Video Game / Eternal City

The countdown of your destiny and the city's starts now.

(WARNING: As of the present, all sub-pages including this one are under heavy construction!)

Eternal City (永远的7日之都 in Chinese, lit. City of Forever 7 Days or Forever 7th Capital) is an Eastern RPG mobile hero-collecting gacha game developed by NetEase Games. It was formerly available for download in China, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan. The Southeast Asia (SEA) version that released in the English language went under the name Eternal City, however its servers went defunct as of June 30, 2020. Currently, it has a Japanese-only re-release as an auto-battler idle game.

The main parts of gameplay, most often for main story progression, are divided into two segments:

• Visual Novel, in which you go about the city liberating zones to progress the current 'cycle' to complete objectives related to the story 'route' you are on. Each cycle consists of seven days, and each day allows you twelve actions (liberate a zone, patrol, construct buildings, etc.) ^note Every action progresses time by one hour, starting from 9:00 and sleeping at 21:00, each requiring 10 Action Points (AP); you have a maximum of 240 AP which restores at a natural rate of 24 hours, though excess AP can be converted into clocks that can be saved for later game sessions. The more traditional Visual Novel parts happen as you make progress in your cycle, during which you will encounter Dialogue Trees—it must be noted that many of the choices have a major impact on the ending of the route you want to pursue, so choose carefully.
• Hack and Slash, where you pick a team of three Wielders and battle enemies in instanced stages. Every Wielder has a basic attack and four skills, two of which are Active Skills, one being a Passive, and the last a tide-turning Ultimate. You control a single Wielder at a time while your other two teammates automatically fight and follow you; you can switch over to one of them, but doing so consumes one of three charges you cannot refill, though it will restore half the maximum health of the Wielder you switch to and reset cooldowns on any skills. Moreover, AI teammates will not use their Ultimates unless you give the say-so. Monster enemies often come in hordes or as singular bosses, though you may fight hostile Wielders as well.

The game takes place on a world similar to Earth, where an incident that would come to be known as the "Black Gate Event" endangered the entire world where monsters of the unknown, alien Dimension invaded through space-tearing Black Gates. They terrorized the people until they were pushed back to the Gates' point of origin by the combined forces of countries around the world, and people who suddenly gained powers after coming into contact with strange items—Divine Artifacts—from the Dimension, later termed "Artifact Wielders". Once the threat was suppressed, it was at that conjunction between the world and the Dimension where the city of Confluence was established, led by the Central Department that took up the responsibility of managing Wielders and stemming the flow of monsters still coming through the Black Gates.

Six months later, Confluence is in the middle of a city-wide battle between the monsters and the Wielders, with you as a "Commander" directing a time-manipulating Wielder named Ann to seal a massive Black Gate, only for it to engulf the entire city along with yourself...

Wielder life-signs critical... Death confirmed.
Outcomes of current challenge - Failed
Scanning for survivors... Residual rate: 0.0045002%
Real-time data deletion initiated...
Logging in again to new data...
Acquiring heart rate......
Reading resources......
System prepared. Time is set to: 7 days
Start activation when ready.
World reconstruction...............start

And then you wake up in a hospital bed to two women watching over you: Ann and Antoneva (the brunette woman from the battle you were in), suddenly acting like they never met you before. You cry all of a sudden, find yourself with no memory, and only a mysterious device called a Tactical Terminal with your name on it by your side.

It is explained then that you are a newly inducted Commander of the Central Department, someone who has the ability to supply Wielders with extra energy to boost their powers and command them for the sake of defending humanity. You are then tasked with sealing the Black Gates appearing throughout the city with your Wielders... all while a huge number '7' floats high above the city that only you can see, which ticks down with every day that passes...

Not to be confused with another identically titled game The Eternal City.

NOTE: Eternal City's Chinese servers were active before others, and thus have released more story and gameplay elements compared to the now defunct SEA version. English names up to the SEA version's last update will be used, with the future Chinese content used and translated as best as possible for English-reading audiences. As such, there will be spoilers aplenty, marked and unmarked.

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Eternal City counts down to these tropes:

• Action RPG: The game’s action happens as a Top-Down View Hack and Slash, where you control one Wielder out of a team of three to tear a path through hordes of monsters. The objective of each stage can differ, but you can expect to fight a lot. It's easy to think of it as Diablo if it crossed with a MOBA a bit ^Parallels You're not a One-Man Army unless your Wielder is really strong; you have two other characters fighting beside you for most of the time; you can freely aim some skills but must be wary of their cooldowns, most of all your Ultimate Skill; and though there's no PVP, you are certain to fight other AI-controlled Wielders, all of whom have the same skills as their playable selves..
• Action Prologue: After answering some questions from a mysterious girl, you're then tossed into a cutscene of later-named Wielders fighting hulking, crystal-embedded monsters in a burning city, and then you directing one named Ann against a horde of monsters as a tutorial stage. At the end, the building you're on gets sucked into a massive black hole in the sky, where you fight a huge monster, and despite defeating it, the hole engulfs the entire city. With so many questions about the scene and setting unanswered, only then does the game really start when you wake up in a hospital bed.
• An Adventurer Is You: Wielders are sorted into six classes: Warrior, Tank, Mage, Assassin, Shooter, and Support. The first former and latter three classes are divided into two types based on their attack range.
  • Melee:
    • Warriors possess both the health to live through close engagements while dishing out high damage.
    • Tanks have a large amount of health and can Draw Aggro from enemies, taking heat off their teammates.
    • Assassins have low health but high damage, often boasting stealth and warp skills.
  • Ranged:
    • Mages specialize in dealing magical damage. In comparison to Shooters, they have lower range but deal large bursts of damage, sometimes having movement-restricting skills.
    • Shooters can deal damage from afar, having the longest range of the six classes.
    • Supporters focus on healing and/or buffing their team over dealing damage. Certain Supporters can also have skills focused on debuffing enemies or crowd control.
• Aerith and Bob: The game's cast runs the gamut of normal (ex. Ann, Bonnie, Rachel), mythical (Askr, Sigrifa, Iscariot), and foreign (Kaliyyeh, Sulette, Li Ruoyin).
• Anime Theme Song: My Days is the game's opening theme (full version here) by GARNiDELiA (sung by Konomi Suzuki). Afterwards, Reminisce Reincarnation by MYTH & ROID was released.
• Apocalypse How: Class 5: Planetary Scale, (all multicellular) Species Extinction, though the ranking can be lower depending on the ending. The default 'bad endings' where you fail leads to a world reset because it ends up getting doomed in some way with little variation in how it happened, but most often because the huge Black Gate that appears at the last day opens up to release an unstoppable horde of the Dimension's Monsters swarming the ends of the earth. Though the other failure endings unique to the route also lead to planet-wide destruction, even some of the 'good' endings end up becoming bittersweet because the world ended anyway while you and the others died on your own terms.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: You can only deploy up to three Wielders for every stage. This also applies to Patrols and Construction.
• Artifact of Power: The Divine Artifacts, creations of unknown make that brim with Thauma and come from the Dimension. They seemingly have a will of their own since they are the ones that choose their Wielders.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: The SEA version constantly suffers from this in the form of (excepting misspellings) confusing syntax and words that don't suit or match a character's action. It only got better in later updates.
• Breather Episode:
  • Most event stories qualify, like the summer event and the Fireworks Festival, being a great deal lighter than the main storyline.
  • By refusing Antoneva's invitation to join the Central Department, the player is set on the Freedom route, which has a side quest far lighter on the requirements, and lets one take on any stage in any order with fewer stages to clear, thus giving freeing up time for Wielder storylines.
• City of Adventure: Confluence, a city built on the conjunction between the real world and the Dimension. As a result, it constantly experiences Black Gates manifesting in the middle of public areas and monsters invading through them, which is why Wielders (at least those registered with the Central Department) are always around and obligated to take down the threat. Dangers aside, there's adventure to be found throughout the city, especially alongside your Wielders.
• Combat and Support: The Wielders and the Commander are this respectively, the latter being incapable of fighting monsters and hostile humans alike, but with the ability to boost the power of Wielders that do the fighting in their stead. In gameplay, this takes the form of three yellow gems under their health bar, which boosts their health and resets their skill cooldowns whenever you switch Wielders.
• Crossover:
  • Outside of SEA, Eternal City has had four collaborations where characters from other works feature as Wielders: Hatsune Miku, Cardcaptor Sakura, Steins;Gate, and Onmyōji (2016).
  • On the giving end, Extraordinary Ones feature Wielders Kun Yui and Viatin.
• Dating Sim: It's downplayed in the fact that not all Wielders become romantically interested in the Commander, but increasing their Affection meter and completing their Loyalty Missions happen in a style typical of the average Dating Sim: you go out on Patrols with them as well as raise their affection (which can also be done by giving them affection-raising items, but only up to five times) to progress their individual storylines, though you may have to complete some special conditions.
• Doomsday Clock: The '7 days' you see underneath the AP bar at every cycle's start is this; for every day that passes, it reduces itself by one, until you reach the last day where the route's climax happens. Whether or not the world gets doomed or saved on that day is up to you.
• Earn Your Bad Ending: You can do this to see the route unique to such endings, as well as get its CG for the 100% Completion, the extra Opals and whatever unique bonuses that come with it. The only downside is that you'll know yourself as the one who may or may not have messed up on purpose and subjected the people involved to unnecessary pain... Then again, the Chaos of Camael route heavily implies that each timeline is something that did happen canonically, including the bad endings.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: There are three Attributes that allow a Wielder of one type to deal more damage to an Attribute it is effective towards and take less damage from it. Going by order of which Attribute is effective against the other: Tough > Deft > Spirit > Tough.
• "Everybody Dies" Ending: Quite a few endings happen this way.
  • Every route has a default 'failure' ending, some of them having unique ones. Terminated in particular happens if you fail a route, where you are defeated by Hiro at the final battle. The madman gleefully opens the Black Gate, letting hordes of Monsters pour through to destroy the world. All hope is lost... until a giant-sized version of the mysterious girl breaks the sky itself, resetting the cycle.
  • The Meaning of Sacrifice ending: You defeat Hiro, seal the Black Gate and save the rest of the world. But having your Wielders fight in the Dimension has resulted in their Thauma overflowing, putting them on the edge of Mortification, and you, alone, cannot purify them all. Kachigo is the first to go, followed by every Wielder you have recruited up to that point, and must now be put down once they turn. And even if some Wielders didn't Mortify, they'll eventually die without the Dimension supplying Thauma. By the end, it's made clear that there is no Wielder left alive.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • Invoked when using Wielders who have died or been disabled for various reasons in-story during a cycle; they can still be deployed in-game, but their Loyalty Mission will be locked until you end the current cycle.
  • You can pit Wielders against their own selves in stages where they appear as enemies and routes involving them.
    • While the Steps Toward the Abyss route subverts it by ensuring that you won't face Wielders loyal to you once the Central Department comes for you after defecting to Hiro, it's pretty funny to imagine that the remaining leaders you earned affection with (Antoneva, Anka and Elusha) are still playable and loyal despite their canonical selves opposing.
    • In boss battles against the Hound of Tindalos, you can have Isaac, the monster's true identity, fight his own hated transformation.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: An important element of the game lies in the seven-day cycles. Once you reach Day 1 and it ends, time resets, tossing you into a new loop without your memories. The few people unaffected by this include "God", who is responsible for the loop, and Viatin, who is actually an unknown being existing outside of normal spacetime.
  • Everyone else also loses their memories, notably your Wielders, which is why your Affection Meter with them is always 0 in every new cycle and must be built back up for their personal questlines if you haven't completed them.
  • At the end of a cycle, the game tallies a "Cycle Score" based on the CGs you obtained in the cycle and other important objectives (number of Zones Liberated, number of Wielder stories you conquered, etc.). This score is converted into Memorial Passes, as well as a determination of your Commander experience and Coin rewards.
• Guide Dang It!: With the limited amount of actions you can do in an entire cycle, let alone a day, it's important that you keep to a schedule, and stay with it perfectly so that you don't waste even a single action or risk making even a single mistake and forced to redo a cycle just for that. For instance, Saihamm's Loyalty Mission can only be completed during Day 7 because, unless you're on the Freedom route, she Mortifies on Day 6, while Rei's requires you to have completed Osagi's story, have 200000 Coins, and keep a "Hat of Stealth" Kageso handy—and that's not getting into the right dialogue options to make! It's best to rely on guides so that you can plan ahead of time.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: The Commander doesn't have a canonical name, so your account name is treated as the Commander's real name in-story.
• Inconsistent Dub: Upon picking up your first "Kageso", Ann explains it's a "shadow Relic", that is, a knockoff of the real thing that Wielders use. While it explains what the word Kageso means, this is inconsistent with the fact that Artifacts—especially with "Artifact" being the name of the tab for strengthening said item—aren't named the same.
• Morphic Resonance: Though fairly rare, a lot of Wielders' appearances from when they were human are changed upon gaining their Artifacts. One example of this is Cybil, whose body has become virtually that of paper, as evidenced by the ends of her black hair turning to white paper, and has to be careful of fire and water lest it damages her.
• Rule of Seven: Expect to see the number '7' a lot.
  • As explained in this page's description, the game's original Chinese name is 永远的7日之都, which can mean City of Forever 7 Days or Forever 7th Capital. This refers to the fact that each time-looping cycle consists of seven days.
  • There are seven city districts.
  • You need seven Opals to summon a Wielder.
  • There are seven leading Wielders of the Central Department: Antoneva, Anka, Elusha, Olucia, Ranulk, Flora, and the anonymous "Son of Darkness", Darvela.
  • The number is also a biblical reference for factions based on religion, where there's often seven of something, so it's appropriate that the week in the game's story refers to God's myth of creating the world within seven days. Moreover, one such faction is called the "7th Trumpet", which in mythology is supposed to herald "the wrath of God" coming down on humans; the 7th Trumpet is an antagonistic entity that desires the death of all Wielders, hence, every route that involves their direct involvement has them responsible for the destruction of Confluence.
• Sampling: A number of music pieces are based on classical music.
  • Victory Fanfare takes cues from Frédéric Chopin's Etude Op.10, No.8 in F major "Sunshine".
  • The ending song for Pure White Relief is based on Mozart's Requiem in D minor, K. 626.
• Standard Superhero Setting: The setting ticks off a lot of checkboxes:
  • No matter the route, you can expect to confront at least one hostile Wielder or even a small army of them.
  • Some aspects of the game's setting are given a deep lookover, and may or may not turn out for the better, coming off as a Decon-Recon Switch of the superhero genre. Issues include how a Wielder's powers affect their surroundings—and their own life—for good or bad or in-between, public fears (which are sometimes justified) of said Wielders using their powers for ill intentions, and a Wielder's life outside of being one which may at times cross each other.
  • There's a Fantasy Kitchen Sink of cultures, genres and powers.
  • The current order of things in the city, and the rest of the world, is being kept by Wielders of the Central Department stopping monsters invading from the Dimension... except by the end of the last day of the week, things'll have gone to hell—until time resets anyway.
  • Artifact Wielders gain their powers from being chosen by said Artifacts. The Black Gate Event itself was what prompted a Mass Super-Empowering Event of humans-turned-Wielders before the current story.
  • The Central Department is effectively the world's Super Team that manages a Super Registration Act.
  • Wielders and the threat of the Dimension are all common knowledge the world over, though it's presumable that there aren't Wielders all over the world at the moment because of how recent (six months) the rise of Wielders is.
  • Many antagonists often succeed in their plans and force our protagonists to respond. Only a few times does this get subverted, such as Anka and Antoneva planning for every problem in the God's Fall route.
• Story Branching:
  • The main game is all about this; every week before time loops, you can set up your own schedule so long as you complete any requirements (usually completing a previous route) and make the correct choices according to the route you want to go on, even fit in some side quests like your Wielders' stories. Be careful however, since it's all too easy to run out of time before you complete an objective or make a careless mistake that easily fails your run.
  • The Rhapsody of Twin Stars is a unique but more traditional route where both sub-routes have you spend the next six days after the first progressing through a massive Dialogue Tree of choices.
• Two Roads Before You: With a few rare exceptions, each route has a major milestone where it offers you two choices, and thus two paths to go down. This becomes the norm in later routes after Mirrored Shadow of the Transient World, possibly as a result of the two Antonevas tying together your possibilities.
• Your Days Are Numbered:
  • Literally; the number '7' that only the Commander and Hiro can see is a countdown to doomsday on the last day, and no matter what happens, the most common ending is that the Commander dies, the deaths beforehand notwithstanding.
  • No matter the cycle, Antoneva will always die early before the last day even happens, most often to Mortification. Not even her focus chapter's endings allow it despite being cured of Mortification; she futilely sends the Commander away before dying in Person in the Shadows, and she sacrifices herself to dispel the huge Black Gate in Deep Blue Star.