Review: Sundered

Sundered tries to find his place under the sun in a slightly different way, first of all with a specific visual style that attracts attention. Hand-painted and traditionally animated, the game looks like some kind of cartoon from the 1980s, with a style inspired by animated films by Ralph Bakery and Frank Frazetta. 
This is not surprising so much when we consider that the game is the work of Thunder Lotus Games, which brought us to the equally striking Viking Saga, Jotun. We agree that the game should not be judged solely by graphics, but it's really easy to get lost in the landscapes, spend time watching the animation of the protagonist or falling from the chair watching spectacular scenes when unlocking new abilities.

As much as he delighted his appearance, the Sundered world is often empty. You will find yourself wandering around without any possibility of interaction with the environment, without the opportunity to find out about this unusual world and your mission in it, except in exactly marked places where you will listen to the cryptic and horrible stuttering narration. Without exaggeration, even when you finish the game, you will not be sure what it's actually about. The game world is randomly generated whenever you play or die, so you'll see generic corridors and copy/past scene. Fortunately, the key locations are clearly highlighted on the map, and it will be refreshed every time you generate a world with the approximate shape of the zone through which you will pass, so the navigation is very clear, although sometimes tense as there is no form of teleporting.



If you read the description of the EA hand, you can easily assume that the design has sundered and traces games Dead Cells, one of the most popular roguelike games in the last few years. There is the generation of a map, a return to the beginning when you die and a very similar combat system, but all similarities cease to exist. Death in Sundered is not so dramatic, moreover, it will only return you to the original altar. There is no loss of experience, ability, or progress in unlocked zones. Since the altar is the only place where you can spend the accumulated experience (crystals) on the character improvement, you will often want to return before stepping into new and heavier stocks. Structured.

Death, as I have already noted, does not mean much in this game, but far from being a rabbit like a rabbit. Unlike the aforementioned Dead Cells and similar games that are run by the mantra "difficult but fair", the authors of Sunderedthey decided to completely reverse the approach and sudden weight jumps that almost guarantee death. At completely random intervals, hordes of opponents appear, sometimes seemingly infinite, that is very easy to fill your character and, while almost impossible to see anything on the screen, they are pure frustration and a typical dishonorable challenge. With ruthless monsters in hunting the player and they will never stop frowning after him, teleporting and prancing over the walls. Additionally to the wound are snipers and flying opponents who have practically unlimited range and pass through the walls, and tend to create out of nowhere, especially at the parts of the level that you have just passed. Worse, the obstacles and traps that will stop (or hurt) your character have nothing to do with opponents. I wonder who this is in the Thunder Lotus studio acted as a perfect idea, while at the corner of the room we were growing a bunch of broken controllers. 

Sundered for now does not deserve a tremendous recommendation, but certainly "hold on the radar". Thunder Lotus Games has to make more effort to get into the genre with a lot of great games floating to the surface.

Rate: 6.5/10