Sundered

One thing is guaranteed in Sundered, You will die lots and lots and lots of times! But each time you will come back stronger than before. Sundered is a Fast-Paced Metroidvania 2D Action Adventure that throws you in a hell and challenge you to survive and if you are a hardcore action platformer player, you’ll definitely enjoy it even though it suffers from some serious technical issues.

Sundered is a sight to behold, and has a unique world that I loved exploring. However, the controller-smashing cheapness of the combat, and iffy technical performance make it tough to recommend for those unwilling to embrace the grind and conquer the challenge.

Sundered is a beautiful-looking Metroidvania with interesting mechanics, let down slightly by performance issues and a difficulty curve that is simply too steep during its opening hours.

A missed opportunity for an artistically-inspired metroidvania game in desperate need for a corrective patch.

An opportunity squandered. [Sept 2017, p.85]

All in all, I feel like Sundered had a great idea in place, but due to the procedurally generated rooms mixed with the nonstop enemy encounters, I felt like I wasn’t able to progress enough in a span of time to make me want to keep going. The game wants me to die and because of that, it felt like it didn’t matter if I was skillful enough to make it through, they wanted me to bang my head against a wall for about 30 minutes so I would gain enough shards to level up a few things then take it on using their progression system rather than my skills as a player. It ends up being a frustrating endeavor after a while. Now, that’s not to say there isn’t some enjoyable things to be had here, but I would be weary on spending the full price tag for now. After a little price drop or a sweet digital sale, give it a shot then.

Another promising game is ruined by the lure of procedural-generation, which is a particular shame given Sundered’s gorgeous animation and interesting gameplay ideas.