LOVE ETERNAL Review — Upside Down

Avant-garde is a rather apt way to describe LOVE ETERNAL, a precision platformer with psychological horror storytelling and some downright eerie vibes. It’s a title that feels like a metaphor for changing the way you think baked into its own core gameplay mechanic. Really, it feels like a game chock-full of metaphors, and I don’t feel as though I was smart enough to understand every single one.

That being said, I don’t think LOVE ETERNAL necessarily wants to be understood. I think it’s a game that wants, more than anything, to invoke some kind of feeling in the player. While I also don’t believe that feeling is meant to be anger, I do think that dying a thousand times across the game’s increasingly difficult platforming segments is part of the equation.

LOVE ETERNAL sends you on a precise platforming quest across a series of levels complete with striking, color-washed visuals, atmospheric droning music, and spikes. A lot of spikes. To complete these levels and hopefully avoid dying on spikes as often as possible, you’re given a nifty trick to invert gravity, changing the direction you fall to the top or bottom of the screen.

Doing so has a few caveats. Namely, the process is not instantaneous, and as you “flip” between gravity, you roll forward with momentum. The power can also only be activated again once you’ve touched the ground, with a few exceptions, meaning that once you flip, generally, you have to commit to the new direction you’re falling until you land. The platforming segments in LOVE ETERNAL are designed around this ability, challenging you to flip up and down, often multiple times per level, and introducing twists on the mechanic as you progress.

A platformer like LOVE ETERNAL is sort of like a puzzle game where the solution requires the player to have a good grasp on precision timing. The player experience in these kinds of games is absolutely determined by how well the game handles and if the controls are fluid and responsive enough to make precise movements, because any lag or hiccups can make the experience miserable to play. I’m happy to report that LOVE ETERNAL‘s controls are incredibly fine-tuned, more than well-equipped to pull off the precise movements it demands of you. There was never a time while playing that I felt like a death was anything but my fault, as I was always confident that the controls were doing what I needed them to do when I told them to do it.

That being said, I did die a lot. LOVE ETERNAL is as difficult as, if not more so than, any other precision platformer I’ve played. The game certainly treats each and every room as its own uniquely designed and, most importantly, challenging… well, challenge. There is a reason why the game is so liberal with save spots, sometimes putting two in a single room.

Be prepared to die, die, and die again as you challenge this game, knowing that swift respawns and generous checkpoints make up for it.

LOVE ETERNAL has a pretty deep and pretty unique story to tell between the platforming. To say that the game has some experimental storytelling would be an understatement, as the message in this obscure psychological horror story isn’t always the most clear.

Normally, I would say that such a hard-to-follow, or at least such an attention-demanding story, would be hurt by the game’s rather consistent death loops. Normally in a title like this, expending so much brainpower to get over a series of particularly difficult levels can actually check me out of a story completely. However, I was surprised to find that LOVE ETERNAL didn’t have this problem. In fact, each new cutscene full of unsettling weirdness felt like a reward for getting to the end of a segment and renewed my interest to keep going, even when I’d faced a series of humiliating deaths moments before.

A would-be consumer should be aware that LOVE ETERNAL isn’t the longest game in the world. While your playtime absolutely corresponds to how well you are at navigating the puzzles, I found myself getting through it in just under six hours of playtime. For ten dollars, though, I don’t think this is an unfair length at all, and I think every minute of those six hours is filled with something special to make it more than worth your while.

LOVE ETERNAL isn’t going to appeal to everyone, but real art never does. The game can feel incredibly difficult at times, demanding serious precision lest you face constant death loops on some of the tougher puzzles. The story is also incredibly experimental and avant-garde, combining horror and a little bit of comedy to create a narrative that is downright unsettling, bizarre, and at times difficult to understand. That being said, its difficulty, weirdness, and unique approach to storytelling are what give the game its incredible charm, making a title that, if you don’t love, you’re sure not to forget.

Try Hard Guides was provided a Steam code for this PC review of LOVE ETERNAL. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! LOVE ETERNAL is available on Steam, Xbox, PlayStation, and the Nintendo Switch.