Nothing causes my heart to drop to my feet instantly in the world of gaming like the word “strategy” (Well, maybe “PC Only” but that that’s two words, so we’ll stick with this). As a standard, I come with two modes of play – running in as quickly as possible and shooting/swinging at everything in the room until it stops moving or sneaking in and killing everything from the shadows as quickly as I can. That’s it, if it requires much more in the form of planning or commanding various units, I will normally fail harder than the folks at HBO when it came to wrapping up Game of Thrones. Historically, I’ve loved each and everything that 10tons Ltd has released thus far, so I was interested to see how their newest release Undead Horde stacked up against the rest, despite putting the strategic element front and center in the promotional materials.

The paper-thin narrative follows the last necromancer, who has been held captive for an unknown amount of time and coincidentally released around the time you pick up the controller. With the ability to raise the dead and a taste for revenge, he seeks out on a journey to avenge his fallen clan and take over the world of the living. Luckily, the strategic element is dumbed down just enough to make it almost as easy as it sounds in writing.  With the press of a button, you can raise any of the recently fallen enemy forces and have them move on to the looting and pillaging phase of the game within seconds.

After a short, well-rounded tutorial that makes the best of its time allotment, you’re set forth within a semi-open world area that includes a series of larger than average linear paths, reminiscent of any title from the dungeon crawling genre. The core gameplay revolves largely around “liberating” enemy camps, I use this term in quotations because in this venture, you’re the villain (A huge pro for me, there simply isn’t enough of this anymore) and this entails killing every living being in the areas and burning their structures to the ground. Along the way you’ll be given secondary objectives of the required and optional sort, such as rescuing other members of your legion or hitting key enemy camps to provide strategic benefits, such as quick travel points; which there really isn’t enough of.

Your necromancer isn’t the most damage resistant of protagonists so you will need to rely on your undead minions to protect you and do most of the hard work. I am a very do it yourself kind of person, so I struggled with this throughout the game for multiple reasons. The horde you amass will follow instructions well if you direct them (my first mistake, since I often ran head first into battle), but they kind of meander around aimlessly if you’re not huddled around them when you engage the enemy forces. The sweet spot for them to automatically kick into attack mode is hit or miss and seems to vary depending on the type of creatures you’ve got in your party at the time, but the on again off again response feels like they are suffering from a severe case of ADD. Much like your character, the minions don’t take much in terms of damage and will fall regularly, often requiring you to raise the recently dead in a constant cycle of reanimating whatever is available, since you can only select specific types at the hub area after completing the prerequisite requirement of killing X number of them. These requirements, like many aspects of this game, run on a thin line between fair and overly grindy.

I’m not sure if it’s my own severe case of ADD, but I was constantly bouncing back between loving and hating this game. Early in I died a lot, more than anyone should die in any game that isn’t a Dark Souls inspired game. This yielded not only a sense of frustration early in, but a huge bump to my XP and looted items, since I was stuck in a loop of killing the same enemies in the exact same place over and over, almost pushing me to my breaking point. Since the fast travel points are so spread about, this becomes a constant theme of the game, where I would find myself stuck in a loop of barely making it past where I died the last time, only to be and continue until I could inch my way to the next fast travel point.

When you’re not retreading the same ground repeatedly, the game can be a joy to play, and even more so when your horde is clearly overpowering enemy forces. When all of the stars align where you have the right mix of creatures against the right level of enemies there is an enjoyable aspect to the combat that really stands out as a blend of the criminally overlooked Overlord series and the long forgotten Deathspank. 

The one area that really stands out as a negative through and through is the visuals. The same cookie cutter Roblox looking style is used in the game and simply fails to impress on every level. Assets and character models are re-used over and over, making certain areas of the game that already feel like they’ve overstayed their welcome that much worse. This style was passable back in the days of the N64, but with so many other options on the table, why someone would play something that looks this generic is beyond me.

At the end of the day, Undead Horde feels like a misstep from a team that has slowly worked their way into being a personal favorite of mine (you can get my thoughts on a number of their other releases here). While it has its moments of brilliance, the rollercoaster of joyful destruction and tedious repetition make it an extremely difficult game to recommend at the current cost of admission.

7 out of 10

Pros

• Intuitive Controls
• Play as the Villain!
• Fun Sense of Destruction….

Cons

• …When You’re Not Retreading the Same Area for the 20th Time
• Uneven Leveling/Loot Systems
• Not Enough Quick Travel Points
• Dated Visuals

Undead Horde was developed and published by 10tons. It was released on NS, PC, PS4 and X1 on May 15th, 2019. The game was provided to us for review on X1. If you’d like to see more of Undead Horde, check out the official site.

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

 

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