Neverness to Everness Might Already Have Me Hooked

I genuinely did not realize I had finished the main story of Neverness to Everness.

Around 12–14 hours in, the quests just stopped appearing and I kept playing anyway, waiting for the next one to drop. Nearly 20 hours later, and after logging in almost every day since launch, I still find myself roaming the city waiting for Version 1.1.

That probably explains this game better than any review score can.

Marketed as a free-to-play anime-style GTA experience, Neverness to Everness immediately caught my attention with its absurdly stylish trailers, urban setting, vehicles, weather systems, and promises of “500 free pulls.” Admittedly, that marketing is a little misleading considering a huge chunk of those pulls end up being materials, arcs, and upgrade resources rather than exciting character summons.

Still, the surprising part is that the game actually works — at least for me.

The city is gorgeous. The art direction and character designs are genuinely superb, and some of the cinematic story cutscenes are among the most visually stunning I have seen in a game recently. Ironically though, while the world feels lively aesthetically, it can also feel strangely lifeless mechanically. The streets are packed with graffiti, shops, NPCs, weather effects, and visual personality, but they lack the movement and fluidity you expect from truly great AAA open-world games.

What kept me invested was not just the main story, but the sheer variety of things to do. Fishing, cab driving, cafe management, performing in a rock band, playing Tetris-like arcade games, pulling off Pink Paw heists — the game constantly throws activities at you to earn Fons and grow your city reputation. Some of it absolutely feels like novelty content, but during the first couple of weeks it creates this oddly addictive rhythm where there is always “one more thing” to do.

The combat is where the game truly carries itself. Fighting anomalies feels consistently satisfying because enemies go down in that perfect middle ground: not complete pushovers, but also not frustrating enough to make you throw your controller across the room. Depending on your grind level, the balance feels surprisingly fair. Your team composition matters, the characters feel stylish in combat, and the encounters remain engaging far longer than I expected.

Quest quality, however, is wildly inconsistent. Some side quests are genuinely awful, filled with skippable dialogue and tedious pacing. Most of the dialogue itself is honestly skippable too. But every now and then the game suddenly delivers something spectacular. The auction house storyline, Morphex the dog, the trapped kid in the greenhouse, and the debt collector questline all stood out as memorable moments that showed what the game is capable of when everything clicks together.

The progression system is also smartly paced at first. Without aggressively grinding, I comfortably finished the main story and all anomaly commissions. Character growth never felt punishing early on, and the daily/weekly structure naturally encouraged logging in regularly. Even after reaching level 50 on characters, the progression mostly feels manageable rather than predatory.

Another thing I appreciated is how little the game pressures you into obsessing over meta builds or hyper-optimized team compositions — at least in Version 1.0. Across roughly 20 hours, I managed to pull five S-rank characters completely free-to-play, including duplicates that slightly strengthen existing characters through bonuses like higher crit rates or faster cooldowns.

More importantly, I never really felt forced to “solve” the game mathematically. I mostly just picked the characters whose designs I liked the most and the team naturally worked well together. Zero, Hathor, Mint, and Jiuyuan all felt satisfying to play, and before pulling Hathor I was comfortably using Haniel instead.

That accessibility helps the combat remain fun rather than stressful. Instead of spending hours watching build guides or worrying about ruining progression, I was free to simply enjoy the fights, the animations, and the rhythm of combat itself.

But after reaching the current endgame, the cracks are beginning to show.

Ironically, the most frustrating grind is not character progression — it is spending weekly city stamina. Even after weeks of playing, I have barely managed to spend over 150 stamina naturally because most of the required activities eventually start feeling repetitive. There are only so many fish I can catch, deliveries I can make, or songs I can perform before the novelty fades away. The systems themselves are fine, but they lack enough challenge, randomness, or variety to remain rewarding long-term.

And maybe that frustration itself says something important: the game as a whole worked on me.

It is easy to point out the flaws now because I have exhausted most of the genuinely exciting content. The story has ended, the side quests are mostly done, and what remains is the grind. Without the momentum of discovery and narrative progression, the repetitive parts naturally become more visible.

One thing I absolutely have to give Neverness to Everness credit for is how free-to-play friendly it currently feels. I have not spent a single rupee on the game and honestly, at least right now, I do not feel pressured to. The main story, anomaly commissions, progression systems, and overall gameplay loop feel completely accessible without opening your wallet. In a genre usually designed around frustration and monetization walls, that alone makes the experience refreshing.

Maybe that changes later with future updates, stronger characters, or harder endgame content, but Version 1.0 feels surprisingly generous for a live-service gacha title.

At this point, the novelty is fading, the grind is becoming repetitive, and the flaws are easier to notice than they were during the honeymoon phase. But even after the story ended, even after exhausting most of the meaningful side content, I still log in almost every day.

That probably says more about the game than any review score ever could.

One massive reason the game has stayed in my rotation is its cross-platform setup. Being able to seamlessly switch between PS5 and mobile with cloud/server saves makes the grind infinitely more manageable for me. I can knock out 10–15 minutes of daily activities during a work break on my phone and then continue the actual story or exploration later on PlayStation.

Honestly, without that flexibility I probably would have fallen off already. These days I do not always get the time to sit down and turn on my PS5 regularly — especially when it is usually occupied by my daughter — so the ability to carry progression across devices genuinely keeps the game alive in my routine.

For all its rough edges, inconsistent side quests, repetitive endgame loops, and occasionally misleading marketing, Neverness to Everness already has something many live-service games fail to achieve: it made me care enough to stay.

And honestly, as someone still chasing that platinum trophy completely free-to-play, I think I’ll probably keep coming back for a long time.