Posted on: March 28, 2023
TerminalFerocity
Verified ownerGames: Reviews: 18
Demands of Precision Not Reciprocated
Unsouled carelessly borrows from too many disparate sources to be anything but less than the sum of its parts. Imagine Hyper Light Drifter, Sekiro, and Bayonetta trying to dance but stepping on another's toes. The game has a meager movelist with significant functional and tactile overlap. Enemy and encounter design leave little room for what scant stylistic expression would be allowed by the moves on offer. There's more nuance than I have space to give credit for, but moves can generally be distilled to "hit enemy", "hit enemy away", and "move to and hit enemy". Combos feel isomorphic or call-and-response in a way that more carefully considered action games avoid through expanded movelists and move properties. The "chain" system, which ostensibly drives combo depth or demands exacting inputs, is in the majority of cases merely a graphical signifier that the player has finished move recovery and may input their next attack; it's nothing novel, let alone noteworthy. For some, the appeal lies less in expression and more in rising to imposed technical demands, but Unsouled's loose design tolerances leave the game issuing these demands without facilitating the player's ability to meet them. Player and enemy hit and hurtboxes were not designed with the core principles of this game's combat in mind. Attack adjustment tracking, collision friction with enemies, and enemies' hurtboxes/player hitboxes are all so small that the player's attacks, most of which significantly reposition the player, will frequently pass harmlessly past enemies and leave the player disadvantaged in position and state. All of these flaws are exacerbated by the additional layer of Souls/Sekiro mechanical and statistical derivations meant to force a rhythmic ebb and flow of attack and defense. Tracking four separate meters above each individual enemy is too big an ask when I'm occupied by parry windows and razor-thin attack margins. Got bad end on hardest diff. Some fun! Much frustration!
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