Steel Rising Review (PS5) – Even Bound by flame was far from a perfect game, it set a precedent for me when it comes to games coming out of Spider Entertainment.
The quality of the writing coupled with the story it weaved made it worth struggling through the clunky gameplay. Even then, the clunky gameplay still worked well enough.
Steel Rising changes the direction of what Spiders’ normal games look like. Rather than an action RPG, the team immersed themselves in the Soulsborne formula to explore a potentially fascinating, alternate history of post-French Revolution cyberpunk.
While Steelrising makes a solid attempt at formula, it loses much of what makes Spider Entertainment games so wonderful.
Steelrising Review (PS5) – An accessible, imperfect Soulsborne that lacks the basics of Spider Entertainment
You take on the role of Aegis, an automaton who, unlike the rest of the robots in the game, has the ability to think and even speak for itself.
Your master, Marie Antoinette herself, is sending you to Paris to investigate what happened to her children and to put an end to the current uprising plaguing Paris.
In my preview from a few months ago, I didn’t see much of the story, but I wasn’t worried about that.
“Not much of the story came out in the build I played, but I never worry about the narrative quality when it comes to Spiders.” is what i said then.
In retrospect, I realize that my early time with the game should have attracted more attention. While the story here isn’t bad at all, it’s also a far cry from the other more powerful stories Spider has put together.
Rather than the full narrative breadth, the team delivers more of a subtle story in small chunks.
This story comes in the form of an occasional cutscene, in which you often meet historical figures of the French Revolution, or short conversations you have with civilians who have barricaded themselves in their homes.
The writing quality associated with Spider Entertainment shows up throughout the game, but it just doesn’t show up as often as it should.
Early inconsistencies are quickly fixed
Unfortunately, the best part of the story comes in the second half of the game. Given the genre that Spider chose in Steelrising, this means that many people may not invest the time it takes to experience the full story.
To make the injury worse at first, the voice acting in Steelrising starts out lethargic. Aegis, an automaton, sounds robotic and stoic, which comes across as good and even a bit more emote the more Aegis experiences.
However, half of the characters you encounter along the way feel undervalued. Even the very first character you meet, Marie Antoinette, is voiced very lethargic with an episode that sounds more like a first try in the studio.
Fortunately, the more common characters you encounter offer more captivating voice work. Still, it takes a while for those characters to appear.
Limited advantage of PS5
From the very first moment of the game, Steelrising presents you with a fully realized environment that somehow looks disappointing. The degeneration is sweeping the streets of Paris, of course after a devastating takeover, so the areas lack a lot of color variation.
What makes this harder to swallow is how dated the textures look. For most of the game you run through muddy streets full of rubble and glass, but the textures don’t share the same level of realism.
Standing buildings and scaffolding maintain a healthy graphic fidelity, but the muddy streets look more like Saran-wrapped and unnaturally reflective.
At first glance, I wonder why Steelrising is on PS5 at all. Everything Steelrising offers lacks a high level of detail on all fronts to ensure an appearance on the next generation.
Be it visuals, audio, and overall presentation, PS4 offers everything the game needs to do what it does.
Let go with help mode
Steelrising offers one saving grace for those who just want to experience the story: Assist Mode. In this mode, you can reduce or eliminate the damage you take, increase stamina, and keep your Anima (the soul version of this game to level up your character and gear).
If you use assist mode fully to spin trophies, just plowing through enemies with no consequences will have its own reward level. It also helps you learn enemy moves and patterns for future playthroughs.
Unfortunately, Steelrising does not contain any form of New Game+. On the other hand, it would make New Game+ disproportionately easy to collect trophies as you progress through the game with Assist mode maxed out to level up your character.
Personally, Assist mode ages better than co-op in the Souls games. Considering that the co-op used in those games requires a server and another person to play the game, knowing that you can just play the game on your terms when you start this game, it just feels more natural.
It stings a bit for me now as a trophy hunter, but I know the Assist mode will help people play this game in years to come.
Take it to the vending machines
Steelrising’s real meat and potatoes come with combat. You start the game with four classes: Bodyguard, Soldier, Dancer and Alchemist. These only serve to provide you with specific starting weapons and early stats that benefit those weapons.
As you explore the game, you’ll gain access to all the different weapons in the game, so you can really play the way you want.
Alchemical weapons allow you to apply elements to enemies, such as freeze with ice and stun with electricity. For example, you can use an ice daring rifle to freeze enemies from a distance. Then you switch to the fan blades to trim away a ton of health.
As mentioned above, controlling your enemies plays a key role in combat. Steelrising offers two ways to do this: through alchemical application and through dizzying. Essentially, hit an enemy often enough in a short amount of time, and they stagger.
This leaves the enemy open for one hit where they take more damage than usual.
Options and their imbalance
Each area contains enemies that are weak to different elements or weapons. This almost forces you to exchange your weapons when you move to a new area. I say “almost” because the game can be approached with any combination, but some enemies just prove a lot harder to steer that way.
Struggling in a new zone almost means you have to craft more and more Anima and materials to level up different weapons for that area. This extends the time it takes to make progress.
Given how spread out the story is across the game, this can contribute to a diminished drive to keep going.
Then there’s the parry function; I purposely saved this for last. This mechanic works so well that once you get the hang of it, you don’t have to switch weapons at all. Almost all attacks can be parried with the only exceptions being alchemical ranged attacks.
These range attacks only deal small amounts of damage to apply that element.
This opens the game wide open. On the one hand, you try to play how you want, and you are almost forced to change it along the way. On the other hand, you master parry and struggle only with timing enemy attack patterns.
I miss a lot of skill when it comes to parrying in video games, but Steelrising offers more freedom in this area than the Soulsborne games.
When Potential Meets Limitations
Without ruining it, Steelrising has a story hook late in the game that felt pretty cool. The build up to it in the second half of the game also came across as much more progressive than the first half of the game. While I think the ending is worth the price of admission, not everyone will.
A combination of a slow story, very dated visuals, and a lackluster voice actor in the early game will no doubt put off many players.
Those who persevere will find a fun Soulsborne that demands just enough without pushing back as much as the games that inspired the genre while providing a cool alternate universe for an important point in French history.
Review code kindly provided by publisher.
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