I am leaping between narrow walls of a deep labyrinth, trying to escape a horde of enemies with no intent other than to kill me. A cultist hinders my path with blasts of energy; tens of crawlers scurry up the walls like menacing, hungry tarantulas hunting their prey; a bat-like screamer shifts through the walls of the caverns, shooting crying souls out of its body that chase me. I slay a few of them. I jump in some more and escape to the next chamber, but they follow. Eventually I am overwhelmed, and I die. After a sigh of relief, I attempt the caverns again with restlessness as I am urged to push forward by the scarred voice of an omnipresent deity that I am bound to.
If this sounds familiar, it is because the game is heavily inspired by H.P. Lovercraft, insofar as to throwing in some references to characters in the novels for those with a keen eye. In fact, it’s those references that further immerse you into the atmosphere and the allegories the game is trying to throw at you. By now you’re probably thinking of Dark Souls, from which some elements can also be found here.
In Sundered, elements of the Metroidvania genre are meshed together with the oppressive difficulty and atmosphere of Dark Souls. Atmosphere is especially important in Sundered, not only given its influence but because — by and large — it is what truly shines when other elements of the game fumble. The hand-drawn vistas, characters, and animations are just beautiful to look at, and the music not only sets the tone but plays an important role in keeping you under pressure. To its advantage, the story is revealed through bits and pieces — just barely enough to give you an understanding of what has happened and the situation you are in, but never too much to explain everything you need to know; a lot of it is left for your imagination.
The game is divided into three distinct regions, each with its own aesthetic and set of enemies and challenges, from an underground research facility (which seems out of place) to a massive open cathedral that looks like a 2D re-imagining of Diablo’s High Heavens. As you wander through the caverns, you’ll immediately notice the Metroidvania influence. Parts of the map are sealed off until you find the special ability required to proceed for example, and the map is a complex multi-layered set of chambers with ever evolving corridors.
That’s right: the twist here that sets Sundered apart from other Metroidvania rogue-like games is that while there is a fixed “general layout” (e.g., the mini boss will always be in that particular chamber, four chambers away from where you start), the little rooms and caverns that connect those chambers are randomised. This is both a blessing an a curse. In some ways, it breaks your habit of adaptation by randomly throwing in different rooms and enemies at you. In other ways, though, it is mostly frustrating. Should you die at a boss fight, for example, traversing back to that boss is a different experience with every failure; sometimes it will be an easy, straight route, and at other times it will be a winding set of corridors with a horde of enemies in the middle that will get you killed before you even reach the boss. This is often more frustrating than it is challenging, especially when you are repeating the boss fight for the fifth time and the state of your readiness in terms of health and shields is determined by how randomly difficult the trek was to get there.
The random arrangement is not limited only to the rooms, however, but to the enemies as well. Often, you will venture through half the map without a single enemy in sight, only to hear the sound of a gong to signify your impending doom, with tens of monsters appearing out of nowhere all at once to make quick work of you. Other times, enemies are spaced out well, with no horde attacking for a while. At best, they are controlled and provide a good opportunity to farm resources from them to upgrade your skills. At bad times, a horde will come at you just before you enter a mini-boss chamber, making it all impossible to beat. At absolute worst, some areas are in permanent horde mode — rendering that entire block of the map frustrating and unenjoyable. Your only hope is to make it to the switch to open the shortcut door to avoid the bulk of the horde in future runs.
This random horde-attack is an interesting mechanic that will keep you on your toes, but its implementation is what drags the game down from a difficult but enjoyable skill-based exploration game to a futile button-mash frenzy. Some hordes are limited — for example, you are swarmed by a large but manageable number of enemies — but when they’re all dead, it is over. More often than not, a horde is an endless barrage of enemies keen on having you dead. In such invasions, death is not due to a lack of skill, but rather due to the game’s intent on having you killed so you can go upgrade you skills — if you can’t manage to miraculously escape that is. This is my main gripe in Sundered. Aside from boss battles, many of your deaths are a result of unfortunate circumstance rather than a lack of skill. No matter how far you have progressed in the skill tree, and no matter how high your health and shield bars are, a horde will in most cases certainly kill you should you not manage to escape, and how challenging your escape is depends on whether the rooms are arranged in your favour or the horde’s.
The times when your death is a result of your lack of skills or an underdeveloped skill tree is during boss fights. These battles are of epic proportions, and without a doubt the highlight of the game and the true shining example of Sundered’s potential. Each boss is a towering menace that occupies so much screen that the camera zooms out, rendering you a tiny speck in the grandiosity of it all. One boss in particular is so large that you might actually lose sight of yourself. They’re not a push over, either, and though they do have a pattern, these change as the boss’s health goes down, and becomes a dangerous frenzy when they’re at critical health. The boss fights are some of the absolute best I have seen, and defeating them sends a euphoric rush very similar to the first time I felled the Cleric Beast or Vicar Amelia in Bloodborne. It is exactly that feeling of winning by skill rather than luck that is missing outside of boss battles in Sundered.
The bosses play an important part in the narrative as well. Smaller bosses drop Elder Shard fragments, while main bosses drop full shards. These shards can be either used to “corrupt” your abilities — making them more powerful — or you can choose to destroy the shards to rid the world of the corruption. Your abilities will be augmented differently depending on whether you absorb or destroy the shard, and your choice not only affects your abilities but the end-game scenario as well (not only the ending). Since the ability augmentations are different, they will also impact your gaming experience, offering you options of experimentations and replayability should you choose to start a new adventure.
Now that I have spent a solid 15 hours on it though for the first run, I don’t feel inclined to play it again to try the other ability augmentations. As much as the graphics are beautiful, and as great the soundtrack is, and as epic as the boss battles are, they cannot alleviate the primary problem with Sundered: luck plays a more important role than skill.
