Ultros is the most creative Metroidvania I’ve played in ages
After spending nearly two hours with Hadoque’s upcoming Metroidvania-slash-roguelike Ultros, I’m impressed with its creative spin on the genre – even though I don’t really know what’s going on. Ultros drops you, a sword-wielding masked person with an impossibly stylish red coat, into a squishy psychedelic hellscape called the Sarcophagus. Why you’re there or what the Sarcophagus even is are, among other details, wrapped in mystery, so your initial goal is just surviving in this surreal dreamscape.
Sarcophagus is a pretty lively place in spite of its name. I ran into a mildly deranged little guy who likes to garden and whose efforts bore fruit in the shape of a consumable eyeball. There was also a chatty fella wearing a trenchcoat and fedora who asked me to lend a hand from time to time, and a ruined “temple of motherhood” with an eerie statue holding what looked like a headless stone baby.
Behind all these people(?) and places, Sarcophagus pulses with color and strange ecosystems, and while the demo reveals little about what to expect from the full story and setting, the few tantalizing glimpses of it have me excited to see more.
Pods are safe havens where you can pig out on monster goo.
El Huervo/Hadoque
Ultros might look like Hollow Knight at a glance, but its combat plays out a bit differently from the usual Metroidvania You start with a basic attack combo and charged attack, but you can also dodge at the right time and execute a strong counter. Others in the genre, especially those with a Soulslike bent, tend to pair this kind of move with certain enemies or push you to use it whenever you can. Not Ultros.
A dodge roll at the wrong time just puts you in greater danger, and some foes die more quickly with regular attacks anyway. Figuring out the right way to deal with each foe feels like a puzzle, and I appreciate how Ultros gives you the freedom to decide the right answer for yourself.
You can “juggle” enemies in certain circumstances, where time slows down, you aim where you want them to go, and then you sling them in that direction, ideally into another enemy or environmental obstacle. Our masked hero eventually gets an Extractor that augments their ability and changes how they interact with the environment, and you can unlock new battle skills as well.
Battles require careful planning in Ultros.
El Huervo/Hadoque
How you get those new skills is one of Ultros’ more inventive systems. You learn new abilities by remembering, which happens when you eat all the nasty things you pick up from monsters while you’re in a resting pod. The brain cortex map is essentially a skill tree, but like with everything else in Ultros so far, there’s more going on under the surface. Cortex map nodes have pretty strict stat requirements that encourage you to find or cultivate specific foods. I’m guessing that gardening will eventually play an important role in helping you meet these requirements, though since the version I played didn’t let me do much of it, my snacks all came from squishy, gooey monsters.
How you treat those monsters is important. The crude, basic attacks that you begin the game with slice and bludgeon monsters to death. That’s a fine strategy in most games, but not such a brilliant one in Ultros. Treat a monster too roughly, and they leave behind bloody pulp, a food option that’s as nutritious as it sounds – which is to say, not at all. High-quality food items raise certain stats more effectively, so Ultros is living up to its promise of encouraging you to think carefully about your effect on the environment.
Smashed bugs are worse for your health than carefully cultivated ones.
El Huervo/Hadoque
Okay sure, so it boils down to “still killing things, but with consideration,” but that extra consideration does make a difference. It creates a stronger connection between you and the world and adds a welcome layer of strategy to progression and your actions in general.
There’s a roguelike loop system at play in Ultros as well, though I only got the briefest glimpse of it. Your actions in one loop seem to open new paths forward when you reset the Sarcophagus, though there wasn’t really enough time in the demo to see how involved these puzzles might become.
We won't have to wait much longer to see how it all ties together, though. Ultros launches on PS5, PS4, and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store on Feb. 13, 2024.
