Sleep, Kill, Eat, Repeat. (Ultros)

Ultros is a game released in 2024, It's a sidescroller metroidvania type, in which you play as… someone, and your main objective is to kill a bunch of sleeping monks and release the Ultros Demon.

I don’t think I played many metroidvanias, I did play some castlevania games and did played some of the metroid games, outside of that, I don’t think that Dark Souls count as a metroidvania, but Blasphemous does, and this one Ultros, some I think are calling it a masterpiece, I think it’s a rough diamond.

It begins with your character face planted in the ground, asleep, upon waking up and exploring you come across with a body impaled with a sword, that where you get your weapon, then the ghost of the corpse appears and tell you to go into this point mark on your map, so you do, in the way you meet the Gardener he show you how to plant seeds, you take a seed and planted on the visually glowing place in the floor, from there a plant will emerge and drop a fruit, onwards you meet Qualia and get a thingy that allows you to double jump, a Thought Extractor, you fight an boss and then you reach the point where the ghost tell to go, there is a monk sleeping a pod there, so you kill him and receives and Upgrade for the extractor, it’s something that doesn’t not work, yet, forward you find the Ultros Demon, you pulled inside of it and then something happens and you are back where you started face planted in the ground, asleep.

There are more of these monks spread around this place, the ghost tells you that this place is a spaceship, the Sarcophagus, and these monks are keeping the ship frozen in time with their sleep mantra so if you wanna escape you have to kill then all, but first you need to get your Extractor back, going all the way back to where the demon is, the way now is blocked by a thorny plant, doubling back you find that the plant Gardener plant early now is fully grow, creating a platform at its top so you can use to explore the area above.

That’s pretty much how the game goes, you explore a new area, kill the monk of the area and get an upgrade of the extractor that allows to explore the next area, such things as Cutting saw to cut those thorny plants and others as well, a digger to pulled up seed of the ground, a jetpack that allow a little bit flight when absorbs energy from sad mushroom or mostly the water that is in the ship. Then you end up back at the Ultros demon and send back to the start. That’s the gameplay cycle of Ultros.

The main gameplay element here are the plants and seed that you find around the ship, each one of these have a different utility and a different fruit of course, mostly you will use the seed that you found in the specific area to solve the puzzles throw at you, but of course you need to use it in other places to reach secrets and such and such, as mention the plants also grow, that happens after each cycle, mostly they just extend themself, which is not incredibly useful in most cases outside being able to reach a new place, their usefulness comes in place later through the game, mostly in the post game.

The fruit that you get from these plants not only provide health, but also nutrients, and what are does, these is what you spend to get new abilities, you have an ability tree that is available in these sleeping pods you use to save the game, you have four types of nutrients and each fruit does provide more to some than other naturally, enemies also provide a source of nutrient, what is left of then, that’s when combat come is place, depending on the execution of the fight you will receive a piece of meat of good quality or inferior, to get good quality meat you need to kill a enemy without using the same move twice, so getting more abilities will improve in that.

Each cycle removes all the abilities that you gain and also the seed and meat that you got in the previous cycle, nothing can be done to regain does items, but abilities have a different mechanic, trough the ship you find these items that allow to lock in place a ability unlocked from the tree, so when next cycle come that ability will still there, but that does that not make liberating other even if you don’t have said item, upon liberation an ability in one cycle the next one it will require less the nutrients need to be unlocked again.

Most of the abilities that you can unlock have a superfluous influence in the gameplay really, you can get a wall jump that is barely functional and need it in the game, there is a higher jump that you can unlock that is very good to get to some platforms that are just really badly placed actually. Another Flaw is the charge attack, which is badly utilized to the point of forgetting it exists, in the early game there are some enemies with a shield that can be broken with the charge attack, but later on that machinic is just gone, poorly implemented.

Another flaw of the game it is story, that is just, confusing, Ultros takes the same approach of the ludonarrative of the souls games, letting scenery and items descriptions tell flints of it’s story and them you can figure it out later, or just watch a youtube video !! The problem is that much like Blaphemous, I didn’t get it ! I have a faint idea of the overall story, but really the whole escapes me.

It’s major draw of course is the visual, which are nothing to sneeze at, having every area look unique in it’s own, the first place you explore of the ship it almost look like a temple, well it's a called a temple as well, the scenery and music mesh to other form given place to awe looking vistas.

Having completed the game, the major challenge is to get the secret ending, which involves getting all the monk pods connected into the Living Network, a gameplay mechanic that comes places in the middle of the game, that you can use to unlock the terminal statues that are around the ship. Getting all of those pods connected is no easy task, you can take the network though the ship using the flowers that sprout from the plants you planted around the ship, but you need to be creative with that, or just watch a youtube video like I did !!! Even so, extending those and finding all the other collectibles is no easy feat.

I could ramble much more about it, like that there is a way to peacefully deal with each boss in the game, but this rambling is going on for too long. Ultros is great even if it’s a little flaw in some aspects.