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Eternal City
(aka: City Of Forever Seven Days)

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Eternal City (Video Game)
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. There's a Japanese-only re-release as an auto-battler idle game that was released in September 2021, but it went defunct as of February 2024.

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 , 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 called 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.


Eternal City counts down to these tropes:

  • Academy of Adventure: The Campus district is the sole educational institution of Confluence which teaches not only ordinary students, but also student Wielders like Kachigo, Tesla, Ririko, Fennick, and Leah. This being Confluence though, it gets its share of monster troubles and even becomes the stage for the Endless Proverbs storyline.
  • 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.
  • 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:
    • 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, or the world was saved but people, including important characters, still died.
  • Arbitrary Headcount Limit: You can only deploy up to three Wielders for every stage. This also applies to Patrols and Construction projects.
  • Arc Number: Rule of Seven is constantly invoked throughout the story, the most overt use of this being that the city always lasts for seven days before resetting back to the first day for another repeat.
  • Arc Villain: You can always count on one appearing in every chapter with their own Evil Plan for the world at large.
    • Ran Tucker (or his digitized copy rather) is a minor one for the Research Institute, being an arrogant Mad Scientist experimenting on child Wielders.
    • Hiro is a constant in almost every loop because his goal is to end the world by unleashing the Black Gate. A lot of routes often involve dealing with him before turning to the main threat as a result. That said, he is gradually replaced by new villains in later chapters.
    • The Seventh Trumpet is a military organization dedicated to the complete extermination of all Wielders for the supposed protection of mundane humanity, though even then they would trample fellow humans underfoot for their selfish goals. The Wings of Dawn chapter shows their hypocrisy in fielding artificially made Wielders, while The Red Meteor demonstrates their willingness to genocide at the expense of even innocents.
  • Artifact of Power: The Divine Artifacts, creations of unknown make that empower their Wielders and come from the Dimension, seemingly having a will of their own to choose their Wielders. Some of them are based on Public Domain Artifacts like Antoneva's Noah's Ark and Li Ruoyin's Durandal, while others are manifestations of or inspired by myths, legendary figures and concepts.
  • Bittersweet Ending:
    • The Deep Blue Star ending. The super Black Gate is stopped along with Hiro's machinations, letting the world move on with its Wielders this time, but it cost Antoneva her life despite everything the Commander has gone through to save her.
    • The Pure White Relief ending. Iscariot and the Black Gate have been stopped, and the world, especially Bahisa and the Wielders, continue to live on, but Antoneva and the Commander die along the way. That the majority of Wielders live makes it more uplifting than The Meaning of Sacrifice, but as with Deep Blue Star, it remains marred by the deaths.
  • "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. (As to how they fit into the plot where loops only last up to seven days and everyone involved seem to know each other for what must be days already, it's possible that they take place in Alternate Timelines where such things have happened or time is different... somehow.)
    • By refusing Antoneva's invitation to join the Central Department, the player is set on the Freedom route, which has a storyline light on objectives and lets one take on any district in any order, each now with three stages to clear. This also frees up time for Wielder side quests, almost certainly making this a Commander's most relaxed playthrough.
  • 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:
  • 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.
    • The only way to recruit Rin is to play through the Steps Toward the Abyss chapter, refuse to Mortify a single Wielder, but kill Hiro, which triggers Rin's awakening, letting her wreak havoc on the city. This sets the player on the Rin's Story ending where you put an end to her.
  • Effective Knockoff: Kageso, which are more or less mini-Divine Artifacts, are accessories that are equipped by Wielders for a significant boost to stats so long as their Cost can bear it, though they are also consumables for raising Star Ranks (provided you have the specified Kageso of a specified rarity).
  • 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.
  • Expy: The Wielders that inevitably undergo "Mortification" pretty much resembles a certain bunch of Magical Girls who can irreversibly (unless with special intervention, such as time manipulation) turn into Witches. However, the mortified Wielders are not powerful to the point of creating their own pocket dimension.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Humans Are the Real Monsters: There is a dark irony in that despite the monsters of the Dimension being a worldwide threat (ignoring very rare exceptions like Leviathan), the dime-a-dozen bad guys and masterminds are almost always humans. Thus far, there is Hiro, Ran Tucker, Seraphim, Iscariot, the Seventh Trumpet and Essolin.
  • 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.
  • Item-Drop Mechanic: Enemies have a chance to drop HP Crystals to replenish your Wielder's Hit Points with.
  • Last Moment Together: In the Freedom route, should the player complete a Wielder's Conquer quest but not complete the route's questline, that Wielder (or one of several if multiple Wielder questlines have been completed) can be selected for a unique cutscene where the two of them witness the end of the world together.
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: A majority of mysterious happenings are very often explained as the work of Wielders, advanced technology, or some other logical explanation (as logical as it gets in a world like Eternal City). A few things however are left uncertain, such as Kaliyyeh dealing with a collection of regretful ghosts without any indication of Thauma having to do with it, or Zhong Hangu being an immortal from ancient times when Wielders are next to non-existent.
  • 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 they damage her.
  • Player Character: The player takes the role of the Commander, an amnesiac person who can empower their Wielders' abilities but is a mostly normal human outside of such activities. Their name is determined by the player's account name while their gender can be a boy or a girl, which has little effect on the story other than what pronouns they are addressed by and what appearances they have in-game or in cutscenes.
  • 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.
    • During the second part of Yuri's conquer story, a police officer states that there have been seven murder cases.
  • Sampling: A number of in-game music pieces are based on classical music.
  • Score Screen: At the end of a cycle, the game tallies a "Cycle Score" based on the CGs you obtained in the cycle and other achievements (number of Zones Liberated, number of Wielder stories you conquered, etc.). This score is converted into Memorial Passes, Commander experience and Coin rewards.
  • Standard Super-Hero 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.
  • Starter Mon: You get Ann at the start before getting a second C-base grade Wielder from your first summoning. One of three will appear: Osagi, Kaliyyeh, or Niya.
  • 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.
  • Trial by Combat: The Wielder Competency Trials is an exam composed of two parts: Technical Trials and Disaster Response. When the candidate passes the exam, amongst other small rewards such as Kageso, Soul Fragments and Cores, and Presents, their max Kageso Cost is increased by 5 and they receive 20 Wielder fragments.
    • The Technical Trials are made up of nine trialsnote  where the selected Wielder has to complete four of them to pass (only one candidate can take the exam per 24 hours, their level will be set to a certain number, and their Artifact and Kagesos will not work). Each trial has its own unique objective that may not even involve combat, testing the player's knowledge and skill over the candidate's abilities and selecting which trials are suitable for them (e.g. Kachigo is a natural choice for the Damage Trial, Bacchur's teleportation and stealth would be great for Obstacle and Steal, Niya's attacks can cover area in AOE).
    • Following the trials is the combat-heavy Disaster Response, where previous level restrictions are no longer in effect and the candidate Wielder can be joined by two others. The candidate must reach the end of a virtual simulation of Confluence and encounter enemies in a total of ten stages that must be fought, which will alternate between a group of monsters and a trio of rival Wielders.
  • 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.
  • Urban Fantasy: The entire story takes place in Confluence, a modern day city of skyscrapers and concrete streets where superpowered humans are getting up to whatever antics they are if they aren't fighting alien monsters that constantly invade wherever and whenever they like.
  • 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.

Alternative Title(s): City Of Forever Seven Days

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