The sceneries of Eternal Ring feature all the classical elements of the fantasy genre. There are caves and tenebrous burrows, luxuriant forests and magnificent falls, towers and mysterious fortitudes. The places that surround lakes or falls, just to make an example, are very suggestive; from a shore of the lake you can see the opposite banks with some beautiful gradations of colors.
Unfortunately, there is an excessive monotony in the construction of the three-dimensional environments. The feeling that the structure of the game levels is extremely repetitive and that the textures used in the game are just a bunch, become strong after you've played for a couple of hours. You continually have the feeling that something is missing in the 3D environments of Eternal Ring; the rooms are often empty and spoil, even if there are some nice light effects that will occasionally catch your attention. It is not clear if this is due to a real lack of creativeness of From Software's artists or rather to an excessively brief period of development, as has happened in other Ps2 launch titles.
However, some of the characters that you will meet and that you will fight during the game are rather interesting, as you can notice from some of the screenshots. All the monsters that an RPG's enthusiast could ask from a game are here. The dragons are surely the most beautiful creatures, built with a great number of polygons, but also ogres, lizard-men and goblins made a good impression on me. These characters blend well with the surrounding environments and they are animated with care, even if they are not as detailed as other characters seen in other PS2 launch titles.
Overall, the graphics in Eternal Ring, thanks also to the 60 frames per second, which guarantee an excellent smoothness of the image, are good. With a little more time to develop the game, I'm sure that From Software's guys would surely have been able to add some textures and to create more complex levels.
