Steelrising | Review

Developer: Spiders

Engine: Silk Engine

Genres: Role-Playing Action Adventure Game

Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Microsoft Windows

Publishers: Nacon, BIGBEN INTERACTIVE

Introduction: Steelrising is a third person action role-playing game in the vain of past “souls-like” games that started with Demon’s Souls. I beaten Demon’s Souls. As well as Dark Souls 1, 2 and 3. I also beaten Bloodborne, Sekiro and Elden Ring. I’m not done.

Futhermore, I beaten The Surge 1, 2 and more recently Thymesia (did not finished). I have experience with these brutal action rpgs. Steelrising has a option that none of the latter games have called Assist Mode.

Presentation: Steelrising is not great, or a terrible game. It just might be the most “7” game there is. 7 is good solid score in my book. Steelrising did have technical issues while playing on performance mode on my Playstation 5. I caught a case of the floating dead automatons. Quite a few automatons would stand up and or float after I killed them. “Killed” a robot. Can you even kill a robot? Anyways.

Spiders is a developer that constantly needs a bigger budget for their creative work. I believe Spiders is capable of making a legit 9/10 role-playing game. I know they can. Steelrising suffers from muddy textures, dead faces in cutscenes and janky Aegis animations (she is a automaton so I can kinda let that pass). Steelrising could be a really good to great game with a larger budget in my opinion.

Story: Steelrising takes place in 1789 during an alternate reality French Revolution featuring Louis XVI who controls a army of killer automaton robots. Queen Marie Antoinette and Gabrielle de Polignac summon a mysterious free thinking sentient automaton named Aegis.

Aegis is tasked with taking down King Louis XVI’s robot army and rescuing important key figures in the fight for freedom. Story is told through cutscenes, collectible pamphlets, leaflets, notes and documents. The story was okay. Steelrising’s story was predictable and often had too much dialogue in it’s cutscenes for my taste.

Gameplay: So Steelrising has a option called “Assist Mode”. In the introduction I listed all of the souls-like games I beaten because I wanted to give a good review of assist-mode. Like many gamers I can be a purist at times. Bottom line is that it’s always the developers and creators of said videogames to make the final decision on difficulty.

Spiders added in-game options to tone down Steelrising’s difficulty which is what this entire review is based on. I pretty much put Steelrising on easy mode absolutely running through the game at breakneck speeds. I lowered enemies attack power, raised my stamina. I also had it so I didn’t have to retrieve and track down my “souls” etc.

Hidesight is 20/20 for most but not for me in this case. If I played the game without easy mode I know I would have died a lot more and in turn enjoyed myself more. I know what it’s like to feel gratification when defeating a tough enemy or boss in these types of videogames.

Assist Mode took that away from me completely. I saved hours in Steelrising using assist mode. I was never worried about dying in my playthrough. Granted I am experienced. I can see the casual player still dying in this game using assist mode. I never died myself but that’s only due to me playing these types of games for years.

You have various upgrade-able weapons and potion bottles for Aegis. You unlock checkpoints called Vestals which have boutiques. You collect armor, weapons and trinkets on the maps. You can clear fog sections on the map by defeating “Unstable” automatons. I completed 5 or 6 bossfights.

None of them were very memorable but did feature cutscene introductions for all of the bosses. You collect loot and new useful abilities for Aegis after killing Titans like an air dash and grappling hook.

Visuals/Graphics: Visuals overall were not that good. I played Steelrising in performance mode on the Playstation 5. Many textures when you looking down were muddy. If you looked at any object closely it gets blurry. Like in reallife. Aegis at times during cutscenes looked okay however.

The lighting looked decent depending on the map. What I did like is the art design of French Revolution Paris. I dug it. Kinda gothic with a Bloodborne-ish look at times. But yeah, I cannot give a pass on Steelrising’s visuals. It looked like poo-poo or doo-doo most of the time.

Sound/Music: The menu tune stuck out to me. I liked it. Okay, I shall go as far to say I enjoyed the music in Steelrising. The thing is, there just wasn’t enough of it. Only time I remember music was in combat situations.

Final Thoughts/Verdict: Before I forget if you want to watch all of the Steelrising gameplay videos that I made check out my Steelrising Video Gallery Playlist. Steelrising is a good game. It just needed a larger budget like most Spiders games.

Assist Mode might start ending up in these types of action role-playing games in the future. People love options and accessibility in games. Thank you for reading – Jason