Immortal: Unchained Critic Reviews

An ambitious venture for a low-budget indie studio, but one that manages to stand out in the crowd despite its flaws.

A SoulsBorne game with its own twist which turns out to be pretty entertaining, especially when it all comes together. And that is also our main concern; there are plenty of times when things don't come together at all which results in frustrating gameplay. Too bad, because the core of Immortal: Unchained is good.

Shooter mechanics in a world that is a conceptual carbon copy of Dark Soul? In theory it could be interesting, but the execution is lackluster and leaves a lot to be desired.

Whilst an admirable attempt at offering a fresh take on what is already becoming a fairly staid genre, Toadman Interactive has unfortunately missed the mark when it comes to one of the most crucial elements of making these games work.

Although I’m a huge fan of shooters, I had to force myself to play Immortal: Unchained. The game clumsily tries to marry two formulas: an action game built around firearms and a soulslike. It does some things right – the atmosphere is intriguing, the dismemberment system works fine, boss encounters are done well and the character development system is solid – but it failed in the most important aspect. Immortal’s cardinal sin is its mediocre gunplay, which makes shooting boring and therefore turns firefights into drudgery.

Immortal: Unchained tries to follow the footsteps of the Souls series, but ends up against a wall.

Immortal Unchained could have been a great attempt to get its name between action-RPG’s as Dark Souls and The Surge. However, adding guns to the well-known formula didn't save the game from having way too many technical and balance problems during release.

Immortal: Unchained is a souls like third person shooter game developed and published by Toadman Interactive. The idea of a souls like with guns is amazing, but the way it is developed, it looks like a set of beautiful non-original ideas stuck together.

Immortal: Unchained isn’t inherently an awful game, but it has very little going in its favour. Its level design is one shining beacon among a sea of bang average gameplay, unacceptable technical flaws, and a combat system that does little to distinguish itself from its inspirations. Those enamoured with the Souls formula may discover something to like, but they’ll have to sort through a mountain of mediocrity to find it.

Ultimately, Immortal: Unchained serves to highlight one thing above all else. Every frustrating aspect of the Dark Souls experience is tolerated and even praised by its fans because the underlying combat system is so fantastically well-realised...Strip that away and all you’re left with is a mediocre exercise in frustration. Immortal: Unchained has thrown guns into the mix, but no consideration has been given to how their addition might affect the classic Souls formula. Dark Souls but with bad combat is a tough sell.

An intriguing premise - that of a soulslike science fiction in which you fight mostly at a distance, using upgradable grenades and guns - turned into one of the worst video games of recent years: a sloppy title, poorly conceived and in some areas clearly "broken".

Immortal’s pursuit of the hardcore label speaks to a certain presumptiveness in its design – that its impenetrable nature will be offset by a community looking for new challenges to overcome and new mysteries to unravel. Dark Souls got away with that approach because every aspect of it was so meticulously fine-tuned. Immortal’s extreme difficulty only highlights how fundamentally its ideas don’t run together. If there’s anything worse than a bad game, it’s a hostile bad game.