Unbound: Worlds Apart (Nintendo Switch) Review

The gameplay isn't alone in crafting this lite metroidvania. One thing that this title does a great job with is immersion. Unbound: World's Apart takes inspiration from the Ori series to deliver a beautiful fantasy aesthetic with vibrant colours while leaning on the use of shading. It does a good job immersing you with intricate fantasy art, backed up by a great soundtrack.

Composed by Alexey Nechaev, the OST at hand uses primarily piano and string instruments to great effect. Both piano and strings have a lot of musical range, and Alexey takes advantage of this range to punctuate the visuals and pace of what's on screen; from the quieter exploratory moments, to tricky platforming scenes, to escaping huge beasts. Each of these moments are highlighted and punctuated so well by the soundtrack.

Something that didn't quite work was the story. This keeps a brisk pace in the gameplay side, but the plot leaves a bit to be desired. A lot of it is found through collectibles tucked away in the maps, and through taking with NPCs along your journey, but it's nothing to write home about. Yours truly didn't get all the lore bits there were available, but the setup alone was a good enough motivator to get going and press on.

Unbound: Worlds Apart is not focused on combat, but instead unique gameplay challenges, separated by a very generous checkpoint system, where, if the player dies, they are put back at the start of the obstacle and not further back in the map. This keeps motivation high to try again even if the obstacle is particularly hard. In the later parts some trials can be quite difficult to overcome, and the curve can be quite steep, but this checkpoint system makes up for it and makes the harder challenges less strenuous.

The gameplay hook is that, with a button press, players open a static portal to an alternate world. In the opening couple hours, this can seem a bit stale, but the developer kept finding ways to implement new gameplay twists with this mechanic. For example, in one area, portals switch gravity while in another you will need to avoid fearsome creatures that appear in the alternate world while exploring.

In terms of performance, Unbound: Worlds Apart is lacking on Nintendo Switch at the time of writing this review. Being something made in Unreal Engine 4, frame pacing and drops come with the territory, despite visuals that the engine can deliver on the console. This issue rears its ugly head time and time again, but it largely feels like a stable experience until things get heavy or bigger checkpoints are reached. Most if not every Unreal Engine 4 game on Switch runs into this issue, and this is no different, sadly.