Eternal Edge + is just too boring and bland. There might be a lot of things that you can do, but going to finish them is just tiring due to the huge areas. Plus, enemies are a joke since you can kill them easily, including the bosses. I didn't feel any fun in finishing the game since it's just made too easy and walking for miles to no end is just ruining my patience. As such, I'm afraid I couldn't recommend Eternal Edge +.