Underworld Ascendant - More Reviews

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More reviews for the disappointing Underworld Ascendant.

IGN - 3/10

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The Verdict

Underworld Ascendant is just broken. What little roleplaying game fun there might've been is taken off the table by technical failings, a save system that feels like cruel and unusual punishment, and a bland story that takes place in similarly repetitive environments. Not one of the core systems for interacting with the world, be it combat, magic, or stealth impresses on its own, and that's when they even work right. Our beleaguered Ascendant is thus sent, over and over again, into buggy dungeons to complete fetch quests and assassination missions to the best of their unimpressive abilities. Underworld Ascendant is a swing and a miss so powerful that it knocks itself off-balance, and the seeds of interesting ideas fail to be realized at nearly every juncture.

Wccftech - 3/10

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The immersive sim is a genre that is constantly under siege. Some developers seem nervous to work on such a title, while larger genres continue to blend its interaction with more mainstream successes. But when they strike the right chords they are wonderful. Even though Prey didn't quite break through the mainstream, the game was a masterpiece of open ended puzzle solving just like Deus Ex and Dishonored. Unfortunately, Underworld Ascendant simply cannot be counted as one of these successes.

Eurogamer - Avoid

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Perhaps the only "successful" immersive sim, then, is the one you can genuinely break. About an hour into my time with Underworld: Ascendant, I made a calculated hop onto a boulder and fell through into the very last level. I'd read that such a glitch existed, but I found the point of entry all by myself, and it's probably the most "meaningful" choice I've made in the Underworld. There I was with nothing but an Argos-brand wand and a bone club to my name, facing the Big Bad in a hellish cathedral surrounded by lavafalls. I couldn't complete the level without all seven keys, and struggled to make headway against its menagerie of spellcasters and spooks. But still - wasn't I, in fact, playing the game as its developers would like? Preying on the gaps in the stage machinery, osmosing through its facade? It wasn't much fun, either way, but in all my time with Ascendant, I have never felt more immersed.

Screenrant -1.5/5

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It's hard to justify that Underworld Ascendant is a finished product. Indeed, the game released at 'version 0.3', and it shows. A horrific and nonsensical save mechanic sets the tone for a game rife with broken systems: terrible enemy AI, confusing map design, a shell of a plot, and a mountainous pile of bugs and glitches have mixed together into an abominable heap of problems that became Underworld Ascendant. Every mechanic to the game needs drastic improvements, and it's just plain unfortunate that Otherside Entertainment released the game as-is. The atmosphere can occasionally look pretty, but it's a fleeting moment. This game has plenty of ascending of its own to do before it's a worthwhile purchase.