When the dust settled last year after deliberations forour Best of 2023 awards,Hadoque’s new metroidvania gameUltrosended up securing a slot onour list of 2024’s most anticipated games.That might have seemed like a bit of a surprise, but what can we say, the game made quite the impact on us. It displayed impressive-looking action, stellar platforming, unique mechanics and truly eye-catching, psychedelic visuals. It was truly a game that felt weird in all the right ways. And now, here we are with the fullUltrosexperience, and it still feels weird in a lot of the best ways…just in some ways that we didn’t expect.
Ultrossees you playing as Ouji, a mysterious stranger who seemingly finds herself stranded on a giant space-faring structure known as The Sarcophagus, described as a “cosmic uterus” that happens to house the titular ancient demonic being and one day give birth to him with help of a mysterious acolyte. Oh, and there’s an eternal time loop in play that also happens to be keeping you trapped here. So now Ouji has to explore The Sarcophagus, meet its inhabitants, kill them if necessary and find a way to take out the seven incubating Shaman and finally break the loop once and for all in order to escape. Of course, doing so runs the risk of freeing Ultros, but with enough exploration, maybe Ouji can find different ways to handle this situation…
Ultrosstarts out with a similar formula as a lot of different metroidvania games. Run, jump, attack, dodge, find different items and upgrades in order to access previously-unavailable parts of the map; you know the drill. But once you defeat the first boss and gain the Extractor that starts out by allowing you to double-jump, as is metroidvania tradition, you make your way to Ultros' chamber by following an eerie trailer of darkness, get sucked in, and suddenly you’re back at your starting position. A new cycle has begun, and what this means is that you’re back at square one. You have to make your way back to the chamber and retrieve your Extractor, having to make your way through similar areas. But depending on the current cycle and certain changes you may have made in previous cycles, things this time around may be different.
Respawn, Reuse, Recycle
The resetting cycles and possible changes you’re able to make to them are whereUltrosnicely shows off its roguelike elements, starting with the abilities you can gain in the Cortex, which serves as the skill tree. To purchase skills, various nutrients are needed, gained by consuming fruit you can find growing around you in certain areas, or by consuming the flesh of enemy monsters that you’ve defeated. Spending nutrients gets you valuable abilities such as poison damage, air dodges, extra health and more, but once you begin a new cycle, the skills are gone again, requiring you to regain nutrients. Unless, of course, you happen to find special items hidden around that can lock abilities you select in place. It’s a terrific touch that combines the progressive buffs of roguelikes with the natural exploration that the metroidvania genre brings, encouraging players to search around.
The other major change you can make comes in the form of gardening. Find a glowing spot of soil, drop a seed you can find in it, and you can create a garden, which can eventually grow and produce more fruit for future playthroughs. More importantly, they can also provide ways to get around, be it by creating solid platforms, vegetation that lets you run up walls, vines to swing on and more. Organic life is a major theme ofUltros,and the gardening aspects are a unique and fun touch that helps give players boosts later on. Other unique touches related to the loops are that until a new cycle begins, enemies you defeat won’t actually respawn, in sharp contrast to many other entries in the genre. It helps dial back the possible repetitiveness and creates a sort of eerie calmness as you walk through a room once filled with creatures whose lives you’ve personally taken.
The combat in general also lands nicely, delivering a perfect blend of challenge that feels accessible to all. Since you may pick and mix your starting abilities with the right skills, it allows you to easily cultivate a possible playstyle that works best for you. But even with the right abilities, success also comes through finesse.Ultrosencourages players to try out a variety of attacks when facing enemies, not just for variety’s sake, but also because it determines the condition of the parts you can get off of enemies. Strike with skill and you get fresh appendages to munch on. Get a little sloppy and you have to settle for a bloody pulp. The combat is simple to learn, fun to master and is on good display during impressive boss battles. Yes,Ultrostruly has impressive combat placed front and center. Said combat, however…is a bit of a beautiful deception.
A Garden of Puzzling Delights
As mentioned earlier,Ultrosencourages exploration, like any good metroidvania game. You can find upgrades for your Excavator’s abilities, bits of lore, shortcuts and more as you peek around. But along the way, you also notice a bunch of areas blocked off by some sort of dark static or statues that simply say “Awaiting Connection” when you interact with them. They start out as a mystery, but then you find connection wisps in the bowels of The Sarcophagus, and they create a trail that can connect various buds to one another, including those of plants and the aforementioned statues, and they can make the static blocking your way disappear. But their range isn’t infinite, so you need to properly find or create a series of buds in order to craft a connection. This right here is where therealgame begins.
ULTROS Demo Starts the Trip Early on Steam Today
A demo has been launched for ULTROS, allowing fans to get some early hands-on access before the game launches on February 13.
Yes, you thought you were getting a straight-up action game, but it was actually a puzzle-platformer. You can indeed take the more straightforward approach, defeat all the various enemies and bosses, and make it to the end in about fifteen hours or so. And it will still feature a ton of satisfying combat, platforming and a satisfying conclusion. But if you take the time to go off the beaten path, backtrack and experiment with the connection wisps, you begin to notice certain things. What were once bosses might now be friendly to you on certain cycles or if you approach them from a certain path. You can make connections to previously-defeated Shaman or certain characters. You begin to realize that there’s a lot more on display here. Basically, treatingUltrosas a straightforward metroidvania game gets you a fun experience with a good ending, but that’s just one playthrough with one ending.
The Seeds of a (Mostly) Pacifist Run
Trying to create proper connections is where more puzzle-oriented elements come into play and they actually make for an even greater challenge than the action-oriented bits. Now you have to figure out what conditions will cause certain plants to grow buds, use unlockable digging and splicing tools for your Excavator in order to uproot seeds and replant them or swap branches around, not to mention what direction or directions everything has to go in. You might have to start searching for compost in order to accelerate growth or even wait more than one cycle. It’s a wonderfully-twisted game of connections that once again illustrates the importance of the gardening mechanics, perfectly illustrating how The Sarcophagus is teeming with all sorts of life, and providing a more peaceful contrast to the swordplay.
It may sound odd or even a bit of a cliché, but I started to viewUltrosas a bit of a metroidvania infused with some ofUndertale’sphilosophies. There, treating everything as a regular RPG with standard turn-based combat leads to the lesser experience, and on a No Mercy route, is explicitly designed to be as unrewarding as possible. The best ending requires a pacifist run, which means getting creative. The same goes here, requiring players to focus more on a different part of the game aside from the standard approach in order to get the best ending. You really have to put in the legwork and put on thinking caps to truly succeed…in fact, you’re able to even do that with the regular path as well. Want to defeat multiple Shaman in one cycle? Depending on where you are at the time, it’s possible to do so, you just have to hunt for it.
Not So Fast
One part that might be contentious when it comes to these puzzles is the use of fast travel, though. Or rather, the lack of fast travel, until you connect the wisps to the pods you use for saving the game and for upgrades. Yes, you can only travel between connected pods, meaning you paradoxically have to do quite a bit of backtracking in order to get around the map more quickly. For me, the speed of everything and the map size didn’t make things too much of a hassle, but it could be a pain to some. The bigger issue is in uncovering the story. Don’t get me wrong,Ultroshas a lot of terrific characters, great dialogue and an intriguing mystery on display, not to mention organic storytelling that eventually suggests how The Sarcohapgus may have become tainted in various ways, as what starts with temples and gardens gives way to more offbeat biomes. There are even more bits of lore to be found all tucked away in hidden areas, per tradition, that provide more insights into the world and even have nifty poetry to boot. It’s terrific stuff.
But once you unlock those particular bits, you are free to view them again…by traveling to one specific section of the map, the only place where you’re able to rewatch them. Okay, I can work with the limited fast travel at least tying into the themes of life and death in the story and world, but not being able to easily access what are basically unlocked collectibles is annoying. It might be relatively minor, but it gets in the way of seeing the bigger picture on display here. And while we’re listing flaws, sometimes the growth behavior of the plants after the sprout from a seed can be random or even bugged. As an example, at one point I had to plant a seed in a wall in order to create shelter that blocks Ouji from a security camera, but nothing was coming out. I had to die and respawn before it would create the plant needed, which was a pain, so hopefully these issues will be fixed by the time you read this.
I suppose having talked about virtually everything else, the only thing left to discuss areUltros’aesthetics. Do you have working vision? Well, not anymore, because El Huervo’s astonishing visuals have caused your eyes to pop right out of your skull. The impressive variety of designs, the detailed psychedlic settings, the perfect use of wild, vibrant colors…it all seems to perfectly find the point right between peace and anarchy, if that somehow makes sense, perfectly fitting the gameplay. Oscar Rydelius also provides a feast for the ears with a soundtrack that perfectly accompanies the visuals, with tunes that get nicely meditative and even jazzy at certain points.
Overall,Ultrosis a metroidvania game that you can approach in several different ways, and all of them are likely to end up being rewarding in one way or another. It’s a truly clever metroidvania game that suits any sort of player and winds up as one of the year’s best and most-engrossing games so far.
Closing Comments:
Ultrosis already a solid, extremely fun metroidvania game when played straight, with nice combat, an interesting story and a gorgeous world filled with intrigue and a great use of organic life as a major theme. But it’s when the game focuses on exploration and the possibility of greater secrets that it becomes something truly special, showcasing clever puzzle design that ramps up the challenge even further, also highlighting its innovative gardening mechanics in the process. It’s easy to get sucked intoUltrosfor long periods of time or even multiple playthroughs, and it’s all time well spent.
