It's an issue that's apparent early on, but once you're busy exploring uncharted territory, it's more of a minor disappointment that falls by the wayside when you're focused on exploration and combat. The game's hand-drawn characters and animations are a joy to look at, but the environments are inconsistent at best, sometimes captivating you with derelict ancient cities, but other times boring you with dull catacombs. It's unfortunate that the environments lack diversity in structure, coming across as repetitive in appearance. Aside from a few key areas, you rarely feel acquainted with your surroundings and are left helpless to adjust to its constantly changing labyrinthian pathways.
What you discover is as morbid as it is fascinating, and it imbues your travels with a strong sense of unease.ĭue to a rift in reality caused by the conflict between the ancient races that inhabited the cavern, the world is physically unstable justification for Sundered's procedurally generated rooms. But like her, you are an outsider exploring Sundered’s strange and gruesome world. While you spend time deciphering the cavern's history, you hear next to nothing about Eshe's feelings about the predicament she's a silent protagonist that rarely reacts to the events at hand. Its unreliable narration is unnerving, as you're never quite sure what to make of the machinations that brought the world to its knees, and whether or not it remains a threat.
When you do stumble upon such mythology, the Shining Trapezohedron offers you vague, ambivalent accounts of the cavern’s former inhabitants and the war that caused them to perish. Sundered’s story is bare bones and mostly exists in the periphery, often relying on you to scour the world for special rooms filled with bits of lore.