Sundered: Eldritch Edition

The best Metroidvania I've played since SOTN and until I played Bloodstained, surpassing (4 me) Rabi Ribi and Hollow Knight
Why?
Half of the time the game is very quiet. Then a single enemy appear, then the GONG (that signals enemies know about the player) starts playing, and another enemy, and two more, and then....
HORDES OF ENEMIES actively hunting the player! There are few games that are able to throw HORDES of monsters at the player in a convincing/nice way, with a need to quickly adapt to tactical situations that can mean life-or-death early, on non-stop action... WHEN the hordes are hunting you. Do you kill every one of them or just outrun the horde of enemies? These are the two seemingly feasible way to "dissolve" the hordes.
The theme is simply waaaayyyy too good. Humans invading a lovecraftian-abomination populated dimension. And the way the game shows the story makes it sort of clear that there are all only sides of grey, as the humans, according to the notes, are sorta brutal and almost evil to the "natives" that were just happily living in their lovercraftian-abomination life in their dimension, going on with their daily chores, doing the dishes, etc. With 3 endings, and 2 EXCLUSIVE endings chosing opposite faction skill sets, there is replayability for at least 2 full runs taking about ~21 hours each!
This game is frequently compared to Dead Cells for some reason... Well, they're very different monsters. This one's beauty lies in the vs-horde fighting, more akin Musou games but on a 2D Metroidvania context that worked sweetly well!
Overall, MUST PLAY!

TL:DR 11hr playtime on Normal Difficulty. Gorgeous game. 9/10. Big recommend to any fans of Metroidvanias who also enjoy Rougelikes.
The game is a mix of Metroidvania and Rougelike. The overall map layout is the same, but many of the rooms are more like zones with the insides of the zones being randomized so while you will always follow the same path through the zones to get back to where you were, the exact path will be different every time. I thought this was a really good way to blend the genres and also addresses some of my complaints about a lot of rougelikes being never ending mazes where a good run is completely RNG based and you can often feel like you are wasting your time. Here in Sundered, every enemy you kill and pot you break drops shards that you can spend between runs on small upgrades to things like your health and damage. Eventually, enough of those small upgrades makes a big difference when you go back through old rooms you've visted before.
The artwork for the game is GORGEOUS everything is hand drawn and really gives off that creepy Lovecraftian vibe. The movement abilities are fun and impactful on exploring the world. The map is well laid out for a Metroidvania with lots of ability check shortcuts and other shortcuts that reward you for exploring everywhere. The combat is fun and has some customization with your upgrades. For instance, I skipped as many of the Ranged Attack nodes on the skill tree as I could, favoring Melee combat. Sometimes, though, the best thing to do is to just run until the monsters stop spawning.
My biggest complaint with the game is the minimalistic approach they took with the story. I felt kind of lost in the beginning not really knowing why I was doing what I was doing. But I suppose that was kind of the point? The game has 3 different endings, something I didn't know when I first started. One where you embrace the darkness and become corrupted, one where you resist the darkness and become a beacon of hope, and the third neutral ending if you didn't go 100% one way or the other. I felt like the game didn't really make it clear in the beginning there were options for this. I ended up going full corruption as I didn't even know that Resisting awarded you with different skill upgrades compared to the corrupted upgrades which they are very up front about.
Overall, I put in just over 11hrs and acheived a 98% completion rating. I thought about going back in to finish that to 100% but then I remembered the things I would need to collect to achieve that were RNG drop dependent and it just killed my desire as I didn't feel like grinding. Overall, I would give the game a 9/10. Big recommend to any fans of Metroidvanias who also enjoy Rougelikes.

Gave up on game first time around.. and just picked it back up.. almost gave up again, but finally getting somewhere with it. Takes some patience

TLDR: this is mostly complaining but its overall a great game, especially casually and even 100%ing as no achievement is locked behind a difficulty setting, highly recommend as a good refresher for the metroidvania genre
Get used to loving and hating this game because at one end the combat is really good, the story is decent, the way that abilities work (i.e. corrupting or destroying shards for more abilities in the skill tree) and exploring is refreshing for a metroidvania
The problem with it lies in its endgame, because this game has a massive stat tree and it becomes just grinding until you got good enough stats to beat the final boss or fight harder hordes of enemies
Speaking of bosses (and this even applies to exploring late game areas), too too too much enemy spam
This is also where most of the games difficulty comes, it relies on overwhelming you with powerful enemies if you everso as accidentally walk into a higher level area punishing you for exploring in the first plac
Exploring areas that are above your current level was supposed to be fun and exciting because youre challenging yourself to see if you can handle going face to face with certain death, but it ends up being just running away from any and all encounters and it doesnt help that your dodges are limited
Limited dodges is fine but its not made for this type of game and it comes out as annoying
Even after saying all that i cant help but recommend this game, its so fun once you get into it but at the same time frustrating
Althought an exception to this is insane difficulty, in hard mode youll be fine slowly leveling up your stats and eventually will need to some grinding in the late game, but in insane mode its just "explore, die almost instatly, level up a bit, repeat"

Not your usual looking-around-trying-to-find-secrets Metroidvania, and not the usual one-more-run roguelike either. Solid story with replayability, great art, and, just so you know, you can run away from enemies; this ain't Vampire Survivors. 8/10.

I've just finished my second playthrough/missing achievements run of Sundered, this time on the Evil route, a few years after doing the first one. Mechanically, Sundered is a clever mix of 2D metroidvania/beat'them up with a roguelike structure. This mix looks very niche when described like this, but that's not the case with a controller in hand (I guess you could find a lot of similarities with what Dead Cells does, on a different segment of the genre).
Artistically, Sundered is gorgeous. Enemies are hand drawn, environments are very distinctive from each other. Soundtrack is very effective, and contributes to create a sense of otherness prevalent in the entierety of the experience.
But that's not speaking of the most impressive feat of the game: the Eschaton language, created specifically for it. In a game where the dialogue with one specific character is the balancing point of the narrative, there needed to be something to remember in it... And god, it delivers. The whispers surrounding the name "Eshe" will keep staying in my mind for a long time.

I went into this game expecting a Metroidvania, not realizing that it was also a roguelite game as well. At first, I really didn't like it. In this way, the negative review about swarms of enemies ring true. However, I stuck with the game, and it became much more enjoyable as you buff your stats. It has a great art style and a relatively interesting story. There are even two ways you can play which pretty dramatically change how the game itself plays. (Resist or embrace)
There are a couple of negatives, focused around the map. The map doesn't allow you to zoom in/out, and the game doesn't pause when you pull up the map. Overall though, I had a blast.