One of the best PSVR escape room games is I Expect You To Die. The developers Schell Games delivered an amazing game that put you into crazy situations solving puzzles while trying not to die. So when Schell Games announced that they would be bringing their new VR title, Until You Fall, to PSVR I was instantly excited to check it out. So now that it’s out, is Until You Fall any good?
Until You Fall is described as a PSVR hack-and-slash rogue-lite game that has you fighting against a dark force in a strange world. There are some brief moments of story in the game about the world and its inhabitants, but it’s definitely not a focus in the game.
The goal of the game is to make it through the end of the level that consists of dozens of sections, three boss battles, and tons of enemies. Since the game is a rogue-lite, you’ll be going through this level over and over, slowly learning more strategies, getting better weapons, and getting upgrades, it’s all trial and error. Besides the level you’re trying to complete, there is a hub area that you return to in-between attempts. In this hub, you can practice your weapons and skills on a dummy, upgrade your weapons or purchase new ones, and choose the difficulty of the level. I’d recommend that you start with the beginner difficulty, as even that one is a huge challenge to complete. Then if you complete it on beginner, giving the other difficulties a shot is worth checking out. The harder difficulties increase the speed at which enemies attack, give you extra rewards, and a few other factors.
Now moving onto the gameplay side of things, each section consists of a handful of enemies. The enemies start off easy, but slowly get more and more challenging. They introduce enemies with ranged attacks, shields, hammers, and more. After you clear a room of enemies you can head towards the exit where you will be given the choice between one of three upgrades or power-ups. These include health increases, skills for your weapons, currency to use in the hub, and stat increases. Though these upgrades and power-ups only last for that attempt, after finishing an attempt it’ll reset your weapons and stats back to their default state. But all of the upgrades you purchase in the hub are permanent.
Moving onto the actual combat, it consists of attacking, blocking, dodging, and performing critical hits. The basics of the sword are attacking by slashing and blocking by moving your hand into the highlighted position. Before I can explain the other mechanics, I have to quickly go over the enemies. The enemies have a health bar and a defense bar. You’ll have to deplete their defense bar before you can deal damage to their health bar. Upon destroying their defense you can deal critical hits by slashing in the direction it tells you to, but you’ll have to be fast before you miss your chance. After the critical hit stage, their defense bar is restored and the process repeats itself until you’ve killed the enemy. Some of the stronger enemies also have heavy attacks that can’t be blocked, so you’ll have to move where the game indicates to dodge the attack. And finally, I would like to go over your weapons’ special abilities. These are abilities that slowly charge up as you battle, and once they are charged you can activate them at the press of a button. These abilities include defense increases, magical items that damage enemies, and more.
As for the movement, you can walk and use a dash move. The dash move is used for instantly putting yourself in front of an enemy, and in the process knocking them off their guard. You can also dash backward if you need to dodge area attacks from boss battles. Now, something I will mention is that there is only click turning, but I feel like it’s necessary for this game. While fighting several enemies the game will warn you if you’re about to get hit from another direction, and if you click turn it will automatically have you face your opponent, so you can quickly block or dodge their attacks. But I wanted to mention this anyways, as I know a lot of players aren’t fans of click turning.
Before we get to the verdict I would like to mention that the environments, graphics, and music are all fantastic! The environments are vibrant and full of color, the music is awesome and makes everything way more exciting, and the graphics are clear on my PS4 Pro. All of these aspects really enhance the gameplay and go together well.
So overall Until You Fall is fantastic! The gameplay is fast, addicting, intense, and fun. And even though there’s only one procedurally generated level, there’s tons of replayability, and it’ll take you anywhere from 3-9 hours just to finish it on the beginner difficulty. And on top of that, the game makes for a really good workout. The only issue I could come up with is that there are loading screens in-between each section, but they’re only a few seconds long, so that’s more of a nitpick. If you want a fun hack-and-slash rogue-lite with fantastic combat mechanics, I would highly recommend that check out Until You Fall!
