That is already turning right into a bumper 12 months for Metroidvania followers. With the wonderful Prince of Persia: The Misplaced Crown having kicked issues off fantastically, Ultros now arrives from a smaller writer however with no small hype of its personal. With a gob-smackingly distinctive artwork model and a fungal, miasmic tone, it actually seems like nothing else on the market proper now, with a much more obscure and player-led story than you may count on.
The sport sees gamers awake on a mysterious spaceship, which appears to be taking part in host to the space-birth of an enormous being known as Ultros — a form of Lovecraftian cosmic horror that instinctively seems like a nasty factor for the universe.
The primary hour or so of Ultros is fairly conventional, as you discover a side-scrolling chunk of map, discover a brief sword to combat with, and meet a few quirky, odd characters who offer you some enigmatic info to digest. You begin to determine a ability tree, and are advised you may solely have the ability to earmark a couple of of those expertise for retention between “loops”, with out understanding fairly what meaning.
Then, after making it previous the sport’s first squelching boss, you may have that thriller solved as you sever the connection of a sleeping monk from Ultros’ delivery course of (you learn that proper) and get sucked right into a space-time vortex to awake again the place you began. You will solely have no matter expertise you managed to mark for cover, and that monk will keep severed, however from there you may have to start out over, making your manner via to a central chamber to gather a power-up once more and heading off to search out no matter new route you can also make it via with mentioned instrument to search out your subsequent monk.
That is Ultros’ loop, a curious fusing of Metroidvania traditions with the lightest of roguelite trappings. It is a loop that does not really reset you too harshly, however thematically resonates as you begin to uncover extra particulars concerning the ship you are on (most of these particulars aren’t precisely definitive, nonetheless).
Your two principal instruments are that brief sword for fight and somewhat floating robotic known as an Extractor, which homes the navigation upgrades you may achieve step-by-step as you progress via the sport. Fight is straightforward, largely centred round a dodge system that leaves opponents open after a well-timed button press, and whereas it is pretty good and responsive, you may quickly realise that enemy selection is sorely missing. The sport additionally has little to no problem curve; bosses are constantly actually simple and enemies simply overcome, with the one actual obstacles we ever encountered proving much more usually to be navigational ones.
As you kill buzzing beasties, you may decide up physique components from them that can be utilized for therapeutic and to fill up your shops of 4 levelling-up sources, a system that sounds extra complicated than it’s in follow. This looting brings into play one last gameplay twist, one among Ultros’ most unique. You too can discover and decide up seeds as you progress across the ship, and plant these at designated spots to sprout a wide range of plant varieties, a few of which supply up bounties of therapeutic berries whereas others supply new motion choices, from climbing spots to momentum-building velocity boosts.
The place you select to plant which kinds of plant can have a very personalising impact on the sprawling map by the point you are in your final couple of loops, though the sport has clearly been fastidiously designed to not make these decisions lock you out of areas you could entry except actually clearly signposted. Better of all, the vegetation develop additional after a accomplished loop, and the ship quickly begins to turn into much more fertile and filled with flora, resonating with some story beats.
This bulging, pulsating sense of fecund life is in lockstep with Ultros’ attractive artwork model, by far its largest and most distinctive success. It is a neon-soaked, hand-drawn slam-dunk of a visible experiment, in some methods easy due to its primary 2D design however constantly throwing beautiful designs and backgrounds your strategy to actually promote its creative imaginative and prescient. Hole Knight is a transparent touchstone for the sport, and that sport’s quiet, sombre tone is in some methods echoed right here, however visually Ultros feels just like the acid-spiked model of that subterranean world, in a very memorable manner.
Nonetheless, in the identical vein because the underwhelming fight, the pure platforming of Ultros can also be not fairly on the elite degree that has followers slavering in anticipation of the long-awaited Silksong. Whereas transferring round feels easy sufficient, jumps are simply the slightest bit imprecise, and your motion set is simply the tiniest bit restricted in a manner that may make the prospect of transferring from one facet of the massive map to the opposite somewhat daunting and draining.
Equally, close to its ending the sport provides you the prospect to take a brand new strategy story-wise by hooking up the entire ship to a form of intravenous community — one which requires you to maneuver via its corridors fastidiously linking up nodes to one another.
This course of is attention-grabbing and enjoyable in small doses, however locking fast-travel behind it’s greater than somewhat harsh, and it did not take us lengthy to surrender on the thought in favour of a speedier decision. It is just a bit too janky to keep away from comparatively frequent moments of mild frustration.
Conclusion
Ultros boasts a visible id that deserves actual recognition, a shocking imaginative and prescient of alien color with design concepts that reside lengthy within the reminiscence. Its platforming and fight cannot fairly match that vigorous success, sadly. Nonetheless, when you’re on the hunt for a unique-looking Metroidvania sport that comes bursting with concepts and a modest 10-hour runtime with the choice of extra when you find it irresistible, few video games can match it for model.