If it can hold up against the staggering, expansive weight of its complex systems, Never’s End might be an all-timer. Big words, I know, but playing even just half an hour of this Final Fantasy Tactics-style tactical RPG with its director left me buzzing. It’s painted in a charming, 2D-meets-3D art style and set in an expansive world, and even my demo held hours of content to explore that I only scratched the surface of.
Developer Hypersect knows it’s stepping up next to giants. So it employed a kingmaker in Masayoshi Nishimura, the original character artist behind Octopath Traveler and Triangle Strategy, to get that distinct East-meets-West look this genre’s known for. Transformed into detailed sprite-like 3D models, Nishimura’s art looks right at home in Never’s End’s pixelated grid. Although each chunk of Never’s End looks like your standard tactical RPG grid, consisting of squared-off battlefields, it’s actually fully open-world.
So instead of bouncing between overworld and battlefield vistas or following a story that brings you to places where a battle happens before whisking you away to another plot point, everything happens in the grid. Thankfully, movement and exploration aren’t locked behind tactics-style mobility. Instead, you can just run around the map freely—until you hit another battle.
Impressively, that open world responds to your presence. Not only does The Never regenerate in certain areas after you leave, but the impact of your magic and casting can permanently change the terrain. Director Ryan Juckett explained how certain types of magic could, for example, compress movement-restrictive sand into hardened sandstone, making it easier to move your units across otherwise difficult terrain.
