Eternal

First and foremost, as with any IF work, the idea of agency should be taken into consideration. Your choices have rationale, and when you execute these choices, they make significant impacts.

In this regard, Eternal does this task well; characters may not even make themselves apparent in differing timelines, and more often than not, they succumb to the ravages of time without your involvement in their own personal stories.

So if you come to this story with the idea that you'll be making drastic changes to the world, you'll have your expectations met.

It's also important to acknowledge, however, that unlike IF works that cast your character as a blank slate, the character you play as is preset for a certain disposition. The summary description and exposition you get early on paints a fairly bleak picture, and if your torturous training is any indication, it's that your character isn't going to be much of a hero.

In the regard that your character is not much more than a physically strong person, the story conveys your limitations decently well. It doesn't mean that you won't run into a lot of unexpected deaths and outcomes (thankfully, CYS allows backtracking), but even on paths of failure your rationale is entertained. Hardly any more or less fair than a Goosebumps, really.

So you have a somewhat darker fantasy story (not quite 'grimdark'; you're not beset by an endless amount of world-ending enemies) that has you well-positioned to survive, and at some points thrive. Are there any great truths about character or morals that reveal themselves? No. Do you get to enact a lot of badass violence like one of those 80's action flicks? Yeah. Do you have entertaining dialogue and character dynamics that break expectations? If you're used to more tame works, definitely.

So with all this in mind, Eternal is above all a fun read. It's not going to revolutionize how you view and treat people, and it definitely prefers long-term attitudes you develop from the rationale of your choices; the outcomes of those behaviors you give the main character pan out in varying levels of success. It's a work meant to satisfy and entertain, and it does this well...provided that you don't take the edge too seriously.