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Horizon Zero Dawn, Days Gone, God of War, Spider-Man and now Uncharted, isn’t that amazing? If you think about it, you would have probably not believed this in 2019, in just 3 years the industry changed so much that it’s almost unbelievable.
Some of you are already familiar with this saga but for those who are about to jump in for the first time let me tell you that this is a great moment to do so. You will miss some of the references but I think you will enjoy the adventures by themselves even if you don’t get the full punch of some scenes and moments by missing the previous games. Let’s see if Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and Lost Legacy are worth your time.
Let’s start with Uncharted 4.
Nathan Drake has long left behind the adventures in order to settle with Elena and live an ordinary life together, however, the past catches us all sooner or later and a new adventure is about to start. Nathan and his, until this moment unknown, brother Sam will sail on a race against time in order to beat an old partner and, perhaps, something Sam is hiding, the goal of this race? The biggest and most legendary of all pirate treasures, Henry Every’s fortune and the lost pirate nation of Libertalia.
A Thief’s End sets a very different tone for the story, while bombastic and spectacular at moments, it’s far more personal and deeper than previous entries, there’s a huge emphasis on how characters are living this adventure, for example, Nathan’s struggle between his desire of keeping a more calmed lifestyle with Elena and the pure desire of returning to the adventure of the unknown, which ends up happening, but the way he’s facing it is completely different to previous expeditions. All characters have enough time to develop themselves within the game thanks to an incredible narrative and performances, the scenes do really help building the characters, here’s my favorite example by the end of the game, Nathan’s performance on Every’s mansion, that scene alone creates a moment in which we can see a level of affection they have to each other, simply wonderful.
When it comes to Libertalia things are a bit different than previous games, while Shangri-La or Ubar had a supernatural element behind them, Libertalia feels like something more coherent for the story Naughty Dog wanted to tell here. The more we explore and learn about the city, the more detailed everything becomes, the conflict that happened, how the most prolific pirates of the era ended up building this place, etc. There's a huge narrative element about this place and its previous owners that is absolutely fascinating, probably my favorite of this saga.
What about Lost Legacy?
We will be following the steps of Nadine from Uncharted 4 and Chloe from Uncharted 2, this adventure will place us on the edge of a civil conflict in India caused by Asav, a nostalgic and ruthless warlord that wants to obtain an ancient object from the Indian culture, the Tusk of Ganesh. We will have to find it before Asav does in order to save the ancient object and perhaps stop his madness.
I would say that Lost Legacy story is a bit simpler than A Thief’s End because it feels more like a classic Uncharted game but at the same time you can feel how the team behind learned a lot from the main game. Lost Legacy was supposed to be a DLC for the main game but got too big and became its own thing and the final result is a mix between the old concepts and the new concepts in terms of scale and pace. I’m glad to see Chloe back as she was a character that had a lot of potential and I think this game truly gives her the attention she deserves. Nadine is also a very interesting one as we saw her as one of the villains from the previous game but here we can actually learn a lot from her, giving enough time and depth to all characters in order to really shine. Asav however, I think it’s a good villain but felt somewhat disconnected from the story most of the time. While it had some potential, it ended up being a flatter character than expected.
The story is good, India was an unknown place for the saga up to this day and there was so much potential, not only it has a very rich and interesting culture, but also had a lot of background that truly highlights thanks to the amazing locations we can see in this game, the temples, the jungles, it feels similar to A Thief’s End but in a more ancient scenography.
There’s absolutely no doubt that A Thief’s End and Lost Legacy are stunning games so I think it’s about time we jump into the visuals because trust me, it’s worth it.
Both Uncharted 4 and Lost Legacy are the type of games in which you will most likely take a few seconds taking a picture every few minutes because every environment is stunning. In the case of Uncharted 4, each area of the game is distinctive from each other, we go from urban areas to dense jungles and tropical islands with coral reefs. It’s no secret that Naughty Dog is top tier when it comes to visuals but the amount of detail and care they put into building something that feels natural but at the same time functional is stunning.There’s also an open area for the first time in the saga, Madagascar, and while it’s a good idea in concept, it doesn’t work especially well in this entry given that it has a different pace than the rest of the game but fortunately the concept evolved and Lost Legacy was built around this kind of world structure.
When it comes to Lost Legacy, visuals aren’t less impressive, on the contrary, while there’s less variety of biomes as the story takes place in a very specific part of India, which has a lot of vegetation and forests, we find here something that we don’t see in Uncharted 4, impossibly big structures, which, at a personal level, gives this games a lot of positive points.
What about gameplay?
U4/LL’s gameplay loop is the same as in previous entries of the saga, however the number of possibilities and animations have been vastly improved over the previous generation of games, not only animations feel more natural but also the addition of the grappling hook has improved both exploration and combat by adding a certain amount of verticality to the areas without being exclusively climbing dependant.
Gunplay is still something that I do not really like, it’s not about how it works but how it feels and I have always had this problem with ND games, that’s why I’m not saying it’s a problem but a personal perception of it, however, while the gunplay isn’t something that I like, the combats became more exciting by letting you approach it from different angles and using different approaches; Stealth, direct combat, jumping, climbing, using covers, etc… There’s a certain combat in U4 (ship graveyard, you will know the one) that sure is intensive, damn!
KB+M control is ok, weird at first but you will get used to it.
Story, visuals and gameplay have been discussed, I think it’s time to talk about sound and music. Music ain’t nothing special, sadly it doesn’t really shine as we would all have hoped, there are great tracks but overall it’s not something that stands up. Voice acting and surrounding sound design is good, the cast did an amazing job with their performances.
As for PC performance, aside from the Shader compilation process (keep that one in mind in case your temps go crazy with such processes) the PC conversion seems to be great. Steady performance and great visuals. While the game is demanding, I didn’t have problems with my rig but please keep in mind that your experience can be different.
In conclusion for this review, I’m extremely happy to see that Uncharted came to Steam. After revisiting this title for its PC debut I realized that this is in fact my favorite entry of the saga and Lost Legacy is a very worthy product too. I think you will enjoy this one a lot as a newcomer to the franchise, here’s hope to see the previous ones coming at some point too but don’t miss this packaging.