Neverness to Everness just launched with anime combat and Porsches

Hotta Studio has released Neverness to Everness today on PlayStation 5, PC, iOS, and Android. The free-to-play RPG drops players into Hethereau, a massive city where supernatural anomalies interrupt daily life.

The pitch sounds like someone threw Grand Theft Auto and a car dealership catalog into a blender. You play as an "Appraiser" running an antique shop called Eibon. The store doubles as a front for an anomaly-hunting business. When you are not fighting giant spectral birds, you are managing real estate or playing mahjong. Hotta Studio previously developed Tower of Fantasy, and they built this new project in Unreal Engine 5 to handle the dense urban geometry.

Licensed cars in an anime city

The developers built Hethereau as a fully traversable metropolis. You can run across rooftops or walk down neon-lit streets, but the primary way to get around is driving. The game has an official partnership with Porsche.

You can steal cars from citizens on the street or buy your own vehicles to customize. Players can collect a red Porsche, and Hotta Studio has confirmed the 918 Spyder is coming to the game in a future update. You can also listen to a licensed soundtrack on the car radio. The audio system includes music from Persona 5 Royal and Persona 5: The Phantom X. You can even equip a portable Walkman to keep the music playing while exploring on foot.

Fighting anomalies and buying apartments

The main storyline involves tracking down supernatural threats. Combat happens in real time. You swap between different characters in your party to chain together their "Esper" abilities.

The launch roster includes characters with highly specific movement and combat skills. A new character named Nanally uses gravity-based abilities to scale buildings, and another named Hotori manipulates time during fights to control the battlefield.

The action sequences are only half the game. Hotta Studio heavily leaned into life simulation mechanics for this release. You can buy apartments and take companions on dates in a first-person perspective mode. The city is full of side activities. You can go fishing or sit down for a few rounds of a mahjong mini-game called Little Sparrow. There is also a co-op heist mode called Pink Paws Heist where you team up with other players to rob vaults before a timer runs out.

Multiplatform launch and hardware demands

Sony heavily promoted this title on its PlayStation channels, but the game is not a console exclusive. You can download it directly from the Perfect World Games website for PC or grab the mobile versions from the App Store and Google Play. Account progress carries over across all platforms.

The open-world city exploration comes with steep hardware requirements. PC players need at least 60GB of storage space and 16GB of RAM just to boot the game. The recommended specs ask for an RTX 3060 graphics card to keep the framerate stable while driving at high speeds. Mobile players will need newer hardware, with support starting at the iPhone 12 Pro Max.

It is a strange combination of genres. I am curious to see how the driving physics hold up when you have to commute across town in a sports car to fight a ghost.