Indie developed action games are a weird beast. For every Assault Spy or Aztez, games that show that even minuscule teams with budgets of half a Happy Meal and a dream, can make combat every bit as satisfying and enjoyable as your Devil May Crys, Ninja Gaidens and Bayonettas, you've got RWBY Grimm Eclipse, Mitsurugi Kamui Hikae, and Ultra Age.
At its core, Ultra Age is a competent enough core of an action game, surrounded by a hellscape nightmare of RPG mechanics that feels like it was made explicitly to spite me. On its face, the combat is okay at best. There's some decent variety between weapons and move sets, even though the light-heavy dial combo strings mesh together a fair bit. But the combat overall feels incredibly weightless in both animation and sound design. Combined with the constant enemy habits of attacking offscreen with little to no buildup, as well as a seeming lack of invincibility frames after taking damage, and you've got gameplay that's way more annoying in the most important moments than it is fun. But that's not even the worst of it.
Let's get this out of the way first and foremost; I hate RPG mechanics in action games. This isn't a slight against action RPGs, not in the slightest. I love Xenoblade, I love Dragon's Dogma, and I'm sure I'll love Kingdom Hearts, Nier, and FF16 when the time comes to give them their dues. What I mean when I say I hate RPG mechanics in action games, is that I hate when they're hastily stapled onto the core of an action game for no real rhyme or reason. God Of War 2018 added armour and RPG stat buffs, Bayonetta 3 added skill trees in place of its original, traditional move list unlocking, Gungrave G.O.R.E piled on pointless stat increases upon most of its individual moves, and Ultra Age... Jesus Christ.
Ultra Age features weapon durability, in an action game, for some ungodly reason. It's annoying in combat, where every hit you land brings down your total durability, obviously. In a cue seemingly taken from Nero's Devil Breakers in Devil May Cry 5, you can at least pop them when their durability is low enough to get one last burst attack out of it, which is real neat, but the inclusion of a system like this in an action game is completely pointless at best and an active intrusion at worst. But it's out of combat where the mechanic's true ugly face is shown. Enemy drops are completely RNG, meaning you might get that weapon you're running low on, or you might get the same two weapons you've already hit the cap on because the game doesn't remove them from the drop pool after the fact.
Your weapon also durability doesn't regenerate upon death, meaning that if you keep losing to a specific boss fight from the midgame that doesn't give you any way of getting new weapon drops aside from backtracking through the empty desert area, you could potentially wind up in a dead game if everything shatters on you. and the game's focus on certain weapons exclusively breaking the defenses on certain enemy types means that losing a weapon can be the difference between a fast and enjoyable battle, or a glacial slog. It's DmC's already horrendous colour-coded enemy mechanic, now mixed with the RNG of whether you'll even be able to get the weapon you need at all.
But out of combat, you need to grab materials in order to gain extra durability to each weapon, as well as swapping out your current buff gems. This means, not running over the items from the enemies you killed, which the game does for the currency you get, but slowing right down and holding the B button for a second to pick it up. It's pace breaking as hell, even if I understand that it's done for the purpose of not overwriting your current gems accidentally. And that's on top of skill trees that include upgrades to critical hits and durability. The long and short of this entire section is that I wish RPG elements would fuck off out of my action games.
What doesn't help the game is the boss fights, which only further compound my issues. Absolute damage sponges that aren't satisfying to fight and only bring out the worst of the game's lack of telegraphing and camera issues. The final stretch of the game, requiring you to go through multiple mazes before allowing you another shot at two bosses you already fought before as well as the penultimate boss was an almost mindnumbing experience, and easily the low point of an already aggrivating game.
In all honesty, it kinda feels bad having to come down this hard on Ultra Age. It's made by a small team who were clearly passionate about what they were making. Hell, I dug a lot of its si-fi aesthetics. But goddamn, the game's potential is absolutely crushed by its almost reluctance to just be a traditional action game, and that fucking stinks. I can stomach some RPG mechanics, but when they start getting to be a major interference with the game, on top of a dozen other issues? It all gets a bit too much. Dial the RPG mechanics way the fuck back, give us a saucier combat system with less damage sponge bosses and off-screen enemy attacks, and we might be in for a good sequel, but who knows when or even if that day'll ever come.
At its core, Ultra Age is a competent enough core of an action game, surrounded by a hellscape nightmare of RPG mechanics that feels like it was made explicitly to spite me. On its face, the combat is okay at best. There's some decent variety between weapons and move sets, even though the light-heavy dial combo strings mesh together a fair bit. But the combat overall feels incredibly weightless in both animation and sound design. Combined with the constant enemy habits of attacking offscreen with little to no buildup, as well as a seeming lack of invincibility frames after taking damage, and you've got gameplay that's way more annoying in the most important moments than it is fun. But that's not even the worst of it.
Let's get this out of the way first and foremost; I hate RPG mechanics in action games. This isn't a slight against action RPGs, not in the slightest. I love Xenoblade, I love Dragon's Dogma, and I'm sure I'll love Kingdom Hearts, Nier, and FF16 when the time comes to give them their dues. What I mean when I say I hate RPG mechanics in action games, is that I hate when they're hastily stapled onto the core of an action game for no real rhyme or reason. God Of War 2018 added armour and RPG stat buffs, Bayonetta 3 added skill trees in place of its original, traditional move list unlocking, Gungrave G.O.R.E piled on pointless stat increases upon most of its individual moves, and Ultra Age... Jesus Christ.
Ultra Age features weapon durability, in an action game, for some ungodly reason. It's annoying in combat, where every hit you land brings down your total durability, obviously. In a cue seemingly taken from Nero's Devil Breakers in Devil May Cry 5, you can at least pop them when their durability is low enough to get one last burst attack out of it, which is real neat, but the inclusion of a system like this in an action game is completely pointless at best and an active intrusion at worst. But it's out of combat where the mechanic's true ugly face is shown. Enemy drops are completely RNG, meaning you might get that weapon you're running low on, or you might get the same two weapons you've already hit the cap on because the game doesn't remove them from the drop pool after the fact.
Your weapon also durability doesn't regenerate upon death, meaning that if you keep losing to a specific boss fight from the midgame that doesn't give you any way of getting new weapon drops aside from backtracking through the empty desert area, you could potentially wind up in a dead game if everything shatters on you. and the game's focus on certain weapons exclusively breaking the defenses on certain enemy types means that losing a weapon can be the difference between a fast and enjoyable battle, or a glacial slog. It's DmC's already horrendous colour-coded enemy mechanic, now mixed with the RNG of whether you'll even be able to get the weapon you need at all.
But out of combat, you need to grab materials in order to gain extra durability to each weapon, as well as swapping out your current buff gems. This means, not running over the items from the enemies you killed, which the game does for the currency you get, but slowing right down and holding the B button for a second to pick it up. It's pace breaking as hell, even if I understand that it's done for the purpose of not overwriting your current gems accidentally. And that's on top of skill trees that include upgrades to critical hits and durability. The long and short of this entire section is that I wish RPG elements would fuck off out of my action games.
What doesn't help the game is the boss fights, which only further compound my issues. Absolute damage sponges that aren't satisfying to fight and only bring out the worst of the game's lack of telegraphing and camera issues. The final stretch of the game, requiring you to go through multiple mazes before allowing you another shot at two bosses you already fought before as well as the penultimate boss was an almost mindnumbing experience, and easily the low point of an already aggrivating game.
In all honesty, it kinda feels bad having to come down this hard on Ultra Age. It's made by a small team who were clearly passionate about what they were making. Hell, I dug a lot of its si-fi aesthetics. But goddamn, the game's potential is absolutely crushed by its almost reluctance to just be a traditional action game, and that fucking stinks. I can stomach some RPG mechanics, but when they start getting to be a major interference with the game, on top of a dozen other issues? It all gets a bit too much. Dial the RPG mechanics way the fuck back, give us a saucier combat system with less damage sponge bosses and off-screen enemy attacks, and we might be in for a good sequel, but who knows when or even if that day'll ever come.