Until You Fall Review – Sword Fighting VR Fun

Until You Fall is a VR sword fighting game that brings together hack and slash and RPG fun.  Fight your way through swarms of monsters, level up your skills, and kill the larger bosses. Let’s get started on this Until You Fall Review.

What is Until You Fall?

Until You Fall is a hack and slash, sword fighting experience where you fight, basically,  until you die. You progress through several tiers though so it is not an endless battle and there is definitely a progression. Monsters attack you and you need to block them and attack them back. As they die and you progress, you gain various upgrades.  Until you Fall is developed by Schell Games.

Until You Fall is available on Steam VR, Oculus Rift, PSVR, and Oculus Quest 2.

Until You Fall Gameplay Review

When you start the game, there is a tutorial that walks you through everything that you need to know. You start with two swords, a large sword, and a smaller dagger(KeenBlade), that appears in your hands by pressing the triggers. Monsters will approach you.

As the monster reaches up to attack you, a sword outline and block chance will appear on your screen. You must hold your arm/controller up to the block line/direction in time. If successful, your controllers provide a solid haptic feedback rumble, and you will have the ability to attack the monster back. Block, success, attack.

Your goal is to destroy each monster’s shield meter. Every successful block you make removes some, as well as each successful hit you do. The entire time the monster’s shield meter is active, it will be attacking you. Some quite rapidly. Once the shield meter is destroyed, the monster will temporarily be stunned and you will give it your all, releasing multiple large sweeping attacks to hopefully finish the creature off.

The gameplay is great, fast and you lose track of time quite easily. I frequently just wanted to play “one more try” and an hour would easily slip by. There isn’t really an end to the game, but that is not really the point. There are many different weapon combinations to try. Did you try the no-blocking run-through yet? There is a basic story as your playthrough, but this is certainly not an adventure game. You are here to block and attack monsters in VR. There is a voice-over story, and a large super boss end goal, but no real campaign. That being said I hope in the future or version 2 they add a proper story and campaign mode to work through. It would add a little extra.

Upgrade Your Weapons!

There are multiple weapons that you can get from the main menu screen between playthroughs. Choosing these weapons is a fun part of Until You Fall Review! Each weapon has its strengths and weaknesses. Each weapon can be upgraded with several modifiers as well. As you play through you can try out different combinations and see which style suits you best.

The developer made things interesting with the multiple weapon types, by adding a delay if the weapon is “heavier”. When you swing the light sword, no delay. The large ax? Huge delay. It works great and tricks your brain.

Until You Fall Review Graphics and Sounds

Until You Fall is beautiful to look at with bright neon colors. The graphics don’t feel cheesy though. The background music has a synth-wave sound, but I found the music motivational and never repetitive or annoying even after hours of playing. The sound effects really sync up to the game very well. You should play with headphones on so you can hear which direction the attacks are coming from. Frequently the monster will come at you from all angles. You will need to turn around and look behind you to see where they are coming from.

Part of the concern I had was you can’t be “hit” by a sword from an opponent (unless you are wearing a haptic vest). But that was never an issue. The vibration in the controllers, the sparks on hit,  and the sound effects that happen on contact kept me immersed.

Until you Fall tracks your progress. You are also able to change the difficulty before starting each map. This is great because maybe you feel like you need an easier time today since that VR workout from yesterday is still affecting your arms. You can save the game at any point as well, allowing you to return to the same spot and level next time you load the game up.

Does Until You Fall Have Multiplayer?

There is no multiplayer option in Until You Fall.  It would be great if it did or you could fight your VR friends, but it is not there at this time.

Can you workout with Until You Fall? Is Until You Fall a Fitness Game?

There are tons of fitness games in the VR stores, and Until You Fall might not be the first game that comes to mind for fitness, but this game can definitely get your heart rate up and your sweat on.

Throughout the entire game, you will be moving both your arms up above and near your head for attacking and blocking, as well as ducking and moving from side to side to dodge attacks. As you get better at the game there would be an increase in exercise level as multiple enemies will attack you at the same time, requiring more dodging and blocking. The wider your attack swings the more damage you will do, and the more calories you will burn.

Until You Fall also rewards players who keep coming back and playing it. If you want to progress through higher levels you will need to upgrade your weapons, and the only way to do that is to keep playing.

The Virtual Reality Institute of Health and Exercise rate Until You Fall as equal to doing Ellipticals or 4-6 Kcal/Min. The same level of workout as playing basketball, tennis doubles, or mowing your lawn – but arguably a lot more fun.

Does Until You Fall cause motion sickness?

When you start Until You Fall you are asked if you want to play in a seated mode or stand up mode. Motion Sickness blinders are on, but you can disable them for a more immersive experience. You move by teleportation and most enemies will attack you, so all these things help to limit VR sickness.

Until You Fall has movement in-game so it MAY cause motion sickness. Use the included vignetting and you should have no motion sickness issues.

Final Thoughts On Until You Fall Review