Sundered

⭐ 8.5/10

(Originally written by Joseph)

This was a totally random game that I'd never heard of, but my friend recommended because it was like $2 on sale. I didn't have much for expectations, but I thought that this game was fantastic. It's a mashup of some games that I love. I think a lot of people would compare it to Hollow Knight because it's a metroidvania and has similar aesthetics, but the combat and platforming feels more like Ori, and then there are rougelike elements that made me think Hades. That's a lot of good games!

It's only 15 hours or so, which was nice after 200 hours of Witcher, and the whole thing is action-packed. You are constantly moving, upgrading, fighting, discovering, and then facing pretty sweet bosses. There's always a great sense of progress. You get to upgrade a ton after dying, so while it can be frustrating to die far out in the map, sometimes I was looking forward to it because you get this awesome sense of how many things you can buy when you get back to the start, how much longer your health bar will be.

I would say that a few minor negatives would be that the enemies come in droves, and there are so many that it's easy to lose where your guy is. I would also say the combat was good enough where you don't need hordes! I guess it's fun to mow down dozens of weak monsters, but it felt a little button mashy when I don't think it needed to go in that direction. It could have had more technical, 1v1 matches. The game also looks amazing, but many levels are randomly generated, making the platforming weak and the corridors samey. Some good, handcrafted, challenging platforming sequences would have been preferred.

But those seem like nitpicks because I really like what was here. Although there's not necessarily anything new in this game, I'm not sure that any game has this combination of mechanics and I think it worked very well. Totally worthy of $2 and 15 hours of your time, especially for fans of these genres.