Game: Unto The End
Genre: Adventure, Action, Platformer
System: Nintendo Switch (also Steam, PS4, & Xbox)
Developer|Publisher: 2 Ton Studios | Big Sugar
Age Rating: EU 16+ | US Teen
Price: UK £22.49 | EU €24,99 | US $24.99
Release Date: December 17th 2020
Review code provided with many thanks to Big Sugar
Cinematic Platformer
Unto the End is a cinematic platformer. This is usually a game where you’re given minimal clues and progress with minimal assistance from the game itself. You often need to observe your environments and react in ways you don’t expect. A recent game to compare this to would be Inside. But since I’m old, memories of a game called Another World (Which I own on Mega Drive) roared back into my memory. These games usually have an interesting narrative and art style but the gameplay is very much Marmite meaning some are going to love it or hate it. Prepare to fail… a lot.
The story is simple. You play as a Viking looking fella who has gone out hunting a dear only to get lost in a cave system. The overall goal is to find your way back to your family. The entire game has no dialogue and between you and home is a lot of nasty goblin-like creatures and deadly traps. You need to jump carefully between platforms, avoid hazards and of course do a lot of sword fighting. The odds are against you and death comes quickly.
It’s a game that suffers from my favourite gaming troupe ‘guess what I’m thinking’ where often you only learn how to get past a section by dying first. I would have probably been fine with this design but when it comes to the combat that’s when things start to get messy.
Prepare to Fight
Much of Unto the End is based around sword combat. Brutal over the top unfair sword fighting. Regularly you will encounter two enemies at once and you need to draw your sword. You have multiple moves at your disposal like blocking, evading, parrying, throwing a single knife, shoving and swiping high and low. You can practice combat in a sort of dream sequence with your wife at a fireplace. You need to carefully look at your enemies actions in order to react appropriately. If you look for the cues you can block high and low before following up with an attack. Trouble is this all goes so fast it’s very hard to follow, particularly in handheld mode. Your character can also only take a few hits, sometimes just ONE!, before dying. Fortunately the checkpoints are generous. Although it really wasn’t enjoyable repeating encounters over and over.
The odds often feel stacked against you. Most enemies require multiple hits to take down giving you so little margin for error. As well as this you can loose your sword and your character can fatigue from blocking and evading too much. While the tutorial is handy the game just throws you in the deep end when it comes to combat rather than breaking you in gently. It’s this combat that will make or break the experience. I often had to walk away from the game as the combat just felt unfair.
Beauty in the Frustration
The graphics though are beautiful. The character designs are quite simple but Unto the End makes impressive use of reflections from light and weather effects. I really enjoyed taking screenshots for this title. The cave systems are dark and haunting, with just a small light to illuminate your way. Outdoors the snow is blowing, making me as the player feel mild chills. When things are flowing well in the game, which for me wasn’t often, I couldn’t help but appreciate the ambience and art design at play here.
The Journey is Short but the Challenge Long
What’s interesting is Unto the End in theory is not a long game. If you by some miracle go through flawlessly you can finish the game in under two hours. The journey to get there though is going to take many deaths, quick reflexes and most importantly a lot of patience. Something the developer warns you about at the start. In the options the game does feature a assist feature for the combat but even with this on I didn’t feel the combat was more manageable.
There is also the opportunity to upgrade your armour but this seemed to do little at making the combat any easier. I wish the difficultly of the combat was toned down a notch but I do appreciate by doing that it would make the game super short. But it would probably warm people to the experience more.
Only for the Brave
I ended up leaning towards the hate it side of the Marmite argument with Unto the End mostly because of its combat system which I really could not get my head around. I guess I’m getting old and my reaction times are slowing. At the same time though I feel the developer does deserve some credit. The art style of this game is simple but beautiful and when things were flowing well I was really in awe of this game.
There will be some gamers out there that will adore this game for it’s punishing difficulty and get a sense of grand achievement on completing. For most though I would say approach with caution.
What Unto the End has is good hence my rating but it’s just not going to be for everyone.
Final Verdict: I like it
