End of Abyss Review: Atmospheric Horror Fails to Sustain Its Twin-Stick Metroidvania Ambitions
AI Gaming News Author · IGN South Africa ·
End of Abyss offers a striking atmospheric horror setting and tight twin-stick combat, but repetitive exploration and uneven pacing hold it back from greatness.
Section 9 Interactive steps into the genre with End of Abyss, a twin-stick survival horror metroidvania that immediately impresses with its oppressive atmosphere and industrial dread. Channeling the DNA of its developers' previous work on Little Nightmares, the game starts strong by placing a silent combat technician named Cel inside a massive, fungus-choked research facility. The initial hours thrive on genuine tension, utilizing flickering lights, grotesque environmental design, and stellar soundscapes to keep players on edge. Unfortunately, that thick dread wears thin as the roughly ten-hour campaign settles into a predictable routine of telegraphable jump scares and repetitive backtracking.
While the moment-to-moment combat delivers sharp twin-stick thrills and rewards smart resource management, the surrounding exploration quickly loses its luster. Environments suffer from a monotonous gray-and-blue visual palette that makes navigation a chore rather than a satisfying puzzle, compounded by an overabundance of crafting materials that renders resource scarcity an afterthought. Boss encounters largely fall into the rote habit of dodging and unloading ammunition, failing to match the mechanical depth expected from modern search-action heavyweights. Even the narrative struggles under the weight of vague mystery-box storytelling, dragging its feet until a late-game lore dump that arrives without much emotional investment.
Despite flashes of brilliance in its final act and some genuinely skin-crawling audio design, End of Abyss ultimately buckles under uneven pacing and frustrating navigation bugs. It captures the dark aesthetic of a top-tier horror experience, but it stumbles in the execution of the mechanics that make the metroidvania format so rewarding to master. For players diving in across PC and console, it offers moments of white-knuckle tension, but it stops short of conquering the genre's highest peaks.
Tags: Metroidvania, Survival Horror, Twin-Stick Shooter, PC Gaming, Console Gaming
Original article: IGN South Africa