Eternal Filena is a Super Nintendo RPG, released by Tokuma Shoten Intermedia in February, 1995. It's part of a franchise that started with a series of "light novels" by Takeshi Shudo, illustrated by Akemi Takada. The story is of a girl, Filena, who has been raised as a boy and trained as a gladiator, and her struggle for Freedom.

Eternal Filena was released late into the SNES's life, but despite this it has somewhat dated graphics. Its looks are reminiscent of Final Fantasy V, except it looks a bit more polished in places. However, there's a kind of charm to this look, and I think it is quite endearing to old SNES gamers. As far as the music goes, you're better off judging that for yourself.

The gameplay is fairly orthodox, so you won't have to struggle with a weird battle system and there isn't anything like special skill sets you have to learn, aside from the skills for each of the weapon types, which are learned by level-ing up.

The story's the main draw of the game, it's why I decided to translate the game in the first place. Like much of the game, it may be cliched, flawed, and derivative in places, but it has a certain undeniable charm to it that makes it worth playing. In fact, despite the above, it somehow manages to combine all these elements to become, paradoxically, unique.