LOVE ETERNAL

Incredible game and experience. A reincarnation of David Lynch if he grew up playing I Wanna Be The Guy and had a shorter attention span. I am happy to have played LOVE ETERNAL.

It's good! The VVVVVV influence is obvious but the addition of momentum is a great evolution of the formula. Not super hard in the platforming department but demanding enough. The game has a lot more going on under the hood than it lets on, terrifying and surprisingly funny at times.

I will start by saying, I played the final hour of this game on keyboard, on my PC with headphones, but the first ~6 hours on controller, on my TV, through speakers. I will say the game is 100% more enjoyable on keyboard with headphones, the platforming feels incredibly tactile and so much easier. Would I have enjoyed the game more if I played the whole thing like this, most definitely, would I have liked the game? Who knows. Love Eternal is going to be compared to VVVVVV for obvious reasons, but fundamentally, it is not V. V is a moderately tricky platformer with optional ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ parts, LOVE ETERNAL is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ platformer. It does the "doing things the hard way" thing where you see a difficult puzzle from safety before attempting it, but in V, it's an optional puzzle with rocking music, in LOVE ETERNAL, it's just as hard, but non-optional and the music is melancholy. Where V's most challenging panels reward you with a jingle and a shiny collectable, this game puts you in an equally hard room with no reward. This is also where I think the V comparison falls flat, instead representing a "the end is nigh" or IWBTG (again, without rocking music) I'm not going to sit and complain, git gud I suppose, I beat the thing, but the first 80% of the game is a slog where the "horror" of the game isn't apparent, the story is very far in the background and you're left solving these frustrating platformer screens. No specific screen gives a catharsis, you can beat an incredibly difficult screen only to be met with one just as hard. There's no pacing, no downtime, just difficulty spike into difficulty spike and the controls are so floaty you never feel like you're improving. Every 20 or so screens you get a nonsensical cutscene, but not enough information to chew on. Then 80% of the way through the game, the game turns into a visual novel and gives you an exposition dump, the story is well written, there is a god who was banished from her people, now she is lonely so she wants to become friends with people, so she steals peoples bodies to try and learn who they are so she can become their friends and love them eternally. It's good. I just wish it had been delivered in any other way. Then the game gets meta-horror a la MiSide with the "god" of the game becoming a Vtuber who is accompanying you and the game learns what pacing is. If the entire game was like the last 20%, of meta horror, good pacing and story, I'd love this game, but unfortunately it's not and I have to judge the game as a whole. The final hour of this game is fantastic. Thematically, I compare the game to "the end is nigh" because while TEIN is about depression and persevering through adversity, to the point of it causing harm to you and those around you, Love Eternal is the opposite, there is no trick or meta message, the game is hard because you have to escape and if you don't, the god wins. As a game as art, this game is, a mixed bag. The art and ludonarrative is great, but you have to sit through 4 hours of incredibly difficult platforming and unfortunately, all of the spookiness is dumped at the end. Works really well on the steam deck though I don't recommend you play it that way and the pixel art is pretty.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ up the final challenge for 25mins while [spoiler]a Vtuber is yapping into your ear, saying that they get bits, asks the chat to backseat and starts singing[/spoiler] felt like sadism. Fun game, I didn't fully understand the story tho.

ホラーゲーマー目線でのレビューです。 実績『誕生日』まで獲得して中断。 まず、作りは丁寧でプラットフォーマーとして面白いです。 やり直しもそこまで苦ではなく、何回か試行錯誤すればこのゲームをプレイする層にとってはするりとクリアできるはず。 問題なのは、ホラー要素というものと高難度プラットフォーマーというものが、お互いそれぞれが単独でも味付けがめちゃくちゃ濃いものなので、 それぞれの主張が強すぎてシッチャカメッチャカな印象を受けます。 そして肝心のホラー要素ですが、恐ろしい描写ではあるのですが高難度プラットフォーマーでイライラしている状態にそれを見せられても怖くもなんともなく。 冷静になってから考えてみると、登場人物の感情がほとんど描写されていなく、どういうことが怖いのか、主人公にとって最悪なのは何か、という点がわからないまま恐ろしい描写だけがされていくので、 それがどういう意味を持つのかイマイチピンとこない。 恐怖表現がナラティブではなくほぼほぼグラフィック頼りなのと、高難度プラットフォーマーでホラーを見るどころではないという素材の悪さで、ホラーゲーマーとしてはサムズダウンです。 アクションゲームとしては面白いと思うのでなにを求めるかによります。

Certainly an oddball title, being a story focused precision platformer with horror elements and a very lynchian narrative. It works though, the plot is immediately intriguing and the platforming feels like a blend of Celeste and VVVVVV. It's more modest in terms of depth and content than either of those games but it's still as fun to play as it is interesting to analyze and try to make sense of by the time you reach the credits.

This is a really great game. The platforming is great, but the storytelling is on another level.

The game is from an alternate reality where indie horror games evolved from super mario rom hacks instead of RPG Maker. Pretty cool game, highly recommend if you like precision platformers and weird horror games.

[spoiler]I don't deserve love, and I never will.[/spoiler]

This game is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ masterpiece. There were some particular moments in the story involving [spoiler] powerpoint presentations [/spoiler] , that were ABSOLUTE CINEMA. My jaws dropped and I was hysterically laughing. Though it is a horror story, the devs masterfully weaved humour into it and it just hits out of nowhere. I only wish there was [spoiler] more catharsis in the ending [/spoiler] . Witnessing those moments make getting through the puzzles worth it. Art: 10/10 Atmosphere: 10/10 Story: 10/10 for those moments I mentioned, 7/10 for the gripe i have with the ending. About 8 overall. Puzzles/platforming: 10/10 for most rooms, 3/10 for a specific puzzle type, 7/10 overall