Ultra Age Review

When you see the trailer for a game you get an idea in your head about what it will be like. Seeing the trailer for Ultra Age I thought it was all about hack and slash action, so I was pretty surprised when the game wasn’t only about that. Instead, Ultra Age is a title that feels a lot more like NieR Automata or Devil May Cry, so there is a lot more exploration than I originally expected, which was a welcome surprise!

It is 3174 AD and you take on the role of Age. Age is a warrior who has come to Earth with the mission to save humanity from extinction. The problem is, the planet is now the home to mutants, robots, and other creatures that aren’t exactly welcoming. Age is on a short timeline — he only has seven days left to live — but if he successfully completes this mission his reward will be eternal life, so there is a lot on the line for him.

Luckily, Age has unique abilities like being able to double jump and use Quantum Warp to teleport himself towards his target. Age has a robotic cyborg partner named Helvis, who comes along no matter the mission to provide assistance and companionship; the banter between the two was quite entertaining. I also love having a robot buddy in games! Age and Helvis are on a quest to recover an ancient artefact that may be located on an old spaceship that seems to have landed on the planet. 

Ultra Age is fully subtitled with the voice track being in Japanese, although you do have the option to switch to English audio if you prefer. I usually turn on subtitles anyway so I opted to stick with the Japanese audio. The soundtrack to Ultra Age was good, just not super memorable like other titles where I would want to listen to the music outside of playing the game, but it serves its purpose. Though I swear they have the sound effect for walking on metal stairs and metal platforms on a higher volume, because when you have to walk across it is incredibly loud and annoying!

The combat was really nice, it felt as if your weapons actually have weight to them so you weren't swinging like crazy. Ultra Age has a nice combo system, and the ability to switch your weapons mid-attack makes for some interesting combinations to use against the enemy and for cool finisher attacks. Age has a wire weapon/tool to use which acts like a grappling hook and can be used to traverse the level, or during battle you can use it to pull your enemy towards you. There’s something satisfying about grabbing an unsuspecting enemy and pulling him in to attack.

Ultra Age looks really nice even if you have the graphics on the lowest settings like I did. The FPS was good and stayed at a consistent rate. It did make my gaming laptop run very hot even with the low settings so I had to go into the graphics settings and adjust them. There’s a large variety of cool-looking bosses and smaller enemies to battle; you don’t have to worry about getting bored always fighting the same type of character. Along with a variety of enemies, Ultra Age has a huge number of different weapons and plenty of upgrade paths to earn for both your equipment and your character. Another nice part of the game is that you don’t need to spend hours grinding to level up, you find tons of crystals that you need to gain levels by exploring and defeating enemies. 

Each colour of crystal you find has a different effect. Purple crystals let you acquire modules that improve Age’s stats; you only have four slots available so if you get one for a slot that already has a module in it, the old version will be discarded and replaced with the new one, so it’s not always beneficial to pick up every one that you see. The other crystals will be used to create blades based on their colour, so there is no downside to collecting a lot as blades can break in battle. If you find the type you need to power-up you can always use the Time Shift to change day to night and vice-versa, causing crystals and enemies to respawn. If you keep doing this you can constantly destroy enemies until you have the amount of crystals that you require. 

I found the level design in Ultra Age was a little too sparse at times; you would find a lot of big wide-open, areas and empty hallways when you travel through the different areas. Even with the lack of objects in the environments though, it could be a bit tricky at times to find the right path to get to the next area. Ultra Age isn’t an incredibly long game, it seems to take about seven or eight hours to complete, but I was okay with that. Having the shorter time means it doesn’t overstay its welcome. Despite the couple little annoyances, Ultra Age is a title you should check out if you enjoy games like NieR, Devil May Cry, or even Bayonetta, especially since it has a very attractive price!