izigame.me

i would recommend this game but only to certain people with a lot of warnings beforehand.
i would like to preface this by saying that i love this game a lot! if i didn't i wouldn't have bought this for myself and a friend. this game has a lot of potential and what it does get right it does really well, and i can tell that a lot of thought and care was put into most of the game. like Cody, i know that this might be a unpopular opinion but i don't think they could've pulled off the escorting Cody part of the game play any better then they did. show me another game that pulled this off just as well or better then undying (please, i need to play more games like this). you really get this sense of not having enough time right at the jump when you see just HOW much of the basics you have to teach Cody, and it gives you a really good sense of how young he is too (i actually guessed his age right before i got any information on how old he is by basing off of what you have to teach him). and i feel like a lot of the more frustrating things about Cody's game play was done on purpose for the story. Cody doesn't run fast because hes got little legs and its supposed to make you use the hand holding mechanic, and i don't know if this is a actually thing but i feel like Cody is less likely to be too stressed out when you hold his hand(?)
without going into details right now ('cause spoilers) the game has a really big issue with not giving the player enough information to know what to do next. especially when the characters seem to know what to do. i actually got a bad/probably one of the least satisfying endings because of this. I've played games that don't hold your hand on what to do next, but a lot of the quest summaries are so vague on where to go next and the lack of information sometimes can even feel misleading. on my first play through i wasted too much time upgrading the truck 'cause i thought it would give me a bigger area to drive the tuck without wasting gas (from what I've seen it upgrading only gives you more storage).
and this is where in going to talk about spoilers so if you want to go into the game blind scroll away now

still starting with positives something i really liked seeing is the progression of Cody's skills and how he really feels like hes growing up with how he can eventually be taught well enough to take care of himself by the time day 45 rolls around. something i wish that didn't happen though is that when you choose the option that lets you play as Cody the game gives you all the base skills that Anling didn't have the time to teach him. it doesn't make sense for a game to be really forgiving about this when its really punishing with everything else even on easy mode. it would've been cool to really feel how much you failed Cody as a parent. and its one of the main driving factors in trying to go out of your way to teach him things, i was actually looking forward to seeing if Cody had enough knowledge to survive. but honestly this is less of a gripe and more confused by given the marketing.
but something i really hope that they fix eventually is some of the writing is really weird or sometimes just feels plain bad. Undying is able to immerse the player in the story in a way that a lot of games fail to achieve. so when it drops the ball its really apparent. Like later on in the game you come across a cat, the game cant seem to figure out if they want the cats name to be Hiiro or pink. or sometimes Cody is spelled as Codi. and there are times where turned Anling will speak normally if you interact with somethings as Cody. these are really small things that honestly doesn't bother me too much but i know its something that could be a make or break thing for someone else.
but sometimes the writing in some cut scenes near the end can be hard to watch 'cause they either feel too frustrating or are weirdly goofy for the situation. i get that some of the characters are supposed to be unlikable, but there's a few of characters where it just feels like a poor writing decision. like Joan and bard for instance, it feels like a chore to interact with them, and the game makes you interact with them the most if you do the cooking side quests. which sucks 'cause the game i think wants us as the players to like or at least sympathize with them, but the game shoots itself in the foot a bit by giving you such a short deadline and then throwing characters at you that need more time at the end of the game. and a lot of the characters are so extreme with their actions that they seem too cartoon-ish and goofy compared to the otherwise realistically written characters.
As much as the game markets itself as a your choices matter type game but honestly i didnt feel like i really had a choice other then the big one on day 45. it feels like theres a few side quest that dont go anywhere and just feel like time wasters. helping or hurting others survivors doesn't seem to have a whole lot of consequences others then potential information loss depending on the NPC. and in the grand scheme of things all of this is not that big of a deal but when you spend over 40 hours struggling over things that don't feel like your fault, almost constantly having to look up anything that could help you figure out where to go next and getting spoiled and the wonky controls (this might just be me, but having to constantly pause the game to get Cody to shoot anything is a bit taxing on patience). eventually all of it just kind of accumulates into being a really frustrating experience. even with all the things i enjoyed from this game
i'm excited to see what the Cody's kingdom update has in store, and hopefully fixes some of the things like the 1.0 update did. i'm hoping that it expands on Cody's game play as the main character, they have a cool thing going there but feels a little under developed. but the devs seem to care about improving Undying so im holding out hope that some of these things will be smoothed out in the future.