Steelrising Review

“Is aught a slay?” I chuckle to myself for the third time that night. Aegis, my customised automaton, is making her way through a war-torn Paris and has just found yet another sickening little hat. She puts it on, it matches the studded leggings I found earlier, and once again I crack a smile because she is, in fact, slaying. The history behind this joke is as recent as the proliferation of the Soulslike in the gaming industry. Memetic riffs on popular concepts, the origin point of my joke, is as abstracted from its source material as Steelrising is from its. But in these degrees of separation, I found both deeply amusing.

Coming to us by way of French game developers Spiders, Steelrising is the latest attempt from the studio to capture the magic of AAA game experiences on a AA game budget. While Greedfall set its sights on Western RPGs, Steelrising reworks the FromSoftware formula with a variety of changes that land with varying levels of success. The end result is a game that definitely feels of its budget range but charms despite this, or perhaps because of it. The French revolution has arrived but due to some historical tweaks, the masses have been violently subdued by King Louis XVI’s automaton army. Intricately designed clockwork robots of wildly escalating design, these machines have left a bloody mark on Paris and its people.

I wore this hat the whole game

Appalled by her husband’s actions, the queen enlists the assistance of Aegis, an automaton with uncanny emotional intelligence and combat skills. You can visually customise Aegis to a certain extent, choosing from a variety of base metals, pompous wigs and pre-set faces with era-appropriate makeup. From here you’ll be prompted to choose a starting class, though these are more guidelines than hard lock choices. Bodyguard and Soldier cater toward players looking for a more traditional strength approach with broad swinging heavy weapons. Likewise, the Dancer class offers a faster approach favouring swift strikes and dodging, but Steelrising’s coolest class is by far the Alchemist.

Combat in Steelrising leans heavily into elemental affiliations, dousing enemies in flames, ice, electricity and more. The alchemist class has a decent head start in this sense, built from the ground up to take advantage of the elements system in deeply satisfying ways. These elements can be inflicted through weapon buffs and consumables, each type incapacitating foes in various ways. Early on in the game, I found a rapid shot pistol infused with ice, allowing me to steamroll some early mini-bosses by freezing them in place before unleashing a wave of heavy blows. The game’s backend mitigates this elemental stun locking with stronger enemies, but if you kit yourself out correctly, much of its first half can be relatively easily navigated due to some slightly unbalanced weapons.

Aegis can deal massive damage with elemental modifiers

Balancing was often the furthest thing from my mind though, as Steelrising’s arsenal of weapons is just so outrageously cool. There are over 40 weapons to find throughout the game’s eight levels, often hidden away in chests or rewarded for taking out foes. There is the expected array of swords and maces, but in keeping with the game’s design work, the weapons are all equally creative. Gorgeously intricate fans that seamlessly fold into Aegis’ arms, colourful tonfas dripping with elemental damage and, my personal favourite, a meteor hammer-like chain weapon that I could ignite with fire and kick into foes at long distances a la Gogo Yuabri. Weapons also come with special abilities that can alter your gameplay, such as the previously mentioned elemental infusion, or allowing manoeuvres like blocking and parrying.

This weapon variety is supported by a relatively straightforward action RPG levelling system and active stamina regeneration mechanic. On the top level, you’ll be spending Steelrising’s Souls currency equivalent on incremental increases to Aegis’ build quality, focusing on health, raw damage output, elemental infliction rate and so on. Weapons and the healing flask can also be upgraded over time for better effectiveness. Steelrising better differentiates itself beyond these basics, however. The ability to rapidly cool your overheated system if you run out of stamina is a welcome addition to the formula that Nioh initially introduced but feels right at home here. The trade-off being the infliction of ice damage due to the cooling systems, a nice in-universe means of explaining a mechanic that heightens tension during fights.

Steelrising has a decent, if straightforward, RPG leveling system

Spiders have also implemented a small selection of quality of life improvements for the genre. For instance, once you have gathered enough robot souls to level up, the icon at the bottom of the screen will change from blue to yellow, saving you the trouble of darting back to a save point only to find you’re missing some odd number of souls. The game also creates an additional save slot before you enter the endgame zone for easier DLC access in the future. Tiny touches like these make a big difference to a genre veteran and I can only hope FromSoftware are paying attention to the innovations being made in the independent development scene.

There is also Steelrising’s fantastic difficulty modifiers, a sticking point among genre purists and dickheads. Spiders have been pretty open about wanting everybody to be able to experience the game and in that sense, they have created a great pathway to it. By enabling Assist Mode you can tweak the amount of damage you receive, ranging from none to full, as well as stamina regeneration, keeping your souls upon death and more. It’s a fantastic set of options that doesn’t compromise the world of Steelrising while allowing players to set their own pace. My only gripe is that it disables achievements/trophies, a strange vestige of skill-based insecurity that feels at odds with the mode’s intent.

Steelrising’s boss fights are often flashy and fun events

Still, allowing players the chance to see all of what Steelrising has to offer is a good thing as the game does boast some truly fun surprises, eventually. The opening hour makes a dreadful impression, between a dull opening level and early combat not having the same impact that later skills provide. Slog through this though and you’ll find a series of escalating boss fights that push the combat, and art direction, to great heights. Level design and aesthetics also improve over the course of the game, with the final level, in particular, providing a visual Parisian feast. Aegis is also equipped with a jump and, eventually, some traversal tools that open up levels nicely. Even when the look of a place let me down, I appreciated the ability to zip around it like a robotic Spider-Doll.

Steelrising also attempts to weave a layered narrative into the Soulslike, a genre that quietly demands good writing but seldom gets it. Aegis’ story is one of autonomy, loss and political revolution, but the game squanders close to all of it thanks to a lacklustre, overstuffed script and bizarre voice acting. In this Paris, everyone waxes poetic about the working class with a vaguely-British inflection, peppering in French words from time to time for effect. Likewise, the game’s ruminations on the proletariat being crushed under the heel of the King’s automated machines is awkwardly stitched to a truly strange third-act twist that makes the whole game feel woefully out of focus thematically.

This looks sick, there’s no way around it.

Final Thoughts

Steelrising is a game of halves, adapting genre staples in fun and welcome ways while failing to stake much of a claim on their newly discovered grounds. Spiders have implemented some genuinely exciting changes in approachability and welcome players into an aesthetically rich and mechanically decent world. But as the writing misfires, and the world design leaves you feeling a little adrift, you can’t help but wonder if all this should have been in service of a better realised game.

Reviewed on PS5  // Review code supplied by publisher

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