TL;DR: Beautiful, but entirely too frustrating
While Unto the End is a beautiful game from a visual and audio standpoint, no level of beauty can overshadow the tedious and clunky combat system that tries too hard to be different. If you could avoid every combat encounter in the game or even simplify combat the game would be great, albeit very short (3-4 hours), but instead you are forcedTL;DR: Beautiful, but entirely too frustrating
While Unto the End is a beautiful game from a visual and audio standpoint, no level of beauty can overshadow the tedious and clunky combat system that tries too hard to be different. If you could avoid every combat encounter in the game or even simplify combat the game would be great, albeit very short (3-4 hours), but instead you are forced to fight in multiple encounters where finally succeeding feels less like a joyful mastery of the combat experience and more of “thank goodness that’s over” due to a lucky string of blocks. The complete lack of guidance or tips with regard to items you receive causes their potential uses to be through trial-and-error luck instead of “creativity” as you show a troll everything in your inventory before you stumble upon the “correct” item. There is a difference between creatively guiding a player to use items in unforeseen or different ways and blindly hoping they will try something random in order to create alternate pathways
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Unto the End hits its 2-D minimalistic art style mark excellently – the game is beautiful. Wandering through pitch-black caves with only the flickering light of your torch to warn you of danger is nerve-wracking but intriguing. In comparison, putting your torch away and trudging through the snow is equally beautiful as the world you walk through as well as the backdrop are beautifully crafted. Often times your environment will warn you of something amiss, though admittedly the strewn out bodies peppered with arrows did not stop me from walking right into the same trap and getting my own souvenir arrow to the chest. The game’s audio follows the same minimalistic style as the visual, as most the time you will be hearing typical sounds of a cave or the rushing wind, your character’s grunting and occasional simple melodies themed to accompany the gameplay. The game’s story is fairly nonexistent as you leave your wife and son to assumedly go hunting before your trip turns into a challenge to survive almost immediately. While maneuvering through the world you’re never quite sure whether you’re going the right way as you wander through dark caverns, but the feeling of being lost is something the game strives to cause as you question if you have, in fact, seen that same spirit mushroom five times. While the exploration piece of the game is simple and satisfying as jump you over deadly falls, dodge traps and solve extremely simple puzzles, the game’s combat is unfortunately where Unto the End fails to match its aesthetic beauty. As someone who loves challenging games, the combat mechanics of Unto the End seem difficult for the sake of difficulty, not for any sort of enjoyment or mastery factor. The game is by no means a hack-and-slash as you’re given a “high” attack and a “low” attack along with matching block moves that from the foundation of the combat. There is really no way to play aggressively as most enemies will flawlessly block your attacks and instantly counter attack unless you manage to first block enough of their attacks, causing them to be briefly stunned. Even while stunned, however, an enemy is blocking one direction, so you have to attack the opposite of their stunned block which is easier said than done as some enemy animations often don’t clearly show where they’re blocking – leaving you to slash and hope for the best. Rinse and repeat the blocking game, throw in a couple attacks that you have to duck as well as a fairly useless dagger/spear and shoulder check that both work once during combat if you’re lucky and you have Unto the End’s clunky and frustrating combat system. According to the game’s tutorial there is also a feinting mechanic to bait a creature’s block, but I was unable to successfully utilize it at all through my playthroughs as any attempt was met with a chain of attacks that usually killed me. All this is to say that combat is extremely tedious, and finally defeating an enemy feels less like a satisfying mastery of the combat encounter and more of a fortunate stroke of blocking luck accompanied by a “thankfully that’s over with.” The game gives you the option to avoid certain fights though no advice or tips on how to do so, meaning trail and error is therefore a key mechanic that is enabled due to the game’s somewhat forgiving checkpoint system. You will be using these checkpoints often as you die repeatedly or, in many cases, succeed in combat but bleed out before you can get to a campfire. The game expects you to learn each enemy’s attacking style and animations in order to predict where they’re going to attack, but doing so through continuous deaths when you’ll only see the majority of enemies once in the game makes it very unrewarding to spend the blood, sweat and tears necessary to “master” a sub-five hour game.… Expand
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