Until You Fall Review (Tacolover_SFM)
Honestly quite unsure on if this review should be positive or negative. Probably depends on the reader. I myself would argue the game has insane potential, but its just not being taken care of. I guess you can see this as a"Hell Split Arena" sort of game. It has its charm, but its not competing with other games in my opinion. The Atmosphere is great, the game characters and environments both look amazing. Music is quite nice too. The combat is fun and engaging (if you use the right weapons) for a time at least. But, it's really limited in scope. For the price, its fine though.
The biggest negative I can give is the lack of enemy variety. Half way through the game you just get spammed with the same tough enemy, then it gets worse at the end where these tanky enemies get upgraded to be even more tanky. They still have similar attack patterns too, just faster. This makes me dread having to start a new run because I know eventually I'll spend a solid 5 minutes taking on two tanky and fast enemies. The weapon variety you can wield is neat, but the weighting of the weapons just make most weapons obsolete. The starting weapon stays consistently the best thanks to its low weight and the fact that you'll have it upgraded before you unlock any of the other good weapons. By the time I unlocked a new weapon I liked, my basic sword was already at level 7 and hard carrying me through the later stages that let me get the funds to upgrade the new weapon. Basically, I ended up with the choice of "Do I upgrade the weapon I wanted, or do I stick with what I know is good so I dont waste time?". Then, once I played with the new weapon, the starter sword was just better and more fun to use. The weapon I had grinded to upgrade turned out to be slow, annoying, and ineffective when compared to the reliable and nimble starting sword. This applies to all other weapons, even the small one handed ones. The Axe you unlock at the end is just worse because it trades handeling and speed for slightly more damage. Honestly the only way they can fix this is by adjusting every weapons weight and letting you chose any weapon you want to start with.
Next big issue I experienced, the performance. My PC is pretty powerful and can run Blade and Sorcery and Contractors VR perfectly fine while both games are modded on decent settings. Meanwhile, this game runs fine until I go up against fast enemies that have fast combos. The game starts stuttering crazy bad and I am forced to take damage because by the time I recover, I already missed a block. Then, when I go to check if I can reduce the graphic settings, I get no option to change anything besides one setting that gives a very minor boost.
Then, to make things worse, the game has very little replay value once you complete it. The maps are always the same, the enemies are always the same with the same attack patterns. The loot is very uninteresting and dosent change gameplay in anyway.
Then to add a little bowtie on all of these issues, the development of the game seems to have stopped or at least slowed to a crawl. I am writing this on December 19th, 2023. The last update that added content was back in March of 2022.. Needless to say, none of the issues I addressed here are getting fixed.
Now, to conclude the review; If you want a game you can play with some buddies for a hangout or two, the game is good. The runs last up to half an hour if you're good and/or are playing on a lower difficulty. For the price its good, but honestly there are better options out there. If you want sword combat, just go with old reliable Blade and Sorcery or even Hell Split Arena if you want a more skill based game, hell even try Swordsman VR. IF the game has all the addressed problems and others I didnt mention fixed, it would be really really good. Right now its just mediocre. Great for cardio if you need that though.