Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem is a psychological horror game released for the Nintendo GameCube in 2002. It was developed by Silicon Knights and published by Nintendo.

Plot
Investigating the murder of her grandfather, Edward Roivas, Alexandra Roivas stumbles upon an ancient tome bound in human skin and bone. Reading it, she stumbles upon an evil plot that has in action for over two thousands years by the lich Pious Augustus and his ancient master. Reading of many people in history, she soon realizes she is humanity's last hope before all falls under the... Eternal Darkness.

Why It Escapes The Darkness

 * 1) It is the first and one of the very few M-rated games Nintendo has published.
 * 2) Though Alexandra is the main heroine, reading the Tome of Eternal Darkness lets you play as eleven other characters. The first person you play as is Pious Augustus before he becomes a lich.
 * 3) * Not to mention, Pious's ending determines which of the three gods he serves.
 * 4) The three gods, Ulyaoth, Xel'lotath, and Chattur'gha share a rock-paper-scissors relationship. Their magic can be harnessed by the characters and be used to help defeat enemies. A fourth but more benevolent god, Mantorok, maintains equilibrium over the other three. Mantorok is however bound by Augustus to keep him from interfering.
 * 5) There's a rock-paper-scissors system between each god that affects the spells you use and even decides which god you have to awaken to defeat the one Augustus summoned.
 * 6) Gameplay shares some concepts with early Silent Hill games.
 * 7) The game is heavily inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft. The Tome of Eternal Darkness is a reference to the Necronomicon.
 * 8) Each character can lose sanity. When sanity is lost, a number of things can happen that keep playing tricks on the player to make YOU think you're the one going insane. Some examples including the illusion that your television is broken, your controller suddenly not responding, your saves getting deleted, the game abruptly ends after completing a chapter and surprisingly, teasing a sequel, items disappearing for a moment, or the character just dying.
 * 9) Each character is equipped with weapons of the era they are in.
 * 10) Each weapon description is somewhat educational allowing you to learn more about the weapon in real life.
 * 11) Four major locations.
 * 12) During Alexandra's final battle with Augustus, the spirits of the other warriors offer their support.
 * 13) Beating the game three times with Augustus serving a different god allows for the true ending.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Somewhat choppy character models that haven't aged particularly well.
 * 2) *This was due to the game originally being made for the Nintendo 64 that had it graphics upscaled to fit onto the Nintendo GameCube.
 * 3) The sanity effects, one of the main selling points of the game, requires you to keep one of your core stats low and potentially take damage.
 * 4) Some of the sanity effects are ineffective when played on a HDTV. It's no real fault of the game itself. Said sanity effects were a play on the most common TVs at the time and HDTVs were far in the future back in 2002.

Reception
Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem is considered one of the scariest games ever made and has a rating of 4.26 out of 5 on GameFAQs, and a 92 on Metacritic. Sadly it wasn’t well received commercially, only selling less than half a million copies, causing the game to fade into obscurity (at least in North America, as evidenced by the fact European/Japanese copies are a bit cheaper), and becoming one of Nintendo’s least-known games. Over the years, however, it has gained a cult following.

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