Keepers is a new weekly segment in which I’ll discuss games I’ve played that I’ve seen fit to keep after playing. I generally sell a game that I’ve finished, so the only reason I keep one is because I plan to replay the game some day. Classifying a game as a “keeper” is generally a badge of merit.
I never owned a gamecube. Part of the reason is because I never saw many gamecube games that I was eager to play. The one that was always at the top of my list was Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem.
As soon as I got a Nintendo Wii, I got myself a copy of Eternal Darkness, and I was not disappointed. You follow the lineage of the Rovias family as its various members come into contact with the book of Eternal Darkness. At its core, Eternal Darkness is a survival horror game. But its magic system, its inventive plot, and its amazing insanity effects are what really makes the game shine.
When hearing about the sanity aspect of the game, it’s easy to brush it off as a novelty, but nothing could be further from the truth. In the game, as you come across unsightly manifestations of evil, your character’s sanity meter will start to fall. As your meter begins to dwindle, you’ll be cued to the fact that your character is starting to lose his or her grip on reality when blood begins to run down the walls. However, this is just the precursor to the game’s incredibly inventive insanity effects. If your sanity meter hits rock bottom, your character will really start to lose it. Sometimes you’ll enter a room to find you’re walking on the ceiling, or you’ll be placed in a scenario that doesn’t seem quite right. But the sanity effects aren’t confined to affecting the character onscreen–they will also influence you. Without giving away too much, if some technical issues should arise while playing the game, don’t be too quick to take action.
I never finished playing Eternal Darkness, which is part of the reason why it’s still on my shelf. The Ulyaoth Black Guardian at the end of chapter 9 kicked my ass, and as hard as it tried I simply could not beat it. I want to go back to it some day. But damn that boss was hard. Brandon, if you’ve got any advice here, I’ll take it. Hell, if anyone has advice on how to beat this boss, lay it on me.
Eternal Darkness is available for $20 on EBay, and frankly I’m amazed. It’s got to be a pretty rare game at this point, and I’d expect it to go for at least triple that.
Someday, I can only hope that they’ll come out with a sequel to Eternal Darkness with insanity effects half as good as the original. I’ll be snatching that one up as surely as I’ll be buying Beyond Good and Evil 2.
I’ll never forget the first time I got the message “deleting data on your memory card” and me running across the room to turn the Gamecube off. More games should mess with your head like that.
I actually went through the game 3 or 4 times, and saw every ending. The day a sequel is announced, I”ll be putting down my pre-order.
I fear that we’ll never see a sequel as long as SK is mired in the dregs of Too Human.
As for the boss, it’s been so long since I played it, that I don’t remember. Honestly though, I don’t remember any of the bosses being particularly difficult, so I must have stumbled my way through to a lucky win.
I remember having my saves deleted too. I’ve never been so scared in my life. Stupid game.
For the Black Guardian, it’s mostly a timing trick. When the Zombies are warping in, cast a 7-point Magical Attack just as the third one starts to warp in. The boss will turn vulnerable right as the cast completes. When he pulls you in close, you just have to run around until he stops attacking you and begins to flash. Drop a quick 3-point magic attack when that happens, then start running around to avoid the next round of attacks. The boss should die after the third 3-point spell. It’s easiest if you set each of those spells to a hot key before the battle begins.
I picked up this game again and beat the boss about 2 days before you left this comment, Steve. My problem (I think) was that I was using the wrong color magic. Timing may also have been an issue – I may have attacked a bit early and gotten lucky this last time. There’s not much of a visual indicator that he becomes vulnerable at any given point. Anyway, you’ll notice that this game is back on my gamercard. Yay!