In a historical moment in which the majority of videogame productions focus entirely on the graphics sector and try to squeeze out graphics engines such as Unreal Engine 5 as much as possible, there are smaller teams that focus their projects on other features.
This is precisely the case with Final Stand: Ragnaroka title that wants to try to carve out a slice of the public for a peculiarity of its graphics engine, let's find out what it is.
City State Entertainment changes name
Before delving into the features of Final Stand: Ragnarok, it would be appropriate to talk about the team that is developing it. Until some time ago, in fact, the software house was known to the public by the name of City State Entertainmentbut it has just been renamed to Unchained Entertainment to ensure that everyone can associate the company's name with that of its latest generation graphics engine, the Unchained Engine. For those who have never heard of this development team before, it is a group of veterans who previously worked at Mythic Entertainment, Warner Bros, Electronic Arts, THQ and BioWare. In fact, among the company's ranks there are developers who have contributed to the creation of productions of the caliber of Dark Age of Camelot, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, Shadows of Mordor, Destiny and Lord of the Rings: War in the North. In addition to being working on Camelot Unchained, an open-world MMORPG arriving in 2025, the team has been developing Final Stand: Ragnarok for some time, which has been available on Steam in Early Access for years now. However, it would seem that Unchained Entertainment is preparing to publish the final version of the game, also thanks to the arrival of investments by 16Z GAMES, Island Capital and The Lauder Family which contributed to speeding up the creation of the title and the graphics engine that drives it.
The peculiarities of the Unchained Engine
Having closed this brief parenthesis on the background of the software house working on Final Stand: Ragnarok, we can reveal to you the main characteristics of the project. The title, with a fantasy setting, is a mix between a musou and a MOBAsince it is a third-person hack and slash in which you can select one of five characters, each equipped with their own weapon and set of skills, and then immerse yourself in various modes in which you eliminate hordes of enemies. So far it might seem like a game like many others, but Final Stand: Ragnarok boasts a feature that probably no product on the market today boasts: the Unchained Entertainment title can manage hundreds and hundreds of characters on the screen at the same time.
We are not just talking about enemies controlled by artificial intelligence, but also NPCs and other real players, whether allies or adversaries. From the gameplay sequences that the developers have shown us, theUnchained Engine it can render an impressive amount of models on the screen at the same time, each intent on performing a different action. The intent is to obtain a result similar to what was seen at the cinema in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, with an infinite number of troops clearly visible in the background. As if that wasn't enough, the small development team's engine also boasts a notable rendering distancethanks to which even the most distant characters are clearly visible.
While all this is impressive on paper, in reality it is much less so: to obtain a result of this type and ensure that the product also works on older machines, the game it certainly doesn't have the latest graphics and, indeed, it appears very dated. From the models to the animations, everything seems to come from an early 2000s production and there is little point in aiming for the highest graphics settings.
Shallow gameplay
What also hasn't completely convinced us is the gameplay of Final Stand: Ragnarok, of which we played the long tutorial. Of course, we didn't have the opportunity to see the hundreds of elements on the screen, but by playing for half an hour we were able to get an idea of what the game will be. As we were saying, on balance it is a musou-style action game with characters characterized by fixed equipment like in a MOBA, without any possibility of modifying their equipment. The only way to make the Champions stronger is to accumulate power-ups that remain valid until the end of the game or to continue using a hero and unlock some passive skills which, however, do not change the gaming experience in any way. It is therefore a title from extremely simple mechanicsjust like the combat system based on very few buttons: the possibilities offered in this sense are scarce and we continue to mow down anonymous enemies such as skeletons and Vikings who die without too much effort under our blows, with a collision system that is far from perfect.
What we saw is the classic one PvE mode in which the objective consisted of defending a tower, but the developers have hinted that in the final version we will find a myriad of different modes. Apparently, in fact, the development team's intention is to combine the co-op component with that PvP, with game modes that involve multiple teams of players at the same time and an army of mobs complete with boss fights. There was even talk of one battle royalewhich with such a high number of players could create an experience different from the usual ones we are used to.
In short, the idea of having an engine like the Unchained Engine to display hundreds of characters on the screen is an absolutely interesting ideabut in the case of Final Stand Ragnarok is not supported by an adequate gaming experience. The combat system is simple and repetitive, the artistic direction lacks character and is unable to compensate for the serious shortcomings of a technical sector that is far from current standards. We therefore hope that the development team decides not to abandon this technology and to use it in the future also in projects where the attention is not placed solely and exclusively on a gimmick.