Tides of Annihilation is a hauntingly lovely action-adventure title from Eclipse Glow Studio. It’s a narrative-heavy title with gentle RPG components and a eager deal with cinematics and boss fights. It’s anticipated to launch someday in late 2026 or early 2027, on PC, PS5, and Xbox Sequence X/S.
Eclipse Glow Studio not too long ago revealed a five-minute-long gameplay trailer for the sport, specializing in an epic boss struggle and highlighting one of many key points of its strong battle system.
What’s particular about Tides of Annihilation?
At first look, Tides of Annihilation could appear to be one other difficult Unreal Engine 5 title from an unknown Chinese language studio. For probably the most half, that assumption is right, till you’re taking a gander at its majestic boss encounters that allow you to tear by way of realms Matrix-style with the help of colossal spectral knights.
On the coronary heart of it’s the sport’s Twin Frontline Battle System, which helps you to summon these sidekicks, presumably, the shadow of bosses you’ve gotten beforehand defeated, to struggle alongside you.
These aren’t simply pleasant NPCs that arrive and begin chipping away on the boss’s well being, however fairly gigantic allies that may change your complete circulate of fight with their interference and switch them into these dynamic but cohesive cinematic sequences. Merely put, they’re fairly a sight to behold.
Twin Frontline Battle System might be a game-changing mechanic
Tides of Annihilation takes place in a post-apocalyptic London–gloomy, gothic landscapes accompanied by melancholic piano scores. Nonetheless, that’s simply one of many two realms you’ll get to discover. The second is a King Arthur-inspired, vibrant locale stuffed with historical magic and legendary creatures, the place you’ll typically be bombarded with a high-fantasy orchestral soundtrack.
You play as Gwendolyn (voiced by Jennifer English), the lone survivor looking out for the Holy Grail that might heal your sister and save the world. Each realms are interconnected, and the core gameplay loop entails discovering and combating these colossal knights and summoning them to struggle alongside you.
These are legendary Knights of the Spherical Desk, and to this point, we learn about Sir Lamorak, Mordred, and Tyronoe. You possibly can summon two of them at a time to struggle alongside you. The current gameplay trailer gave a correct have a look at the Tyronoe boss encounter, the place you witness Gwendolyn combating alongside Sir Lamorak.
That is the place we get a way of the dynamic between Gwendolyn and her spectral knights in fight and through cinematic-heavy QTEs. The whole boss struggle takes place in two distinct realms linked by a breakable mirror.
Gwendolyn makes use of Lamorak’s spear to interrupt the mirror and cross over to the opposite realm when he tells her to, however this acquired me questioning–might we pull off the identical with different spectral knights?
Tides of Annihilation’s Spectral Knights can change the course of the battle
Apparently so, as Eclipse Glow Studio has confirmed that you would be able to swap between knights within the midst of battle, even throughout mid combo. This might be game-changing, as a result of the Tyronoe boss struggle appears to be like shockingly scripted in any other case, what with the pocket-sized cinematic interactions with Lamorak and Tyronoe’s steady remarks about Gwendolyn’s new ally.
Nonetheless, if we might run this complete encounter with a unique ally (granted, this isn’t a tutorial boss for introducing Lamorak), it might be value replaying each boss struggle to witness the variations within the cinematics.
Eclipse Glow Studio is fairly insistent that the Twin Frontline Battle System “is all about giving gamers the liberty to form their very own fight model,” so I’ll maintain them to that.
Gwendolyn can summon, command, and management as much as 4 Spectral Knights in fight. This consists of chaining and executing combo assaults collectively, parrying when crucial, and letting them deal harm on their very own–plentiful alternatives for shenanigans.
As is clear from Tyronoe’s battle, allies are nice for depleting enemies’ stun bar and unleashing visually enthralling combo maneuvers (very paying homage to Persona 5 Royal‘s showtime assaults) when they’re down.
All in all, it appears Tides of Annihilation goals to mix the cinematic really feel and grand scale of God of Conflict and Last Fantasy 16 boss fights with the dynamism of Soulsborne video games, which is an thrilling prospect, to say the least.
I see many similarities, notably with Last Fantasy 16. When Gwendolyn isn’t combating behemoth bosses, she is on the lookout for the Holy Grail to heal her sister.
Within the reveal gameplay trailer, you may spot her touring with a crimson-haired girl, Niniane, who can flip right into a Phoenix, identical to Joshua in FF16. Is she her sister? Most certainly, however we should watch for extra particulars in regards to the story.
Tides of Annihilation doesn’t have a launch date but, however it might be a fall 2026 or early 2027 sport. It is going to launch on PC, PS5, and Xbox Sequence X/S.
