Steelrising (PlayStation 5)
Official GBAtemp Review
Product Information:
- Release Date (EU): September 7, 2022
- Publisher: Nacom
- Developer: Spiders
- Genres: Action, Role-play
- Also For: Computer, Xbox Series X|S
Game Features:
Imagine the scene, the year is 1789 and you are in the city of light amidst revolution. Marie Antoinette is there, and her husband, Louis XVI, is causing what can only be described as blood-soaked havoc with his robot army. Yeah, I did say "robot army". It's not a true retelling of what happened back then. Instead, it's Spiders' version of events where France was frightfully more technologically savvy back in the 18th century and was able to build sentient robotic servants to assist alongside you. It's a strange one.
The story begins with Mary Antionette and Gabrielle de Polignac discussing (in perfect English) the downfall of Paris due to the Kings actions. Comparing the King, Louis XVI to Emperor Nero, they concede that he has sent the city into ruin and that they are imprisoned in the Chateau in which they reside, and that the new "Chataue Gaurd" are effectively their indefatigable robotic jailers. The Queen, Marie, is grieving the possible loss of her Son, who she still feels is out there, somewhere, but also fears for the safety of the other Parisian citizens, namely the children.
Luckily, they have one non-hostile automat that is loyal to the queen, her bodyguard, Aegis. Using Aegis as her eyes and ears, Marie and Gabrielle send the robot to cross the hostile environments, take a boat to Paris, and find Vaucanson's workshop near Les Invalides, to find information on how to defeat the automaton army, with the ultimate primary instruction that the King must be stopped!
The protagonist automaton is an intriguing culmination of gothic Parisian chic and steam-punk deadly-dance-weaponry. Given the robot's history as a court dancer, made by Vaucanson (the engineer in the service of the Clockwork King), Aegis is yours to personalise at the beginning of this incredibly strange tale. Giving her a customised complexion, wig-style, facial look, and one of four core traits: Bodyguard, Soldier, Dancer, or Alchemist, you escape the Chateau and embark on an errand to get from point A to point B, and back again, in one piece. Don't fret, those core traits aren't locked in, you can change it up at any time.
Bodyguard class essentially means you're great with close-range melee, Soldier grants you long-range melee and ranged weapons. Dancer allows for dual wielding and superfast attacks; whereas Elemental Alchemist utilises a gradual building of power to slowly strengthen an otherwise quite weak class of player initially. Alchemist is a more consumable-focused class, but ultimately very rewarding once you enrich your weaponry and dial down your tactics.
I began as the Bodyguard for the combination of damage vs range, and battering enemies with a hammer was great but risky. I quickly swapped to Soldier class due to having longer-range abilities. I found that I could pop enemies off with a musket without them getting close enough to wail on me. Building my Power, Vigour and Durability stats meant I was a heavy hitter that could swiftly dodge attacks while retaining energy to launch a barrage of powerful onslaughts.
Weapons in this game are reasonably abundant, with fans, swords, guns, mallets and chains there are elemental versions of each type that you will need to acquire and utilise against each foe depending on their traits. Ironically, or not, one of the best weapons is found immediately after the first miniboss in the game which is barely fifteen minutes in.
The Nemesis Claws deal serious damage at the expense of very little agility, so I found myself using them throughout and frankly not feeling the need to swap them for something newer. I guess it's trial and error when it comes to your favourite weapons to wield, though I felt like I was cheating by sticking to what I knew and persevering with them for an entire playthrough.
As you would expect, everything, everywhere you look, is grimey, blood-soaked and decaying. No organic life is visible in the city, only wave after wave of various zombie-like traipsing robotic killers stumbling around the scenery. Encountering roughly the same enemy over and over you learn to dispatch them in a couple of hits, dodging, countering, and running where necessary. This game is a grind from the very start, and the enemies, though similar in appearance, have ever-increasing difficulty levels to take down making your journey all the more trying. As you progress you will encounter different enemy types that offer harder challenges too.
Aegis' gears visibly turn, cranking and grinding, oil sputters out and she crumbles to a halt if you overdo it and sprint or dodge frequently. You pick up oil burettes to effectively revitalise your ailing health, and not keeping an eye on your vitality can mean the difference between storming the next wave successfully, or reloading an old save and having to do a section all over again. It's pretty unforgiving for beginners such as myself. Quite often I found myself instantly dying due to dodging and using up the energy I would otherwise need to perform a strike. It is a fine balance to get right, and I'm not a fan.
You will also find elementals to collect, and anima to horde. Finding rarer materials yields stronger upgrades going forward so be sure to pick everything up because you're going to need it when you face bigger and more formidable opponents.
Scattered around the various levels you'll also discover vestals in which you can further enhance your character through upgrades, boutique and equipment. Using the upgrades menu you find a submenu containing a heck of a lot of data, which is initially quite overwhelming, but as you progress you realise what it's all about and it becomes less daunting very quickly.
Upgrading your character comes in 6 main flavours, including Power, Durability, Agility, Vigour, Alchemy and Engineering. Each of these serves to enhance your vital statistics in ways that will increase your survival rates. For example, if you neglect your frost resistance and you enter a cold area you are not going to fare very well until you do something about it. Similarly, if you over-enhance your durability but disregard your agility you'll become a slugger who can take a beating but cannot avoid the most basic of obviously-incoming impacts.
Each stat has pros and cons, and therefore it becomes a balancing act to settle on a succinct set of attributes that suit your play style. Essentially it boils down to attack versus defence muddled in with Aegis' innate health/endurance and multipliers.
Running down her spine are 4 key modules, that provide passive buffs to your character. Each module has tiers too so you can upgrade and enhance your combination of buffs to suit your playstyle. Gaining your first key module from the Unstable Lancer mini-bosses loot, you then learn of how to utilize these to best develop Aegis for yourself. Upgrading costs 1, 3 or five keys depending on which tier you are upgrading too, with 5 unlocking the final tier.
I mainly opted for Power and Health to rely on brute resilience and stamina to force my way through the relentless wrangles. Focussing on armour is really a no-brainer, and buying elemental enhancements, such as flame orbs, to deal more damage was incredibly useful too.
You walk with the left stick, clicking it in sprints. The right analogue stick controls the direction you look towards as well as locks on to the closest enemy when you click it down. The attack buttons are mapped to the R1 and 2 buttons, as well as the L2 button for special moves. You can jump with Cross and Dodge with Circle, and using a special item is the Square button. L1 & either Square, Triangle or Circle will launch a special attack too, and Triangle is reserved for picking up items and cooling/interacting modes. Why the picking up of items wasn't automated is beyond me, because that would have been incredibly useful. In general, the controls are simple to pick up, but I often had to consult the options menu to reaffirm the combination buttons.
Attacking enemies with the R1 or R2 button feels weighty and expresses a definite heft upon impact. The fighting handles well, but directionally if you accidentally point a few degrees away from the enemy your swings will miss and your attack will be utterly useless making the very core of the fighting system frustrating to use unless you're constantly locked on to an enemy. Something a bit more forgiving, or more free-form would have flowed better and provided a more satisfying and tactile fighting experience in my opinion, especially when encircled. Also absent is the ability to combo moves, alternating with multiple enemies at once, to fend off groups.
Though Aegis the automaton is well-designed and wonderful to observe in fluid dynamic movement and with her subtle nuance robotic ticks; the very world you explore is bland, sparse, muddy and maze-like. Being funnelled from one place to another is often annoying and frustrating in places, where you think you can simply cut across from one place to another by jumping up and over a wall or pushing through a thin chainlink or leafy border. But alas no, you are forced to take the long route, which is all the more tiresome if you happen to die along the way and have to retrace your steps to get back to where you were before.
One saving grace is the environmental stylings that lead up to the miniboss and titan battles. The lighting gets more interesting, the map layout becomes more spacious, and it's a big 'tell' that all the interesting objects and points of interest are clumped together in this area to make it far more of a crescendo piece. The flames and fire do serve to add some pizazz to the battles but I didn't notice many accurate shadows or interesting visuals come from this. Some of the environment design itself is very intricate and intriguing however the dim lighting and washed-out palette didn't serve to enhance the feelings of despair or hardship, instead it just bugged me how bland and exhausting the atmosphere is. The Seine, Paris inner City, and the Tuilleries, all have the same look and feel, the same bland colouration and in a way, it reminds me of the feeling I had first playing Nightmare Creatures on the original PlayStation, just more frustrating and not as exciting.
I won't lie, I did run past a lot of the smaller enemies, cleared a path when I knew I was near the bigger battles and used dodge, change, attack combination flurry of moves to overcome a lot of the bosses. I only cheaped a couple of the Titans/Unstable mini-bosses when they notably got caught up on badly clipped geometry. That's their issue, not mine, you can't take these little wins away from me!
Though I've never been a huge fan of this type of game, Steelrising is a serviceable "Souls-like-with-a-twist". After reading this it will come as no surprise that I didn't particularly enjoy the overarching grind element, not as much as I would have were this an open-world game.
I did enjoy the varied boss fights and though there were merely 19 of them to overcome, they were easily the meatiest parts of an otherwise quite sparse and monotonous game, that delivers the most satisfaction once I had become a ground-out powerhouse in readiness for the titan battles. It's not a game I can get excited about, but perhaps you may find some semblance of enjoyment in Steelrising, so by all means: give it a try!
Verdict
- Ambitious and intricate
- Plenty to discover and unlock
- Boss battles feel great to overcome
- Around 18 hours of gameplay
- Lousy graphics and cut scenes
- Monotonous in places
