Approximate amount of time to 100%: 30h
Estimated achievement difficulty: 7/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: Yes/No
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: Yes
Grinding Achievements: Yes in some way, some feel grindy without being the normal grindy type of doing something X amount of times
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No, you can play with 100% damage reduction and still unlock the achievements
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No
Ultros feels like a complicated love. I loved playing through the game, while on multiple instances I felt completely lost, or had no idea what I was supposed to do, or more... how to do it. Because what you're supposed to do becomes very clear early on. However, I still felt so much love for this game.. till I got to the progress after the violent ending, the point I was looking forward to, working on the non-violent ending. Because halfway through the violent ending, you get the idea how to do the non-violent, and I loved that idea.. but in practice... it kinda sucks. Okay, let's break down what I mean by that because I can see that it is quite cryptic.
I loved playing Ultros. It is beautiful. The style combat system makes the fights challenging but fun. On top of that, it has great settings like damage reduction if you want to turn down the difficulty a bit, but also options to fade the background because it is quite an explosion of colors. It is easy to lose your character in it, but there are settings to make that better. I also love the time loop mechanic and how that combines with plants that can grown between loops, plants that are already there, but mostly plants that you'll plant yourself. However, here we also come to one of my negative points. I totally understand why the plants have hard-to-remember names, that is what plants have... but when you need to use them in ways to reach things you can't without them... it is hard to remember which plant does which. I used a list with names that
Well Played showed in their review , and even with that list, it is hard to figure out which plant you need, or if you know.. where to find a seed for that (or dig it up later in the game).
The story in Ultros gives you bits and pieces, for you to mash up together to figure out the story. I have the feeling I know enough to kinda understand the story and how the characters are bound to each other and this planned, but I'm not 100% sure if I do. Although the story isn't that important in my mind, I played Ultros more for the mechanics and the exploration than the story.
Then the part I'm struggling with in this game... it has a lovely list of achievements, and after the violent ending I was looking forward to working on the non-violent ending. Having to connect the plants so that they bloom is such an awesome idea. And the beginning of this idea was awesome to do, but then you get to the point where it is a struggle... you might need a different plant in a spot, but figuring out which one for many spots and dealing with those forgettable names (and for some: places where to find them) just isn't that much fun. Then having to reset a cycle to let them grow and finding out it was the wrong plant, or that it didn't grow well enough is a bummer. This system helps you with being able to teleport around, connected pods can be used to teleport. but that means you only have easy access to an area if you were already successful in connecting that area.
I think that some achievements are missable because once you connect something to the plants, you can't disconnect it. So don't connect those "things" you destroy in the early loops (keeping this vague on purpose to not give too many details), to be able to get both endings, because after the violent ending, you can go back and connect them, so that seems the right order to do it in.
I loved my playthrough of Ultros, and I love watching
a friend with a Let's Play YouTube channel explore the game. However, the process of figuring some specific things out for the achievements isn't my favorite, and I wish the teleport system was not connected to that part of the game. I see myself coming back to Ultros and finishing more achievements after there are good guides on how to do those things, I just don't feel like I have the mental capacity or patience to figure it out myself. I recommend Ultros to those who don't care about achievements and those who love challenging achievements. Furthermore, please if you're one of the latter people... maybe think about ways to make a guide for others so they can reach the other ending as well.
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