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Neverness to Everness launched globally on April 29, 2026, bringing a fresh urban open-world experience to the gacha game market. The open world is genuinely fun to explore, the F2P experience is really generous, but the story struggles to hook you early on. Here's my review of the game, and I have tried to keep it fluff-free.
Note: I played the game on two devices: iPhone 13 Pro Max and iPad Pro 11-inch (1st generation)
Device Performance and Optimization
From my experience, the game worked better on my phone than on my iPad. My iPad is quite old, but it handled the game without crashes. No major freeze occurred while I was playing on the iPad; however, there were frame rate drops in certain fights, but that's pretty much it. I had a much smoother performance overall while playing on my phone, though it got quite heated up after some time. Despite heating issues, I didn't face any crashes or frame drops. Throughout my time playing the game, I used moderate graphics settings, and the visual quality was still really good. You can actually choose higher settings (if your device allows), especially if you are on a PC. If you are on a mobile device, I recommend sticking to moderate settings unless you have a new device with good specs. I will add more details to this section once I get to try out the game on PC.
Combat System
If you have played a lot of gacha games previously, you will find most of the combat mechanics in Neverness to Everness quite familiar. The combat system feels smooth with good animations. The difficulty feels low for standard content and there isn't much complexity. Button mashing works for easier content, especially at the start; however, boss fights require a bit more attention. But honestly, I am still impressed overall, considering this was NTE v1.0 release, and I feel it might just get better from here. Also, I am really excited about Hotori's release because of her time stop mechanics, and such interesting mechanics really make the game more fun. I hope the character abilities and combat system get a bit more complex from here and have more depth.
Graphics and UI
Neverness to Everness has IMPRESSIVE visuals. The environment, city, and landscapes are really beautiful, and I honestly enjoyed exploring. The combat visuals are appealing as well. I like the combat animations for most characters (especially for Hathor), but there are a few characters who don't really have exciting animations (mostly male characters and a few female characters). However, if I talk about character designs alone, strictly the designs and not the animations, I feel they can get better. Maybe I am being nitpicky here. Don't get me wrong, the character designs are decent, but they can definitely get better (just my opinion - you can have a completely opposite opinion to mine and it's okay!). Coming to the UI, I feel it can definitely be improved for a better experience.
Story Struggles with Engagement
The story follows the main character, Esper Zero, who lost their memory and joins a company investigating supernatural anomalies in the modern city of Hethereau. You meet new characters, form a team, solve anomaly cases, and uncover mysteries. The amnesia protagonist setup feels tired and overused across games. This makes the story less engaging than a fresh narrative approach would provide. I felt some story moments and dialogues felt out of place and dragged. It was a bit hard connecting to the characters as well. Apart from these story struggles, I liked that MC is not treated like a god all the time (like in a lot of gacha games). One last heads up - you might end up hating/loving Taygedo (once you play the game, you will understand why I gave him a special mention).
Open World Exploration Shines
The open world is the strongest part of Neverness to Everness. You can ignore the main story completely and just roam around without getting bored. Honestly, the side activities and open world content are what really got me hooked to the game. There is so much more to do than just continuing with the main story. Side activities provide more playtime than the main story. The amount of content feels overwhelming at times, with dozens of systems and activities.
F2P Friendly (at least at launch)
The gacha uses a dice board system called Scarborough Fair instead of traditional pulls. Whatever tile you land on becomes your reward, including characters, weapons, or currency. Limited Boards guarantee the featured S-class character with no 50/50 system. Every S-class you pull is the rate-up character. This makes NTE significantly more generous.
Apart from the gacha system, the game really felt quite F2P-friendly. The game gives you two free standard banner selectors (if you made an account before May 1). On top of that, you get Chiz, Haniel, and Aurelia for free from playing the game, pre-registration rewards, and login bonus. The reason I say it is quite F2P-friendly is because unlike in many other gacha games, where free characters are not that good - NTE free characters are actually quite good and can easily get you through the content that currently exists. For example, Haniel is a universal support and can be played in a lot of team comps. The MC is also a good character, and Chiz is also a very strong DPS. On top of these, you can pick 2 free characters (One from reaching 50 pulls on the standard banner and another from free rewards by the dev. Also, I recommend Jiuyuan, Sakiri, or Baicang from these selectors). Just with these characters, you can make multiple strong comps.
Also, apart from this, you get a lot of gacha currency from exploration, redeem codes, launch rewards, and leveling up. You can also get free S rank arcs by doing certain tasks, which further adds to the F2P experience.
Final Verdict Solid 8/10
If you're looking for a new gacha game, I highly recommend you give NTE a try. The game does show promise at launch. The game has its flaws—the story struggles to hook you early on, the UI needs work, and character designs are just decent, but the open world is genuinely fun to explore, the combat system shows promise (and will hopefully improve with future updates), and the F2P experience at launch is really generous (might just be the best in gacha space for me).
