I have no doubt that the challenge of differentiating yourself, especially with a budget title, in an overcrowded eShop is a monumental challenge. Especially when you’re up against a number of successful games that have already established themselves in the subgenre, you sometimes have to take some risks to set the table a little differently and hope that spells success. Of course, sometimes those same decisions that set you apart can end up blowing up in your face, and at least to some degree that’s how I ended up feeling about Unto Deepest Depths.

Given that this falls into a sort of tactical strategy RPG vibe, there’s no question that there are a number of other titles already out there to compete with. Worse, while not many of them are quite in the budget-friendly range, on a decent sale you can pick them up affordably and in general they’re more on the visually-impressive side. Given those challenges, it appears that two elements in particular were thrown into the mix in order to try to have this play a little differently. 

The first is that it has a more roguelike structure, with you choosing your base party to start out with, and then working through a series of battles and chance stops along a path of your choosing, hopefully gaining experience and building up your party to weather tougher battles. The second, and the one that I tended to struggle with more, is that in order to complete your turn, each of your units must both move and attack. While that doesn’t sound like a big deal, in practice it does take some getting used to, especially when dealing with ranged units like magic users who can cast spells that do damage in quite a lot of areas. That’s great when you can get everything lined up and hit multiple enemies at once, but not so hot when you’re trying to position your other units, and trying not to take on friendly fire.

What this does manage to do is set the game apart from the crowd, and it deserves credit for that. Unfortunately, I see that feature also making it more of a love/hate proposition. I can see where some people could find the almost puzzle-like challenges this can present to be satisfying, needing to very carefully move your units into place, setting yourself up for success with patient planning. For me though, it just added a layer of frustration that too often felt very artificial and only rules-based rather than making any practical sense, taking me out of the experience.