Eternights makes room for meaningful romance between high school hijinks and supernatural horror. It’s a mostly lighthearted story about young adults working together to save the world. However, it’s also about finding love in a hopeless place.

The premise of the game starts innocently enough. The protagonist, an average 18-year-old man, asks his friend Chani for advice on how to set up his profile on a dating app. However, before he can even get to his first date, the apocalypse begins. Eternights, the anti-aging drug the game is named after, has transformed a portion of the population into violent, mindless mutants. You are gifted with a shapeshifting limb as your weapon to fight against them. 

That doesn’t mean the finding love part has to stop, though. Your journey also includes bonding with the other survivors.

In Eternights, what you say matters. Your hero might be a blank slate up front, but you can customize his personality with your responses. What partner you pick mostly depends on who you like best, whether that’s in terms of aesthetic or personality. However, you might also consider the different abilities you can unlock by dating a particular character. You have four options: Yuna, Sia, Min, and Yohan.
 

Yuna

• Social Skill: Expression
• Protagonist Skill: Stinger (sword thrust attack)
• Special Abilities: Area of Effect Heal, Instant Heal
• Element: Fire

Yuna seems like the public’s dream girl: a bubbly, sweet singer on her way up in the idol world. Before the world’s demise, she was a pop star who appeared in tons of public performances and ads, enough that the protagonist’s best friend was showing her to him on TV before they dove into bunkers. As an artist, Yuna is an expressive person, so she prefers someone who’s just as in tune with their feelings and vocal about them as she is. You can win her over with Expression, which means picking dialogue options with as much personality as possible.

Yuna is the token healer of the game, so most of her abilities involve different ways to heal the team and the protagonist. She can also unlock the Stinger ability, a sword thrust that the protagonist can activate when he gets close enough to an enemy. 

Pick Yuna if you enjoy stories that lean toward high school tropes like passing notes to your crush during class and struggling to face pressure from your peers.
 

Sia

• Social Skill: Acceptance
• Protagonist Skill: Three Swords, Attack+
• Special Abilities: Ice Rain, Cold Freeze
• Element: Ice

Sia embodies the interests of a professional scientist and researcher inside the body of a teenage goth. Some players might pick her right away just based on aesthetics with her long, dark twin ponytails and black clothing. However, she also has a very distinct personality that highlights her passion for science and struggle with balancing humanity with her research. She especially appreciates Acceptance, so picking level-headed dialogue options matches her pace the best.

Spending time with Sia can boost your attack power and strengthen ice abilities like Ice Rain and Cold Freeze, which shoot ice missiles and slow enemies respectively. You also eventually unlock a Three Swords ability that spins a trio of swords around the protagonist in battle, damaging any opponent that comes in contact with them.

Pick Sia if you love a know-it-all, type-A goth girlfriend with a passionate streak.
 

Min

• Social Skill: Confidence
• Protagonist Skill: Blast
• Special Abilities: Barrier, Stun Wave
• Element: Thunder

Min is a socially awkward athlete that the protagonist rescues from a horde of monsters. She calls the protagonist “coach” because she asked him to be her coach shortly after her rescue—a coach on how to be her most confident self. Thus, picking dialogue options that shows off your Confidence can really impress her. She’s known for being an accidental pervert and sometimes saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Still, she means well and always tries to do her best.

Min unlocks the Blast ability for the protagonist, one of the most useful in your tool kit because it enables you to perform ranged attacks. It’s especially important in a hack-and-slash-style game like Eternights, where timely dodges and evasion can make all the difference in your survival. Ranged attacks can help you avoid close contact, which can make navigating hordes of enemies easier. Her other abilities, Barrier and Stun Wave, also grant you defensive abilities that shield you from attacks and stun enemies respectively.

Pick Min if you like awkwardly endearing characters who have guts. Also, if you want to level up her extremely helpful abilities. Note that you will have to endure extra anime cringe.
 

Yohan

• Social Skill: Courage
• Protagonist Skill: Whirlwind
• Special Abilities: N/A
• Element: Wind

Yohan is an immortal being who first appears in the protagonist’s dreams and the only male romance option in the game. However, even without taking LGBTQ+ interests into consideration, his character is distinct enough that anyone can enjoy his personality. He has a habit of lightly joking with the protagonist and making demands in teasing ways, but he also mulls over philosophical topics like the fleetingness of happiness. He admires Courage, perhaps because he feels he needed more of it in the years before he met you. 

Yohan grants the protagonist the Whirlwind ability, which deals damage to any enemies that get stuck in the area of effect while the ability is active. Unlike the other romance options, Yohan doesn’t unlock his own abilities, though. Instead, he unlocks stat bonuses for the main character as they grow closer. 

All of these love interests benefit the protagonist with their stories and abilities. First and foremost, you should pick the one that interests you the most. Eternights prides itself in its Persona-like social link system, so picking a suitor solely based on each character’s story is playing the game as intended. If we’re talking from an ability standpoint, some abilities like Blast might have an advantage over something like a little additional healing, but it won’t do you any favors story-wise if your heart isn’t in it.