The Ascent

buggy as hell co-op. Otherwise, pretty solid fun

verry fun wish there would be a second one with away to join other people publicly

No control over camera angle <- this is a crime, especially when the devs have decided in some places it's so zoomed in you can't see more than 15 feet in front of you. Aiming mechanics wonky. Dying means fighting your way back through areas you've already cleared.

I'll keep it short, the visuals of this game are great when they're not bugging out at times and I really enjoyed the art direction, but that's probably the best part of the game as for the rest it's was below average. The story felt overly complicated but at the same time too simple, characters weren't that interesting and there wasn't really much to hook on to. The gameplay was fine at the start but started to degrade over time, I never felt like I was getting stronger or better at any point I felt like I just needed to use more items to kill less enemies while also dying faster despite leveling up health and getting better equipment, on top of the game feeling very unbalanced in favor of the enemies. Last gripe was the open world aspect, while there is fast travel I still ended up needing to backtrack constantly through areas that almost instantly get repopulated with new enemies I just finished killing which makes any trips feel tedious after the first hour, on top of enemy levels being all over the place making traveling a bigger pain than needed. overall, best viewed from a distance rather than played.

There is an obscene amount of cinematic running in The Ascent. On top of that, the player has no way to move through these areas any quicker except to dedicated fast travel points which are no where near where you need to be. There is a lot of backtracking, including visiting areas you've already been to do additional side quests or go to the high level zone of a particular map. It is, frankly, disrespectful of my time. But I can appreciate beautiful scenery and it would not usually bother me except every zone has multiple loading areas. These loading areas are not hidden, in fact, they usually happen right before combat. While the map is loading in the background the framerate drops to an abysmal 14 and can last almost a whole minute. All while you have to dodge, shoot, and otherwise make sure you dont get kicked back to the respawn point and have to load all this again. Oh and all the enemies respawn when you do. I wouldn't call The Ascent a forgiving game, nor would I call it particularly difficult. However, the enemies have perfect aim every time, so you must move, dodge, or make use of cover. They can use cover much more effectively than you, and there is often no way to get an enemy out of cover without abilities. This leads to issues where you're just sitting in cover trying not to die to a firing squad. Eventually they will attempt to surround you, which gives you an opportunity to pick them off. But for the most part, this is an incredibly annoying arpg combat system. I really, really want to like this game. The gunplay actually feels great. But there are too many little things that just make me think I'd rather be doing something else.

This game is awesome. I loved the gameplay and the idea behind the ascent. But that's it. The RPG is almost non existent. The campaign is very short. No end game content... nothing. It's really dissapointing because this game could have been so much. That's why I don't recommend. I bought it at 10$ and I feel it wasnt worth that after finishing the game.

Frequent crashes.