Review for Immortal: Unchained. Game for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 07/09/2018
In recent times, starting a review talking about souls-like has become more and more frequent. Explaining once again the birth of this (sub) genre can only be redundant, so we want to offer you a new approach. Souls-like are like pizza: maybe it's not exactly good, but it's still pizza, you'll eat it anyway. This is what we always thought: even games that were not entirely convincing, like a Lords of the Fallen or a The Surge, had their positives. Well, Immortal: Unchained doesn't have any.
Immortal: Unchained starts from an intriguing idea to say the least: a souls-like sci-fi built around a TPS structure. Not bad, right? Toadman Interactive's work attempts to propose a small revolution within the ranks of FromSoftware's product emulators: a pity that it fails practically from every point of view.
Let's talk about the setting right away. Our usual mute hero, the universe's last hope, must travel back and forth between three planets to defeat an invasion of robotic undead. If you already imagine intriguing alien views and science fiction worlds to explore, put your heart in peace. Although the work offers an enormous amount of objects of pure lore, which try to give character and depth to the game, Immortal: Unchained is a heap of flatness and lack of style, a set of rocky passages and annoyingly empty metal corridors, with minimal chromatic variations.
The limited amount of polygons, however, does not prevent the game from stacking one long series of technical problems. Textures that need at least ten seconds to load, dancer frame rate, often inaccurate camera, responsiveness of commands not received, bugs that block our weapons and prevent us from firing, crashes that become more and more frequent as we advance and the areas dare increase in size, putting the entire infrastructure of the work under stress. All this, moreover, after a D1 patch that boasts of having solved countless problems and having balanced the gaming experience.
The gaming experience is the real sore point of Toadman Interactive's work. Our adventure, seen from afar, seems to have all the credentials to satisfy fans of the genre. Disappointment, however, is around the corner. Each area tries to emulate Dark Souls' “interconnected world” structure, with sometimes even decent results, but they forget to put a real game into it. The nature of TPS, in fact, has not been exploited in any way to propose an innovative approach but, on the contrary, flattens out any combat mechanics. We will have submachine guns, pistols, grenade launchers, assault rifles, shotguns and sniper rifles: a classic but varied arsenal. Unnecessarily varied.
Not only are most weapons too weak - making sniper rifles and shotguns a must - but the combat system doesn't vary in any way. The beauty of the weapons of a souls-like comes from their moveset and the consequent variation of approach to enemies. Immortal: Unchained only asks us to shoot, with the lock-on, everything that moves. The enemies themselves are divided into two categories: those who charge us and those who shoot. All we have to do is roll over behind them and hit their universal weak point: a core placed between the shoulder blades. Not that this is always possible: many opponents are plagued by reprehensible tracking, while others simply teleport at will.
It does not end here, however: even the exploration will make us regret the most difficult points of Dark Souls. Most of the opposing mobs, in fact, materialize or emerge from the ground a few steps away from us, setting up constant and unpredictable ambushes and betting everything on the overwhelming number: therefore, without weapons able to eliminate the weakest opponents in a single shot (i.e. sniper rifles), every fight becomes a tarantella of wrong target lock ons, inaccurate hitboxes and falls on deaf ears: each area, in fact, is a set of narrow overhanging corridors, scattered moreover with barely visible traps that will eliminate us without half measures.
Immortal: Unchained is all about a fake hardcore, contrived, and unfair difficulty and does not understand that death should teach you something and never punish you. Death in a souls-like should always be the result of your mistake, not a way to waste the player's time. Coming to the conclusion of Immortal: Unchained is a tough challenge: not because our gamer skills will be tested, but because we will have to reach enlightenment before we can forgive all of his mistakes.
Immortal: Unchained is a heap of errors and stylistic poverty raised to the nth degree. It is impossible to find even the smallest and most hardcore niche of players to recommend Toadman Interactive's game, especially given the absurd price of € 49,99.
► Immortal: Unchained is an RPG-shooter game developed by Toadman Interactive and published by Sold Out for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 07/09/2018
