Neverness to Everness is bringing its supernatural open world to PS5 on April 29

I want to start off with: The music in this trailer is great! It alone makes me want to check this game out. Anyways, Hotta Studio and Perfect World Games are launching their free-to-play urban RPG, Neverness to Everness, globally on April 29 for PlayStation 5, PC, Mac, iOS, and Android. The game blends high-speed street racing, supernatural combat, and life-simulation elements into a single package.

Set in the fictional metropolis of Hethereau, the game puts players in the shoes of an anomaly investigator who works out of an antique shop. The city operates under the premise that reality-warping events are just a normal part of daily life. The combat moves fast and uses a four-character team system. Fights rely on a "Perfect" combo meter and rhythm-game-like visual effects to chain attacks together.

Running businesses and running red lights

The developers are aiming for a mix of Persona's daily life management and Grand Theft Auto's vehicle chaos. Driving is a major focus here, which is unusual for the gacha RPG genre. Characters perform vertical wheelies on motorcycles against sunset city skylines and drive sleek futuristic cars through neon-lit underwater glass tunnels. Players can purchase multiple vehicles, modify their engines, and customize their paint jobs before taking them out into the open world.

You also have a day job. Players manage a cafe and plan dessert menus through an "Open for Business" system. When you aren't fighting monsters, you can buy and decorate housing, go fishing, or just hang out in the city. The goal is to provide a dense, modern environment rather than a sprawling empty wilderness.

The pre-order situation

Sony is currently pushing pre-orders for the game, which is always slightly confusing for a free-to-play gacha title. The $9.99 PlayStation Store listing is essentially a starter pack. It includes various upgrade materials, 100,000 Beetle Coins, and five "Fabricated Dice." These dice serve as the game's premium currency for pulling new characters.

The game already has over 30 million pre-registrations globally. Perfect World Games is running a standard milestone campaign that promises free characters and a glider skin for players who log in during the launch window.

Hotta Studio previously developed the sci-fi MMO Tower of Fantasy. They are using Unreal Engine 5 for this new project. The graphics lean heavily on high-fidelity lighting and reflections to make the neon city streets pop. The game supports full cross-platform play and cross-saves across all devices, so you can theoretically grind cafe management on your phone during a commute and switch to the PS5 for boss fights at home.

The urban fantasy space is getting crowded, especially with Hoyoverse's Zenless Zone Zero already dominating the market. But the addition of open-world driving and deep life-simulation mechanics might give this new entry enough of an edge to stand out. We will find out if the driving physics actually hold up when the servers go live at the end of the month.