Ultros evaluation | PC Gamer

Wandering Ultros’s cosmic uterus searching for an eldritch monster I needed to cease from being born, I couldn’t shake the sensation that I’d been there earlier than. The sport is a metroidvania, and for some time it looks as if nearly precisely what you’d anticipate (minus the entire uterus factor). However simply as I began to get cozy within the embrace of style familiarity, the creature hatched, killed me, and despatched me blasting again in time to the start. 

Ultros is a time-loop recreation, but it surely’s extra than simply time that loops. All the pieces does, swerving and connecting again to one another to convey a singular imaginative and prescient on this circle of a recreation.

Ultros is blasted with vibrancy, a perpetual explosion of acid hues swirling in hypnotic patterns. Purple globby juices dribble down iridescent orange ivy; darkish purple liquid submerges holy inexperienced statues; a large tree with glowing autumn leaves bears searing blue fruit with eyes. Each inch of the sport is a pleasure to behold when the backgrounds aren’t full of a lot handmade love that I lose monitor of what’s ornament and what isn’t. A number of accessibility choices exist to assuage this by blurring or desaturating the background, however hours in I nonetheless caught myself attempting to hop onto pillars that weren’t there.

I discovered it exhausting to care an excessive amount of concerning the occasional whiffed bounce when all the pieces seems to be so good, particularly when accompanied by a superbly in-step soundtrack of ambient ragas: shimmering violins, muted saxophones, and buzzing electronics giving technique to discordance in Ultros’s most intense moments, casting a mystical, reverent air over all the expertise.

Which is acceptable given the story, an obscure time-looping Zen journey that cuts the preamble and drops you into an ocean of alien terminology. The Sarcophagus, Shamasal, Cacomin, Marduk, Cortex… should you’re enjoying casually don’t anticipate to know what’s occurring. The writing doesn’t precisely encourage a want to be taught extra. It oscillates between twee stammering and portentous Correct Noun poetry, typically leaving me wanting much less of the already scant dialogue, however should you’re prepared to push by means of and dig, the story right here is effectively thought of and crammed with loads of heady concepts. It’s a narrative of cycles and symbiosis, of demise and rebirth and the fragile steadiness between all the pieces that’s.

You possibly can see the circles in it in every single place. Ultros is deeply invested in its personal thematic cohesion, with a time loop recurrently sending you again to the beginning, left to regain talents (which mercifully doesn’t take lengthy) and discover completely different paths. The opening space turns into a house base as you repeatedly meet the tip. It’s stunning, then irritating, and at last comforting. You’re like the massive creature you’re attempting to cease and the little creatures that get in your approach, destined to be born and to die.

Ultros hosts a complete zoo of gnarly bug-like aliens. Killing them is as straightforward as it’s flashy: fight is a fast-paced rush of combo strings, dive kicks, and parries that explode creatures into scraps of meat to be eaten for well being and dietary factors, the sport’s equal of EXP. On their very own these baddies look like punching baggage in your flurry of assaults, however there’s a twist. Beating them with out utilizing the identical assault twice will end in greater high quality meat with considerably boosted results.

For some time, I mindlessly slaughtered the primary enemy within the recreation’s many loops, pondering it was only a tutorial monster. However because of the promise of premium meat, I began reconsidering my relationship with it, simply as I did with all the alien baddies populating the map over the course of the sport. As an alternative of hacking and slashing, I noticed and deliberate, turning encounters into fast-paced puzzles, and the reward was a way of closeness to that preliminary enemy, its life going much less to waste. It doesn’t completely work—the movelist feels barely too small with sticky controls that may result in an unintended wall bounce at essential moments, however by the tip I checked out all monsters I as soon as slaughtered and thought, “Hey, this multi-eyed abomination is kinda cute!” and tried to allow them to reside as a substitute of farming their flesh.

The identical consideration could be present in gardening, the massive facet system. Scattered throughout the map are patches of land the place you may plant quite a lot of seeds to sprout into fruit-bearing timber. Initially these timber could be nearly fully ignored, however by the tip they rework into Ultros’ biggest spotlight: a sequence of delightfully ramshackle puzzles of farming and gene-splicing that made me really feel like I would grown my very own answer as a substitute of discovering the one right reply. Dig up a seed, change it with one other, graft a department from one other species, and bend it like a bonsai to make use of its petals to platform throughout a pit. Earlier than I knew it, I used to be staring on the setting in a complete new approach, altering the map by means of progress as a substitute of destruction, upholding the steadiness of this delicate ecosystem.  

My reference to the world didn’t cease there. Ultimately, I used to be capable of begin constructing a community, represented as a glowing tether, by connecting each flower within the recreation, which expands up by means of the map just like the branches of a tree, a job essential to see the true ending. This fully flipped my relationship with the sport’s house on its head; areas as soon as run by means of with no second thought changing into elaborate puzzles. I began to concentrate to the closeness of issues, the interactions between completely different vegetation, and the form of the partitions and flooring surrounding me. I wasn’t initially motivated a lot by the promise of a fuller finale, however I received so caught up within the Zen thrill of rediscovering the map that I circled round to it anyway.

Ultros is straightforward sufficient that you simply hardly ever have to completely interact with its most attention-grabbing mechanics, and its writing struggles to successfully convey its lofty beliefs. However the strains nonetheless join collectively on the finish, turning this metroidvania into a phenomenal, round expertise of presence and steadiness. It’s a recreation that desires you to see the world otherwise once you end it, and the best way all the pieces is related. If nothing else, what different recreation permits you to take a stroll by means of an umbilical wire?