YMMV / Eternal Darkness

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Mantorok: Ultimately benign entity who is willing to coexist peacefully with humanity, or The Chessmaster who created a millennia-spanning Gambit Roulette (over three timelines!) and exploited an Enemy Mine situation with humanity in order to eliminate the only possible checks on his power? Some combination of the two? A third option is that he's merely taking Revenge against those who have effectively given him a slow, painful death lasting thousands of years.
  • Pious Augustus, especially during an Ulyaoth playthrough: is it possible that he stuck to his villainous role to his dying breath after gaining knowledge of the multiverse (and thus the schemes of the Ancients)? In the context of the Ulyaoth playthrough, all the moments of Suspicious Video-Game Generosity and him not just killing the other Chosen at the first opportunity could be contextualized as him indirectly helping them. Is his destroyed statue in the Tome of Eternal Darkness because Mantorok recognized the depths of Pious's loyalty and wanted to enshrine it?
• Annoying Video Game Helper: Given all the numerous times a visual depiction of each Ancient's dominance over each other is shown, you will never find yourself forgetting how the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors works. You also need to sit through all the tutorials regardless of whether or not you've finished the game.
• Anticlimax Boss:
  • The Black Guardian has shades of this, with it being pretty easy despite easily killing Paul Luther, with attacks that don't do that much damage and are easy to avoid. The problem though is that damaging in its second phase borders on Guide Dang It!.
  • Pious, especially if you have the Enchanted Gladius. It's fairly easy to stay out of his melee reach and his only other attack being the Magickal Attack, which you can avoid by moving.
• Awesome Music:
  • The soundtrack is notable for being very ambient and yet very memorable - especially when your character begins to lose sanity. The two bosses of the game also have awesome themes.
  • "Black Rose" plays once throughout the entire game without a loop, and is an absolutely beautiful and breathtaking piece.
• Breather Level:
  • Michael Edwards's chapter, gameplay-wise. You're given a bloody assault rifle to kill guardians with. Fitting, as it is the last chapter before the end. Even when you run out of ammo, Michael has a huge health bar and a massive amount of stamina.
  • The short sequences in between chapters in which the player controls Alex. These sequences generally feature no combat and only require Alex to explore her grandfather's mansion to find the next chapter, solving simple puzzles to do so.
• Complete Monster: Across parallel realities, the villainous traitor to humanity and the eldritch beings he serves are sinister monsters:
  • Pious Augustus was a Roman centurion who now serves one of three evil Ancients in undeath in exchange for power and immortality. Over the course of two millennia, Pious causes numerous tragedies for humanity: destabilizing the Holy Roman Empire by killing its emperor; building a monument to his Ancient out of the bodies of countless slaves he has captured; and engineering a conflict in World War I within a hospital to feed many injured soldiers to the demonic Black Guardian. Using a time of planetary alignment, Pious tries to bring his Ancient master into reality, putting the whole world at risk of destruction to maintain his power.
  • Chattur'gha, The Ancient of Body, is the most straightforward and brutal of his kin. If chosen, Chattur'gha empowers Pious with the superhuman strength and demands his servant go forth to conduct sacrifice in his name. Wishing for nothing more than to enter the human realm to destroy it, Chattur'gha has Pious murder thousands to appease his bloodlust and comes forth and feed humanity to his demonic minions in apocalypse to prove his supremacy.
  • Ulyaoth, The Ancient of Spirit, is seemingly the most intelligent yet arrogant of his kind. Should he be chosen as Pious's god, Ulyaoth gluttons the lich on knowledge and sends him forth to cause turmoil and conduct mass sacrifice. Wishing to control all that exists, Ulyaoth means to enter reality and feed mortals to his infernal machines, leaving them in endless nightmare while he empowers himself.
  • Xel'lotath, The Ancient of Mind, has two personalities that work in tandem with one another. Converting Pious to her side and continuing the mass human sacrifices and countless murders to lay the groundwork for her manifesting on earth, Xel'lotath gives Pious his orders and instructs him to be cruel as possible in the case of Charlemagne who is to be made dead, insane, "or perhaps one, then the other". Xel'lotath's powers function by literally torturing the entities she summons, including the zombies revived by her power who are driven into agonized states by a cacophony of voices in their skulls. Xel'lotath plans to manifest on earth and exterminate humankind, crafting a world where her servants and revived mankind kill one another for all time.
  • The Black Guardian is the mightiest servant of the Ancient in all routes. A beast who reflects its master, the Guardian's bloodlust is only held in check by being fed countless humans over the years, so that the Guardian will not go on a rampage. The Guardian savagely murders a monk on its own accord and is happy to help facilitate the genocide of humankind while devouring thousands.
• Cult Classic: Garnered critical acclaim upon its release, and is often considered one of the best games on the GameCube (and the best game Silicon Knights ever made), but only saw middling sales.
• Difficulty Spike: Karim's chapter is probably the part of the game which fights back the most with lots of enemies, particularly the sanity-sapping Bonethieves; though this can be mitigated if Pious isn't serving Xel'lotath, meaning he'll have access to Chattur'gha's rune (and therefore a proper healing spell limited only by his mana bar). He also gains an arsenal of with powerful and effective weapons, and as a fit warrior in the prime of his life can take a heck of a beating as well as dish it out.
• Disappointing Last Level: Alex's chapter is largely a repeat of Edward's chapter, but with the gauntlet of guardian monsters replaced with a series of obnoxious electrified floors, making you stop every thirty seconds to replenish your shield, and the only enemies encountered there aside from one group of Horrors are Trappers.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Xel'lotath. Probably the most popular of the Ancients. Her dialogue and split personality deliver a lot of darkly amusing moments.
  • Ulyoath, the soothingly deep-voiced, lover of long words, and Deadpan Snarker jellyfish abomination also won the heart of fans.
  • All of the human characters are well-loved and have their fans as well, but most notable are fantastic Large Ham Max; Ellia; poor, poor Anthony and Paul; and Edward and Peter for their sheer respective Badass Bookworm and Action Survivor factor.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The Mantorok rune. Even beyond the fact that Mantorok's Enchant Item spell is not only strong against all other ancients, it also poisons enemies you hit with it, doing additional damage. Its Recovery spell, likewise, recovers both health and sanity. A Mantorok shield will protect from all damage types and poison. A Mantorok Magick Pool spell will regenerate your health, magick and sanity all at the same time, making you nearly invincible. The most powerful spell in the entire game, in fact, is that the Reveal Invisible spell, normally useful only when the plot throws invisible monsters at you, will, if cast with a Mantorok rune, actually invert, making you invisible. This means that only boss monsters and Trappers will detect you. You can run around cutting their heads off and most monsters won't even fight back. Zombies will stand in one place swinging wildly and Gatekeepers will slowly rotate to face you, but will not attack. Additionally, unlike many games which employ a Sanity Meter, the player character's sanity does not decline when they look at a monster - instead, sanity only declines when a monster spots the player character, so as long as the player character is invisible, their sanity will never budge. It's no exaggeration to say that this single spell effectively makes two of the game's core mechanics completely redundant.
  • It is possible to discover Magick Pool as early as Lindsey's chapter, although you don't get the scroll until Edward's. A Ulyaoth pool will render most Squishy Wizard characters nigh-invincible; a Mantorok one will render anyone invincible if they can afford the high magick cost.
  • If you so choose, you can walk around in circles to build up your magick, which you can use to heal and restore sanity.
  • Melee weapons are stupidly overpowered compared to the crossbow and various handguns; it's not until you find shotguns or rifles that distance attacking is superior to getting up close and personal to rip through limbs.
• Goddamned Bats: Trappers, which can only be hit with projectile weapons, usually come in groups, are small and tend to blend in with the scenery, make annoying chirping sounds when alerted, have deceptively long reach with their attack, and their attack teleports you to a small room with some enemies and health/magic/sanity refuelers and forces you to waste several seconds getting out of it.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • After Warner Bros. Interactive succeeded in 2021 with acquiring a patent for the "Nemesis System" in Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and its sequel, Nintendo patenting the sanity system in this game was frequently named as also serving to stifle creativity in video games by walling off concepts that have no business being patented. Ironically, Nintendo let their patent over the game mechanic expire that same year.
  • The sanity effect that jokingly promises a "sequel" to the game became less funny when the bankruptcy of Silicon Knights means there never will be a true sequel to this game.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Alex's voice actor is Jennifer Hale. If the game had come out sufficiently later, you would've been waiting to hear her call Ulyaoth a big, stupid jellyfish.
    • Alex bears a very striking resemblance to Samus Aran; especially since she has the exact same hairstyle. Both are hailed as female icons in gaming... and both have been voiced by Jennifer Hale.
  • There is a vampire that prominently features in Edward's chapter.
  • Alex is blonde and dearly loves her grandfather, unlike another Alex who is blonde, encountered in her mansion and hated her father.
  • Considering the game’s status still stuck on Gamecube, it grows more likely all the time the majority of new players will do so via emulation on personal computers. While this may cause the early 2000’s specific sanity effects to show their age, the blue screen of death effect is even more appropriate than when the game was initially released.
  • One of Karim's lines at the end of his chapter is also said by a certain cowardly dog.
    Karim: The things I do for love...
• Hype Backlash: With how much of a list-topping Cult Classic the game became in the early 2010s, this was inevitable. The much-touted sanity effects have been criticized by newer players who see them as a novelty that's not only easy to avoid, but also do little to actually hinder the player, to say nothing of many of them aging poorly. The game's status as a psychological horror title has also been questioned by those who view it as a horror-themed Action-Adventure game rather than an actual horror game (as reflected on the main page).
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: Between your infinite magick reserves and the ability to target enemy heads and arms when fighting them, this is a common criticism of the game, especially with its tendency to be lumped into the Survival Horror genre, which it is decidedly not.
• Magnificent Bastard: Mantorok, the greatest of the Ancients, is a powerful being imprisoned by the machinations and powers of the Lich Pious Augustus, slowly dying in an ancient Cambodian temple. In truth, Mantorok is not idle and bequeaths its powers to the slave girl Elia, keeping her alive for centuries, so she may pass it on to Dr. Edwin Lindsey. Mantorok proceeds to manipulate each of the mortals to foil the plots of the Ancients through the Tome of Eternal Darkness, bringing them so they may have an Ancient destroyed by its opposite and allow Mantorok to merge the timelines, killing all three at once and leaving Mantorok victorious and free to weave its own plots.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "CHARLEMAAAGNE!"^Explanation Anthony says this so often in his chapter, it may was well be a Verbal Tic. However, it becomes a lot less humorous when Paul Luther finds him.
  • "This...isn't...really...happening!"^Explanation After a sanity effect stops occurring, your character will say some variation of this line. Expect to hear it a lot.
  • "Pargon!" ^Explanation  The "power" rune, added to increase spells' power level. Since all runes besides the two for the spell and the Ancient's rune will be this at higher levels, a 7 point spell might sound like "Tier, Pargon, Santak, Pargon, Pargon, Ulyaoth, Pargon!", so you will hear Pargon quite often.
  • "MAY THE RATS EAT YOUR EYES!!"^Explanation This Large Ham line is one of the last thing Max says as he's sitting in an insane asylum.
  • Nintendo constantly renewing the game's trademark and then just sitting on it has become the go-to example for tempering expectations regarding game developers hinting at reviving cult IPs.
• Narm:
  • Alex is menaced by Pious posing as Edward's ghost at one point, and she sends him away with an angry "Get away from me!" and what amounts to a gesture that looks like she was going to grab his crotch, given that she was sitting and he was standing over her.
  • Despite its existence as a real surname, "Roivas" being "savior" spelled backwards is so on-the-nose that it can be seen as this.
• Nightmare Retardant: Michael Edwards' chapter is considerably less scary than any other part of the game. The unfathomable creatures of the beyond aren't quite as nightmarish when you're a heavy set firefighter with an assault rifle/grenade launcher.
  • During Edward's chapter he gets a vision of a horrendous worm. His solution: take a swig of booze. Jump scare instantly turns hilarious.
  • The bleeding walls sanity effect becomes this on replays, since it takes 3 minutes to play out and you won't get other sanity effects as it happens. If you're going for the Golden Ending or just speedrunning, it's actually nice to see, instead of the other ones that could waste time.
• Signature Scene:
  • Anything related to Max's chapter, but special note to the scene with him locked up in the asylum. Also, Pious' transformation into a lich.
  • As far as sanity effects go, the Bath Suicide Jump Scare is a big one, since it's the only jump scare in the entire game and one that you have to see.
• Spoiled by the Format: The game was released in 2002, and the fourth-wall-breaking sanity effects that simulate someone messing with your TV or console often reflect this when trying to replay it in the present day. Many TVs during that era would have a series of green rectangles representing volume, display a black screen with "VIDEO" in a corner when there isn't a signal, etc. Playing it on a modern TV, with all their different ways of presenting such information (to say nothing of emulating it on a computer), makes the fact that the game isn't actually altering these settings immediately clear.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: How Anthony is defeated. Anthony is cursed in the third chapter with a seven point unaligned spell (project creature) that causes him to zombify and keeps him from dying, instead glowing yellow and regenerating all of his health if his health ever drops to zero. Paul finds him still alive hundreds of years later and kills him after Anthony regenerates once during their battle. Why Paul is able to kill Anthony is never explained (although some theorize that Paul giving him last rites is what finally put Anthony's soul to rest). What would have been cooler from both a narrative and gameplay/puzzle perspective is if the curse had been a three point spell aligned to Pious's chosen ancient, glowing that ancient's alignment color when regenerating. In order to stop Anthony from regenerating after taking him down to zero health, Paul must first cast the three point dispel magic spell (having just learned it in the previous chapter) using the opposing ancient's alignment, finally dispelling the curse and stopping Anthony from regenerating, allowing Paul to kill him.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • The sanity effects, despite being the thing the game is most known for, are ultimately this. If you're playing the game as you should (i.e., properly conserving and regularly restoring sanity), you'll basically never see them. With that in mind, a player can purposefully keep their sanity low to regularly see the effects, and unless they're skittish, arguably won't find themselves hindered all that much gameplay-wise.
  • Despite six characters being able to equip torches, only Anthony's chapter ever involves burning part of the scenery to progress.^note Roberto has the option to burn a rope, but cutting it with his saif is quicker.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Some Sanity Effects take the player out of the experience a bit due to the UI effects utilizing features that modern televisions don't have anymore, but televisions in 2002 did. Examples include big green volume bars and a blue screen for the inputs.
• The Woobie: Several candidates:
  • Ellia just wanted an adventure. She got it, probably saving Mantorok in the process. Pity it involved her imprisoned within her own dead body for centuries before the end.
  • Anthony, who fought against all odds, was cursed, knew he was likely a dead man, and ultimately failed. The fact he spent 600 years suffering before Paul released him from his torment doesn't make it better for him.
  • Max, the only main character who both fails in his mission and survives, thus dooming him to living out the rest of his days in the asylum with that failure weighing on him.
  • Paul Luther, who spends the duration of his story completely out of his depth and terrified out of his wits. Ultimately, his fate at the hands of the Guardian and the look on his face can't help but make you feel for the man.
    • Likewise, the custodian in Paul's chapter, his only ally who also ends up getting killed, possibly by Paul's own hand (ambiguous on purpose), and ends up having his soul bound to an altar until the defeat of Pious.
  • Karim ends up falling for a woman who sends him on an impossible quest to gain her affection. When he actually manages to reach his goal he discovers she's slept with the first rich charmer who came along, and is now dead because of it. Despite this, he still loves her and agrees to stay and guard the artifact sacrificing his own life. When Robert finally releases Karim from his duty it's clear the only thing he believes was gained from his sacrifice was aiding humanity.
  • Really, most of the characters, due to the fact that most of them are thrown into an age-old power struggle, with no preparation and an incredibly high chance of death or worse.

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