Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem is one of the few horror games I am capable of playing. Although I have built up some tolerance to scares through watching Let’s Plays on YouTube of horror games, I am still a chicken. Even so, Eternal Darkness is a special game. Around the time that I got a Wii, I played it by taking turns with a friend. I fell in love, but I hadn’t played it since. Like with many games, RetroAchievements provided a convenient excuse for me to revisit my beloved horror game.
Eternal Darkness is renowned for its sanity system… and it should be! I love many aspects of the game, and the sanity system is a really good one. On paper, some of the effects, like muting the volume, are cheesy. However, Eternal Darkness perfectly executes these effects that caused me to freak out. Because the game uses a fixed camera, the game has screen transitions. Instead of triggering a sanity effect at these transitions when I was expecting it, it would wait until I let my guard down. Many times I would feel safe and calm, but something would suddenly happen, like my head falling off. The timing works perfectly with the sanity system.
The combat system is very satisfying. Eternal Darkness let’s you hack and slash with melee weapons if you want, but it is not effective. Instead, combat requires some thought. I had to aim, which locked on to the closest enemy in front of me. I couldn’t move while doing so. However, I could use the analog stick to target the head or arms. Lopping off arms of zombies leaves them defenseless. Losing their head caused them to be blind. If I didn’t kill them fast enough, their heads and limbs would grow back, which created a sense of urgency. A head shot was the most effective way to dispatch other enemies.
Ranged weapons have a “swing” to them. When I targeted enemies, I had to wait for my character to get locked in on the enemy before shooting, otherwise my aim would be dismal. Once locked in, I was guaranteed a hit. I had to be mindful of tight corridors while using melee weapons. Depending how I targeted, the weapon might swing into the wall, and miss the enemy. In those situations, I tried to just swing for the head, since my character would perform a chop animation. Overall, the combat feels great, and the enemies have a satisfying squishiness to them.
I adore the magic system. Throughout the game, I was collecting circles of power, runes, codices, and scrolls. All of these items are required to make spells. Each spell requires an alignment rune. Enemies in Eternal Darkness can be aligned to one of three guardians. If I wanted to cast an attack spell, I needed to make sure to select the alignment rune strong against the enemy I was targeting. This became a game of rock-paper-scissors, which I thought was clever. There is a fourth rune, which beats any alignment, but requires more magic to cast.
The magic system can feel a little complicated, but the game does a good job of letting you stumble into spells. You’ll find everything required for a spell, and then the game will have you practice using it. By the time I was able to cast more powerful spells, I grasped the finer details of the magic system.
One of the reasons why I can play Eternal Darkness is because the magic system can make the game easy. The recovery spell is unlocked very early in the game, which allows to recover not only health, but sanity as well. Magic is recovered from running around, so I essentially had an endless supply of magic. The first time I played through the game, I relied heavily on magic. By my third playthrough, I was unlocking achievements for not using the recovery spell during chapters. It is a cool way to add a difficulty without an explicit menu option.
Eternal Darkness is heavily inspired by H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe. Its another reason why I am able to love this game, because this is the type of horror I like. Primarily, I played as Alex Rovias, whose grandfather has been brutally murdered. I had to explore his mansion in order to uncover what happened. I found the Tome of Eternal Darkness and began reading. As Alex read, I took control of the character featured in the chapter. Each character in the tome introduced revelations to a scheme to end humanity. Alex’s grandfather was trying to stop it, but now it was up to me.
Eternal Darkness plays with time and space in interesting ways. Each character takes place at a specific location and time period. The locations include an ancient city, a Cambodian temple, a cathedral, and the Rovias mansion. I got to see each locations evolve or degrade over time based on the characters I played. Each character has different stats. A scholar might have higher sanity, but his health and stamina might be lower. It was cool to see these backstories affect gameplay.
The voice acting is surprisingly good for the era. Of course, it doesn’t hurt having Jennifer Hale in the cast. The writing is great, and felt like playing an H.P. Lovecraft story. I played through the game three times to get RetroAchievements. For each playthrough, I was able to choose the alignment of my enemies. There are only minor changes to the cutscenes. The game replaces the guardian with the one you chose, but otherwise, the story is the same. The biggest change comes from beating the final guardian on the third playthrough. I thought it was worth it, but I was just having fun playing the game.
Eternal Darkness is not perfect, and I am not blind to its flaws. There is some tedious backtracking, especially if you want the best alignment rune. The ending has you going through a very tedious trek, and then has the gall to make you do it twice. Some of the puzzles are obtuse. The menu system is very dated. However, I had so much fun that I had trouble stopping. Seriously, I needed some screenshots, and ended up playing for a couple of hours. Once you master and accept the quirks, the game is a fun time.