Immortal: Unchained

Since the release of games like Dark Souls, there has been a never-ending quest for other game developers to match the level of difficulty while also balancing enjoyability. Some titles, likeBloodborne or Demon Souls, have managed to capture the feeling well, some would even claim better than that presented in the Dark Souls series. Among those that tried to compete in this market was the 2018 souls-like game Immortal: Unchained, which received an extremely wide range of responses for its presentation from fairly good to downright awful in comparison. Despite its unique concepts and firearm combat as opposed to the traditional melee approach, Immortal: Unchained had difficulties utilizing these ideas to create a fluid experience, instead relying heavily on making the game hard for the sake of being hard.

Stop Ragnarök

Saying that this game is essentially Dark Souls, but with guns would be a pretty apt summary for it, if you’re only talking about the core gameplay mechanics, that is. The setting is something else entirely but helps bring some neat ideas to the forefront in terms of lore and exploration. Your main goal as a prisoner of the Monolith is to complete the quest set before you by Aras, your guide: restore the Nexus orbs and fulfill the prophecy to hopefully put a stop to an impending apocalypse. Seeing as this game draws heavily from the ideas from Norse Mythology, Aras knows he and the prisoner both have large roles in their own ‘Ragnarök’ quickly approaching.

Traveling throughout the Monolith and some surrounding areas, you will be able to find several disjointed pieces of lore to build your understanding of this strange universe, and perhaps the dark secrets that helped form it. All of this is well and good when written down, but when I say disjointed, I do mean it unfortunately. Of course, a souls-like game will essentially boil down to you beating one large boss after another with some annoying enemies in between, but the story takes a major back seat despite having some genuinely interesting concepts. The narrative is there, but its execution felt weak or unimportant, though was well thought out.

Dark Souls with Guns

The mechanics of Immortal: Unchained were definitely the primary focus of development, though this certainly doesn’t mean they are perfect. Its main gimmick is that making any meaningful progress means overcoming tough hordes of enemies only to fight a difficult boss, no surprises there. While it isn’t for everyone, the upgrades for you weapons and armor, reloading, and dodging can all help you breeze through the game with the right amount of skill. Additionally, being able to use different weapon damage types, like acid or fire, along with a huge list of compact guns, assault rifles, shotguns, snipers, launchers, and melee weapons was really satisfying due to the variety of approaches you could take to each firefight. I’d love to say melee is well represented, but it is difficult to build a class around it. What causes combat to be frustrating isn’t that weapons are underpowered or your foes are overpowered, its just that the AI tends to exhibit odd behavior, like homing attacks, that make dodging and shooting feel nearly impossible.

Bottom Line

You’re given a lot of freedom in your choice of weapon, but in terms of dealing with enemies effectively, it often feels like you’re being pushed a certain way. This, combined with the tendency of enemies to knock you down once and you’ll never have a chance to recover, make combat in-depth, but more often frustrating.

Pros

• Diverse settings/lore
• Combat system difficult, but well developed

Cons

• Story unique, but lackluster
• Combat is good/challenging, but unforgiving difficulty isn’t innovative
• AI can be frustrating/buggy