The Ascent

to be clear, this game has some real janky problems. like, if you have multiples saves, you'll never have confidence of being able to play the one you actually want. it doesn't save reliably, so losing extreme amounts of progress is all too easy. what this game has going for it is atmosphere. the art direction is great, the combat action is fun. i recommend it, but understand you're dealing with coding that has holes in it that you will be encountering with various levels of inconvenience.

Lets go indent, you are flesh, you are a big corpo tool, you are expendable, you are alone. 10/10 Visuals makes a playthrough worth it by itself 9/10 Soundtrack, gritty and futuristic 7/10 Gameplay that is fun but lacks enough diversity to stretch into the later half of the game/DLC map Final score - 8/10

So, I just want to say, if you've ever looked at a game or like a trailer, and was like "Wow that looks so cool!" That mystery of what the game MIGHT be, is so so so much more interesting than what this game actually is. I wish it was more interesting to play, but man it just is not it. Majority of my time experiencing the game, and will be for everyone, will be just slowly walking around, backtracking, finding chests with nothing useful, and at some point, you'll question what fun am I even having? The idea of this game is so interesting, but dear god, playing it made me have buyers remorse, even on sale. If you don't mind insanely slow meandering around, pick it up. Otherwise, I'd look elsewhere.

Изометрический кооп/сингл шутер без лишних заморочек. Атмосфера и локации - кайф, стрельба нормальная, прокачка присутствует, сюжет есть. Камера не всегда удобная и сложность противников нелинейная (самый сложный босс в середине игры, а не в конце), но получить удовольствие это не помешает. Помешает только одно - техническая составляющая. Оптимизация нормальная, но баги и частые зависания намертво дают о себе знать. Люди пишут, что лечится переходом с директикса 12 на 11 в настройках (или конфиге), но в моем случае зависания просто заменились вылетами с ошибкой. За скидочную цену - шикарная вещь для неискушенных качественными играми людей.

Originally, this review was negative due to a game breaking bug right from the get so. After giving the game another shot, I'm leaning positive but would definitely be mixed if that was an option. The game itself is fun. A top down isometric twin stick shooter set in a cyberpunk themed world. The game world is beautiful for an isometric game. There are frequent perspective shifts and zooming in and out during the game that show you the world in more detail. The RPG elements in the game are a bit weak... There are no meaningful choices that change the story - it's very linear. Character progression is simple: you level up and gain stat points to allocate, new weapons and armor, new "skills" that consume "energy" (mp equivalent), new throwables, and perhaps most importantly, upgrades to your cyberdeck which lets unlock areas that you couldn't access before. Think metroidvanias unlocks. Combat is fun. I'm a big fan of top down/isometric twin stick shooters so I was stoked when I found a game that uses that perspective that looks this good. Ammo is unlimited. There is a neat cover mechanic where you can duck behind objects and shoot over them, which is typically not found in a game with this perspective. The skills you find feel meaningful and do considerable damage. It's honestly not a bad game at all, but it's riddle with bugs. Besides the bug in the original review, I was also stuck in between two objects and unable to get out, the game froze on me randomly, and a certain quest at the beginning where you have to kill four special enemies would not trigger without quitting to the main menu and re-entering the game. Thus was within 8 hours of the game, so I basically ran into a bug every 2 hours on average. I simply can't truly recommend the game for this reason. It's so janky. But since steam doesn't have a mixed review, I would say that the game is fun enough that a negative review is not deserved. This is definitely a game to wait for a sale or buy a key for. Original review: Within the first 5 seconds of playing the game after finishing character creation, I pressed the roll button and fell off the map into pitch black darkness with no way to recover. There ain't no way. Listen... there will always be bugs in games but never have I experienced a bug this bad so quickly and makes me just reconsider playing the game to begin with. What in the world? See the screenshot on my profile.

Clunky, janky, buggy and lazy where it matters. What are attributes? What do they scale? What's the difference between one level and the next? What's the wind-up delay on my weapon? Where's the world map? Why are tutorials popping up mid combat, locking my screen and making me click through next dialogues to make it go away? Why can I not quickly escape dialogues with ESC or something similar? What is armor? How much damage reduction is each point of a defense stat? Does different damage types have different status effects? Are some enemies weak to certain damage types? Why is one weapon setting enemies on fire but other ones are not? Is there status buildup in the game? Why can my co-op partner not pick up healing if the host is off screen? This game is crap on so many levels I don't even care what it does well. I've been trying reaaaaally hard to find enjoyment in the moment to moment gameplay but it's just crap. BUGS BUGS BUGS. Mission objectives braking, waypoints in the wrong location, unreadable worldmap, no custom waypoints, inadequate quest descriptions, restart the game 5 times an hour to deal with a bug. Honestly ♥♥♥♥ this, I feel sorry I dragged a friend into this.

The gameplay was fun, and I can see the potential. But everything else felt mediocre. The game is poorly optimized, suffers from performance issues/crash, and overall wasn't a great experience.

Un avis tardif, mais toujours d'actualité pour cet excellent jeu. Si vous aimez le "hard-cyberpunk", le genre twin-stick shooter et le "hack & slash", ce titre va forcément vous plaire. Les points forts (dans l'ordre) : L'ambiance, les graphismes, la direction artistique, le feeling des combats (exigeants au début, mais gratifiants une fois maîtrisés) et, dans une moindre mesure, la bande-son (un peu inégale, mais certains morceaux sont incroyables). Les points faibles : Un scénario un peu nébuleux et quelques soucis de backtracking, certaines zones devant être reparcourues pour de simples transitions. Le mot sur l'univers : On est sur du cyberpunk hardcore, crasseux, technologique et nocturne. Le jeu va bien plus loin dans cette esthétique qu'un Cyberpunk 2077, beaucoup plus grand public. En ce sens, The Ascent se rapproche énormément d'un Ruiner.