In Unto The End you play as a father who must get back to his family. The journey there is not easy, however. He must face creatures, straight out of nightmares with sword and dagger in hand. Every step will bring him closer to home. From cavernous underground ruins to harsh mountain peaks, overcome environmental challenges and deadly traps as you travel through a world of lovely crafted landscapes.
Ramped up difficulty
Unto The End is a 2D combat-adventure game with a handcrafted aesthetic and puzzle elements. Outsmart the creatures you face, learn their patterns because otherwise, you’re in for a long ride. The game’s difficulty is what they call player-skill focused, but what this really means is that the game is really hard, especially for those who play it for the first time. Every creature you face has an attack pattern you must learn in order to overcome them. They are really strong only taking a couple of hits to kill you. When they hit you hard, you will drop your sword and torch which makes it really hard to get it back, especially when facing multiple creatures. Because it will be dark when you drop your torch, it will be tough to spot what the creature is doing, which makes it harder to learn from it.
The game is marketed as a challenging single-player experience with minimal handholding, but I feel like the game is just unfairly designed at times. From the traps placed in the world, that give no chance that you will survive any of them in your first attempt to the enemies attacks who can just turn around whilst charging there moves. These things feel to me like they unnecessarily, stretch out the gameplay, which is rather short for the price anyway. The game is about 6 hours on your first playthrough of course depending on your skill level as well.
Enter the darkness
Speaking of gameplay. Combat is not like a Hack & Slash game but more strategic. The creatures can attack you from high and low angles. Look at the animation to predict their attack and block in time. Rushing the fights will only lead to your demise. If you struggle with reacting quickly enough you can use combat assist. This gives you a little extra time to help with the combat. If I didn’t tell you the story at the beginning of the review, you wouldn’t have known. The story is told through visuals alone. There is no dialogue boxes or voice-acting. You won’t even have known that the father was heading back to his family. Unto The End has a simplistic art-style. The mood, sound design, and visual storytelling are well made and convey the atmosphere really well. You really will feel unnerved and on-edge while playing.
Conclusion
Unto The End conveys a great eerie atmosphere with only visual storytelling in place. This game, however, is hard to recommend to everyone. The gameplay is unforgiving in difficulty and will surely frustrate you from time to time. With minimal handholding holding the game can feel unfair at times. This is only for the people who are really into unforgivingly hard gameplay.
