Love Eternal Review (PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, & PC)

Think too hard on it, and the title “Love Eternal” will creep you out a bit. Not quite like unconditional love, but that you’re forced to love somebody for eternity, regardless of whether you fall out of love with them. And that’s Love Eternal’s story, in a nutshell. A psychological horror puzzle-platformer, constantly surprising you at every juncture. 

Be it the narrative or the gameplay, you’d best prepare for a tumultuous ride. It’s unlike anything you’ve played before. Sure, a few similarities here and there to Celeste’s unforgiving precision and Super Meat Boy’s tough platforming. But ultimately, an indie horror platformer that’ll leave you more puzzled than most. 

Developer brkla and publisher Ysbryd Games have far outdone themselves here. Let’s see how exactly in our Love Eternal review.

Dinner is Served

The start of Love Eternal’s story already had my senses tingling. It deceived me into thinking this is another relatable, ordinary story. How often have you wanted to skip out on family dinner? And wanted to say no to being sent to fetch and do things around the house? That’s Maya for you, a moody teenage girl, reluctantly sharing dinner with her family. She’s then told to answer the phone when it rings. When she returns, though, her family’s gone. And when she goes looking for them, she ends up in a creepy castle; the only way back to her family is to beat a series of challenging puzzle-platforming stages. 

But that’s not the end of the story. Every so often, we peel back the layers around Maya’s family’s disappearance. That a goddess, a lonely, selfish, and dreadful one, is responsible for all of Maya’s troubles. Bit by bit, Love Eternal expounds on Maya’s family history. That this isn’t the first time the goddess has been up to no good. That her powers are pretty extraordinary, enough to distort reality. From messing with Maya’s head to trapping her in a terrifying, deadly labyrinth, the goddess will stop at nothing until she gets what she wants. “Loneliness” is a core theme of Love Eternal, explored in the most vulnerable and unhinged ways. Its ties to the goddess, Maya, and her family’s fate put the fear of God in you through strongly written and designed visual novel storytelling. 

Mind Games

Indeed, Love Eternal’s story is more than meets the eye. Its pacing is masterful, guiding you down a destabilizing rollercoaster of emotions. Downright pummels you through empathy and understanding, unsettling discomfort, before throwing jump scares at you that will get your heart racing. The extent the goddess is willing to go to traumatize Maya is far beyond platforming. It’s mind games that break through the fourth wall to affect your own emotional stability. Quite literally, in fact, when down the road, Love Eternal switches its storytelling format into breaking through the fourth wall. And before that, it switched to a point-and-click narrative. Overall, Love Eternal dares to dream big, fusing experimental and meta storytelling mostly successfully. 

“Mostly,” because the story can feel disjointed at times. And the ending definitely leaves you a bit confused, and not in a clever way. Some narrative choices don’t land like they should, with some sections feeling like a drag. But these are very scarce, at least compared to the genuinely horrifying surprises you’ll encounter. The devs have called this one a psychological horror, and they have, by all means, delivered the dread and sense of uneasy discomfort masterfully. Special recognition to the audio-visual cues and music. Exploring the goddesses’ haunting mindscape looks and feels truly dreary. With every screen specially hand-crafted, you enjoy unsettling images and backdrops that keep you invested. As do the chilling sound effects and subtle but unnerving music. 

Trial and Error

While the story pushes its boundaries of the expected, the platforming sections equally don’t disappoint. You’ll navigate the castle, screen by screen, evading obstacles and platforming your way to safety. Spikes and lasers are littered all around moving platforms, and it’s up to you to help Maya make it through hazards unharmed. With her small frame, squeezing through tight spaces makes sense. But the moving platforms require your timing to be accurate. Love Eternal is, above all things, a precision platformer. And so, any slight mistake in your timing or accuracy will lead to certain death. But before you start to worry, rest assured that the platforming stages will be easier at first. The early stages serve as tutorials, teaching you basic mechanics that grow in complexity over time.

Maya can run, jump, and high jump. Easy enough to grasp, then comes in, gravity-bending. It’s the main skill in Love Eternal that will occupy you throughout your runs. You can essentially bend gravity to either run on the floor or the ceiling. But onward, you’ll learn there’s a catch. Once you flip Maya, she has to touch the ground before you can flip her again. This then introduces red gems you can use to redeem your gravity-bending skill. The red gems are dispersed mid-air. And so, Maya can then flip as many times as the red gems you acquire, at times even completing a stage without ever touching the ground. 

Tough As Nails

And this is where Love Eternal gets complicated. When you have several things to juggle, all while considering accurate timing and precision. One slight mistake, remember? Even when there are several spikes, lasers, moving platforms, and red gems seemingly out of reach. I won’t lie to you. Soon, things will get very tricky. Even the best platforming gamers will struggle to beat stages in one go. And that should be encouraging, because it means Love Eternal relies, at least significantly, on patience. You’ll die too often, enough to want to rage quit. But then, something holds you back from giving up. I can’t quite describe it, but there’s an intrinsic motivation to want to get it right in these types of games, no matter how many times you fail. 

How do you explain dying so many times, and then getting to the final challenge, which is way harder than any stage you’ll have completed? Even unnecessarily so, because the difficulty spike doesn’t even make sense. And yet, you still find yourself pushing. Trying and re-trying. It’s one thing to plan out your route, taking note of the obstacles and moving platforms on the way. But it’s another to practice and master timing and precision. Even worse, to master Maya’s momentum –that’s the other thing Love Eternal factors heavily into beating its stages. When flipping Maya, you have to consider her velocity, as she’ll maintain her momentum. And that can make her movement too slow or too fast to dodge an obstacle in time.

Smooth Ride

Again, Love Eternal has its way of driving its hooks into your soul. No matter how frustrating it gets to lose, you still find yourself trying again. And that can be because of a lot of reasons. The satisfaction of finally beating a stage, I’m sure. But also, how quickly Maya revives after dying. It’s so fast, you have no time to process your failure. Not to mention how snappy and responsive the controls are. Maya moves flawlessly and with grace, so much so that any mistake is fair and justified.

For a precise puzzle-platformer as strict as Love Eternal, you can’t get away with tedious, unresponsive controls. The same goes for the technical performance, with the animations smooth, and overall gaming experience running flawlessly without a fault.

Verdict

If you’re looking for something refreshing to challenge your reflexes, do try out Love Eternal. It’ll definitely surprise you with its twists and turns, both literally and figuratively. The story is shocking, despite its seemingly ordinary start. It constantly toys with your sanity, putting you in a constant state of sweet discomfort. Puzzle-platformers may rarely be psychological horrors. But Love Eternal far outdoes itself as far as creating dreadful scenarios is concerned. 

And the platforming stages that await you will have you writhing in agony in solidarity with Maya, who’ll die one too many times. But with every death comes a shocking determination to try and try again. It’s a strictly precise platformer, demanding accurate timing, and during so many levels veers dangerously close to frustration. But it never quite gets boring or loses your interest. 

In fact, the steep challenge may be Love Eternal’s secret power, almost nudging you not to give up. Sure, a few issues come up during your playthrough, with the story getting a bit confusing, and the platforming stages seeming unnecessarily strict. But none of the issues ever takes away the fact that Love Eternal is a work of art: unique, creative, and unsettling in all the best ways.