Ultros

The psychedelic gardening metroidvania

Why

• A real sense of exploration, not just of the map but of systems
• The 'attack variety' mechanic puts an interesting twist on otherwise basic combat
• Incredible, psychedelic art direction
• The central time-loop conceit is a big swing

Why Not

• Lack of direction can be frustrating at times
• There are times where you know the solution but just need to wait for it to grow
• Time looping requires plenty of back tracking

Impressions

Ultros isn't content with having been designed by an art team eating LSD like it's food; it also has time loops, a DMC-esque combo system and even gardening as a central mechanic. The game takes a lot of big swings, so some will be turned away by the misses despite the occasional home run.

The game opens like a pretty standard Metroidvania, albeit one which looks absolutely incredible. You wake up with no abilities, not even a sword, and set out to explore a derelict spaceship overflowing with life. Eventually you'll get a sword, double jump and some other miscellaneous abilities before beating a boss and murdering some dude in a pod. Then the game ends as the ship is engulfed by the titular eldritch entity, only for you to wake up right back where you started. Without your sword. Or double jump. Or any abilities.

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people drop off there; I nearly did. Judging by the Steam achievement percentages very few people make significant progress through the story, as one mid-late game story boss had less than 10% of players getting his achievement. But if you persevere through this fairly shocking experience for a Metroidvania player, you'll find some pleasant surprises to go with the unpleasant.

One of those is the combat system, tutorialized by what I guess is the second area most players will access. A nice lady in a big hat explains murdering the native fauna with a variety of moves rather than spamming the same attack yields more nutritious food, which you naturally eat to level up your skills. Spamming the same attack over and over results in a bloody pulp which'll heal you but not provide any upgrade potential. Trying to mix up your moves keeps the otherwise pretty simple combat engaging, as does the requirement to break shields or reposition behind enemies to deal damage.

Another strong point is the gardening. Throughout your adventures you'll find a multitude of seeds and fertile soil to plant them in. It's not just for decoration though, planting the right seed in the right place will allow you access to new areas or facilitate linking nodes of the Living Network to enable fast travel/open the way forward. Living Network progress carries over between loops (thank god) as do plants, which leads to the downside of this system. Plants can only grow so much in one loop. Quite often, the amount they can grow is considerably less than needed to do what you planted them for. Also, at least at the start of the game, you have no idea what to plant where and no way to free up planted seeds/occupied fertile soil.

This leads to a lot of confusion, backtracking and frustration as you try to figure out if you planted the wrong thing or just need to wait another loop for more growth. It also appears required for at least one ending judging by context clues from linking one of the pod guys to the Living Network, making obtaining that ending pretty painful.

With no challenge presented by platforming and the combo system in combat rendered pointless once you've locked in a few key upgrades to not be lost between loops, the game becomes almost entirely about this gardening mechanic. And that's where I unfortunately dropped off; if I wanted to play Stardew Valley I'd play Stardew Valley. Having said that, I did get a pretty enjoyable 8 hours out of the game, and there are clearly some cool ideas here which could really resonate with people. I think it's hard to justify at full price, but on sale Ultros is definitely worth giving a try for the unique experience and fantastic art direction if nothing else.