The game looks pretty and i love the artstyle, but i dont like the skill tree thing, its not for me, the map is mostly random so its hard to grind some good amount of points, and if you want to do that it will get annoying

Nah, just not my kind of game it seems, its not bad or good its somehow neutral. but without a real story i dont see any real valuable reason to play it.

♥♥♥♥ game

Another unfair powerspike. I think I’m done.
Level 1: Okay, maybe decent.
Level 2: Suddenly everything has more HP, nasty debuffs, and absurd damage output.

The difficulty spike is not fun – it’s frustrating and feels unbalanced. Instead of a fair challenge, you get punished. I wanted progression, not punishment.

Honestly? I'm tired. Games should be exciting, not demoralizing. This one just reminded me why gaming doesn’t feel rewarding anymore.

Uninstalled. Trying to get my money back.

OMG... soooooo slooooow. no enemies around, just pointless running and falling for half an hour.

The least fun Metrovania game I've ever played. Lots of bugs when trying to get a controller working, Frustrating.

grind grind grind. if i want grind then i would play some mmo. what's progress even about in this game? developing some real skills? constant spam of horde of mobs do not show nothing. What is point of those horde?! if im close to finnish those mobs then another wave's appear and over and over, even when i fight with bosses those show up wtf?! poinless waves, pointless game

This is a mostly competent metroidvania with a satisfying Yggdrasil skill tree (which uses gold dropped by enemies), satisfying traversal and movement mechanics (WAY superior to Hollow Knight in this regard), and mostly fluid and satisfying combat.

It is weakened by its over-reliance on horde mechanics, which introduce difficulty by overwhelming you with on-screen spam. I'm not a fan of this design philosophy, and I especially didn't appreciate it during some of the boss fights, especially the final one, which might be the most unfun boss fight I have ever experienced. I watched a pro doing it on YouTube and still hated it. This isn't a difficulty or skill issue: I could fight this boss with an invincibility cheat and hate it no less. Being blown all over the screen while trying to use the unreliable grappling hook to get back to the boss's damageable node never felt like my skill was being tested. Only my patience.

I really enjoyed most of my time spent on this game, but the times I didn't enjoy it I REALLY didn't enjoy it, and that is relevant too. There is a lot to love about this game, but I would not recommend it to a friend.

Interesting take at metroidvania genre. Movement is fluid and all skills have use through the exploration and battle. Character development (skill wise) feels rewarding. The map is very well done - it has markers for important rooms so you don't get lost after getting some ability required to unlock a door or jump to a far ledge.

The bad side of Sundered is the lazy enemy design. Formless blobs of tentacles shooting wall-piercing projectiles or darting through the screen at the speed of sound. Battle ends up being just random button smashing to dodge and attack most of the time. Some areas have infinite spawning enemies with infinite range - really frustrating. The only viable strategy for these areas is run away to the next room, but at some point there are so many enemies, projectiles and environmental hazards pushing you around (physically pushing) that you end up dead.

TL;DR: My opinion on Sundered is very mixed. It does some things right, and it can be a fun experience, however it messes up several key factors, and that ends up detracting from the experience massively, making it very frustrating and grindy. Wouldn't recommend unless you're willing to put up with some of its frustrating aspects in order to experience the good parts of the game (the Bosses).

This review is spoiler-free, i played the game for 20 hours and finished it once on Hard. I do want to preface this by saying that i don't think Sundered is a bad game, obviously a lot of effort went into it and it did manage to keep me engaged for most of its playtime. However i think the game commits several mistakes that detract from the experience overall.


- So, you probably know this if you've seen anything about this game, the map isn't designed by hand like most games of the metroidvania genre, instead, only certain key locations are, and all the areas in between are procedurally generated, changing every time you die.
- In my opinion, this doesn't work well, firstly, it makes it so all the rooms in a certain region feel very same-y. The design of the individual rooms is honestly not bad at all, however, the fact that it is randomized detracts from the work done to create these interiors.
- It also creates a situation where you can't really "learn" the map, instead having to rely on a minimap on your screen to locate yourself.
- This is gonna connect to a later point i'll make, but i strongly believe that designing a normal map like most metroidvanias rather than procedurally generating it would contribute massively to the theming of the game, and allow for a much richer atmosphere.

- While you're out there exploring, sometimes you'll hear an alarm or a gong go off, which means you're going to be engaged by a horde of enemies.
- What happens next is that you're going to be engaged by 20-30 enemies at once, you can't escape them, since they'll teleport to any room you're in, so you have to fight them.
- It gets so bad, at certain points you can't even see your character anymore inside the mess.
- In my opinion, this detracts from the game massively, it feels like artificial difficulty, when you're in the early game, these hordes are so overwhelming you're almost guaranteed to die to them, no matter what you do, and the only thing that will help you against them is getting stronger by buying upgrades and getting more damage, health and bonuses. In other metroidvanias, enemies have a variety of attacks and interesting mechanics (some more than others, ofc) which you can learn how to avoid, dodge, punish, parry, etc, this allows you to tackle even complex late game enemies if you're dedicated enough. Sundered doesn't allow that, there are no complex late game enemies. They're all designed to be part of the swarm and get thrown at you by the dozens, they have at most 1 attack, 2 if you're lucky, even the late game enemies. By the endgame, you'll just be spamming dodge, and then spamming attack until you can build up an execution to take out multiple of them at once.

- Here i'm talking about the actual bosses, not the mini-bosses
- The bosses are arguably the highlight of this game, they're incredible, really. The game gets it right: massive monsters that can barely fit in your screen with big attacks and specific weak points you have to hit. The combat system of the game really shines here, being a super soldier makes a lot of sense when you're fighting these monstrosities.
- There aren't that many major bosses, however the quality over quantity approach really pays off for these guys, their designs range from disturbing to terrifying, their difficulty feels like it is tuned to be just right (not easy enough to be boring, but also not impossible or frustrating), and by the later parts of your playthrough, the game conditions you to be really excited for these boss fights since you know they'll be great.
- There was really only one optional boss i thought was very disappointing gameplay-wise, however even in that case, the visual design was still astounding.

- Now, i'm by no means a Lovecraftian "expert" or anything like that, i do enjoy the books and i get excited to look for media that tries to explore themes of fear of the unknown, however i'm not a big connoisseur.
- With that in mind, i think the game does a decent job of exploring these themes, specially with the bosses and towards the ending of the game. Your sword (the Trapezohedron) is dubbed and talks to you in Eschatonian, which is a made up language created specifically for this game, which i imagine is inspired by R'lyehian. This is honestly really cool and adds a lot to the game.
- However, like i hinted at earlier, i think the procedurally generated environments really detract from this theming. It removes a lot of opportunity to create strange and alien-like locations, diminishing the feelings of mystery. I believe this was not the intention, and that the devs intended for the randomized maps to create a feeling of uneasiness and the randomness to emulate a sort of alien environment that is ever changing, however this, in my opinion, does not work, and ends up detracting from the atmosphere instead.

- The bonus system isn't that exciting, it reminds me of Hollow Knight charms and the Beads in Blasphemous, but a way more simplified version, there aren't that many interesting effects, with most of them just being stat increases, and you have to grind to get higher levels of these bonuses (which isn't really necessary to beat the game, at least not on Hard, might be needed on Insane difficulty).
- The cannon is your standard "magic"/long-ranged option in this game, however, as opposed to the spells in Hollow Knight for example, it feels very weak, and there are rare occasions where you'd want to use it, making all of the bonuses and skill tree perks you can get for it feel like a waste. I did find it useful for a certain boss, however outside of that, i barely used it.