4.5/5 ★ – usagichann's review of Sundered.

This is a review that's probably at least 4 or 5 years late, but better late than never right? Sundered is a game that I played about 4 or 5 years back when it was released for dirt cheap on the Nintendo Switch. I picked it up, finished it and never touched it again because the Switch is a system that belongs to my daughter, for better or worse. Well, fast forward a few years and Epic gives it away for free AND I got a steam deck. The circumstances are just right for me to revisit Sundered, on a slightly bigger screen and much better hardware. Was it as good as I remembered it, or is it just slightly rose colored lenses? Well, I have to say satisfyingly that it was every bit as good as I remembered, if not actually better becuase my hands aren't cramped playing on the crappy joy-cons. Sundered is a metroidvania that uses some procedurally generated maps. Its really a bit of a mish mash of good combat, eldritch horror, and some horde mechanics. All the basics of a good metroidvania is here, exploration, good combat and combo system, a nice skill tree for you to explore, badges/perk systems to enhance and further personalize your character, and a lot of dying. That's right, there's a rouge lite element to the game too. But dying mostly resets the map so not much really is lost. This isn't a game you can easily speedrun becuase of that and other reason, although its also not impossible. You just have to be really good at the platforming and combat portions of the game. The game's high-lights really is the boss fights, and there's 4 of them. The game IS a bit on the short side, but as I get older, I definitely appreciate these short but very sweet games. The one side of the game that feels a bit short is the story. You wish they could hvae done a bit more exposition, but what they do hvae is quite servicable. You play a character that gets trapped in a lost city and is trying to get out with the aid of a helpful, but rather creepy weapon. You can aid the weapon further by corrupting abilities you find (like double jumps) or you can spurn the weapon's entreaties by incinerating the pieces you use to corrupt. Either will give your existing ability a boost, but do so in different ways, leading you to have the ability to play through the game 2 or 3 times to get the 100% achivements. I'm a bit of a sucker for metroidvania, but the hand drawn art, the exploration, the slow burn of the story really did the trick for me. Highly recommended, and I wish the game sold well enough to have a sequel, but as it is, its quite well done and I enjoyed it greatly. If you have this in the epic library for free, i highly recommend it, otherwise, just wait for a good sale and if you enjoy metrodvanias, I think you'd enjoy this one too.