Damn. That was. Awesome. This is another entry that I got way back in the glory days of the console not long after the game came out (2002 in this case and now 11 years ago). Played it a little when I got it, but found it very intense and stressful so didn’t get too far into it. I think this was down to not understanding the mechanics very well. I tried to pick it up again a couple of years ago only to find my save corrupted. Initially thinking this was one of the game’s “Sanity effects”, I tried again. And again. Only to find it was not a Sanity effect. It wasn’t until I heard of the Kickstarter campaign to make a spiritual sequel to it called “Shadow of the Eternals” that I was spurred to try it again. This time to avoid memory card corruption, I opted to play it on the Dolphin emulator (hence the change from grainy SD screenshots to awesome HD ones). And boy was I glad I came back to this one. It was fun from start to finish. It was still intimidating in places, but once I had a good grip on the Magick and mechanics and such, I felt much more secure and didn’t encounter too many places where I got stuck.

There was excellent variety in every level because each one is a different person through history each encountering “The Tome of Eternal Darkness” and aiding in the battle against the Eternals throughout history. All their efforts counting towards the greater battle. Sadly, because we are looking into the past for all these folks and only stay with each for a brief while, it means they can be killed off. And this does happen. A lot. There are only 4-5 main areas over the 12 chapters so they are visited a couple of times each throughout history, but they change a lot over time so they always feel slightly different and not just cheap re-treading of levels. The combat is also a lot of fun each people and period of history getting different weapons that can be enhanced with Magick and deployed against a wide variety of enemies all needing careful tactics due to the purposefully slightly clunky controls (which help add to the tension). Further defensive and offensive as well as tactical Magick helps mix things up both in combat and in the puzzle solving.

All in all, excellent start to finish. Never dragged for a moment, just wanted to keep playing it till it was done to see how the very interesting story concluded. This is going to go high on the list of top games and I now feel quite stupid for leaving it so long to finally play this properly. It also makes me really hope that Shadow of the Eternals happens now. But unfortunately, at this point in time with just over 1/3 of the funds they need and less than 3 days to go it seems unlikely…

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/617502838/shadow-of-the-eternals-0

Do it!