Steelrising

Remember when the soulslike subgenre was still starting out? Those were good days. Developers who grew up playing From Software titles and wanted to pay their respects. If not, take this well established formula in an interesting direction. Whether it be Salt and Sanctuary being the first 2D soulslike, or Remnant: From The Ashes transforming into an over the shoulder shooter. It was special back then, but ask anybody now and they’ll probably tell you the soulslike genre is now oversaturated. With five plus genre entries coming out each year, and not a whole lot of them are doing much to stand out. If you know me well enough then you know I rather enjoy soulslikes. I love a decent challenge every now and then, and much like metroidvanias I’m always excited to see how people freshen things up. However, I understand this fatigue a lot of people have been facing. This question of where you draw the line between inspiration and copycats. If a game is trend chasing or genuinely trying to be good? I mean just recently Lords of The Fallen 2 received a few new announcements. A sequel to one of the most uninteresting dark fantasy games I have ever seen, and the “direction” the studio wants to go with the sequel is less interesting now. I wouldn't doubt if some toxic sh*t was going down behind the scenes,, but let's not make it all sound like doom and gloom. Even this intro is trying to build up doom & gloom.

Code Vein 2 released and I’ve heard no one talk about it aside weebs, and Mortal Shell 2 is set to release later this 2026. Okay, that one I’m a bit interested in as someone who played the first. We have gotten too many soulslikes, and hype for one following early genre entries isn't getting as much fanfare. Understandable, but also kind of sad as this is time and effort spent toward making video games being wasted. With the saddest story as of lately  being French studio Spiders being shut down. Making games since 2008, but never managing to land a success. Their latest project was Greedfall 2, the sequel to the highly ambitious RPG back in 2019. I remember having friends that liked the first game when it was initially released. Saying it was the closest a team has got to matching the magic and quality of Dragon Age: Origins, but while good it wasn’t particularly great. The game had pacing issues, performance issues, and was pretty janky from what I heard. Hence why most my friends stopped talking about it when they either lost interest in beating it, or did and became very underwhelmed by the overall package. It sucks because Greedfall seemed like a good idea from the trailers, and served as several years of Spiders learning from past projects.

So they tried making Greedfall 2, witnessed it bomb financially, and become the final nail in the coffin to send the studio under. Another studio down and developers in need of new jobs. Really sad story, but let’s not toil around any longer and instead pay some respect to one of their past titles. Steelrising, turning roughly four years old this year and was made due to the studios love for From Software. A departure from the massive ambitions they had previously, and was instead a smaller scale project with together focus. Again, it was them trying to learn from experience. Where they made the mistake was when they decided to release Steelrising. 2022 was a fantastic year for games and saw the release of one of THE games of the current decade, Elden Ring. You heard about it, I’ve heard about it, everyone knows about it! Its approach to open world design and exploration. How it evolves the combat of the Dark Souls series. Expansive lore partially contributed by famous writer George R. Martin. Being a pure example of how to make an open world game. It wasn’t the first to take the open ended approach, but it certainly did it the best. A culmination of From Software’s greatest ideas, and for a lot of people the peak of what soulslikes could be. Any attempts beyond that point or released around the same time would struggle. To be tossed aside for forgotten for trying to compete with a great one.

Steelrising was one of those attempts and it’s a shame. If it had waited another year to release & the developers spent that time adding more fulfilling content it probably would’ve been a great game. Instead it ended up being a decent game to most people. With mixed reception at launch, and currently sitting with a 7/10 on Steam. A rating that honestly makes sense having given the game another shot recently and spending the last few days slashing through it. I think this game is good, geuinely! There's some nice ideas here and gameplay wise it's fun. However, it's lacking some the spices that some of the best soulslike have that allow them to stand out. Once of which we'll even be bringing up as a nice compare and contrast. So today we’ll be talking about Steelrising and what it at least attempted to do. How Spiders could've honestly done more to make this one of the best soulslikes.

Story

The premise is that in an alternative universe, robots were invented during the late 1700s. Made to assist the people in day to day endeavors and protect in times of need. A majority of the robots though were controlled by political figures such as the king of France. What happened in France during the late 1700s dear readers and children? As ex-convict Jean Valjean from Les Miserables would go on to witness: the revolution. The first of many revolutions to take place in France, but I digress. Man I never watched or read Les Miserables. What does this have to do with the game or review? I don’t know…… Anyways, people started revolting against the king’s tyranny and cruel laws. The king then decided to command his robot servants and armies to fight back. These robots then went overkill, slaughtered hundreds, and turned the streets of France into basically No Man’s Land. Civilians hide in doors waiting until the civil war ends, but it continuously rages on. Political officials who do have the power to challenge the king have either been taken away or captured. The queen of France has been sent away for growing distrustful of her husband.

A few weeks pass and the queen alongside her close friend are sealed away with a garden home. Unable to see the chaos in the streets as luscious greens cloud their view. The queen wishes to stop her husband in whatever way she can, but is unable to due to so. She was given something before being sealed off. A humanoid robot designed to serve and obey her every command. Even though robots are made to serve and not develop cognitive thought she finds a loophole within the machine’s system. Telling the machine to revolt against the king and gather allies to help aid in the revolution, because she is the queen and this specific machine must do what she says. This machine’s name is Aegis, and she dutifully decides to carry out this plan. Fighting her way out of the garden, locating a wooden raft, and sailing towards the central street of Paris. Armed with a plethora of tools Aegis will cut down every monstrosity in her wake and change the future. 

Gameplay

This game is pretty much what you come to expect from a soulslike. Combat where every attack must be a dedication, stamina dictates how much you can do, and health is a vital resource rather than a representation of how many hits you got left. You have a flask to refill your health, which in this case is an oil can. However, you also have vials that can be looted off of certain enemies or purchased from shops. They function similarly to the blood vials from Bloodborne, but unlike that game you can carry a high amount of them like the life gems from Dark Souls 2. We’ll talk more about my grievances with this system, but Steelrising has a fair amount of consumables it wants you to test and utilize in the field. Enemies come in different forms bearing weapons and attacks of different speed. Dodge at the right time, because if not you’ll lose considerable pools of health. Attack, dodge, and eventually you’ll kill an enemy. Every time you slay an enemy they drop essences, the souls of this game. They can be spent at checkpoints to upgrade your stats, gear, and purchase items. Resting at a checkpoint also refills your health and oil cans, but it then respawns every enemy so consider whether you want to push forward or rest when all is wrong.

Just like Dark Souls there’s a corpse running mechanic. Dying while carrying any essence leads to dropping them. To get them back you must backtrack to where you died, but die again before retrieving them and they’re gone forever. Forcing the player to understand what killed them so they may learn and adapt to the world they’re in. What sets Steelrising apart from a majority of soulslike is its focus on traversal and gimmicks. The first few major bosses will reward you with traversal upgrades similar to a metroidvania. An air dash to cross gaps, grappling hook to zip to rooftops, and kick to knock down certain barricades. These can be quite useful not just in finding secrets, but also avoiding certain combat scenarios you may not want to deal with. As for your gimmicks you have an ability known as instant cooling. Inspired by Gears of War and Nioh, you can press a button upon running out of stamina to regenerate some if not all your stamina. If you don’t press it at the right time you gotta wait for stamina to regenerate like Dark Souls, but if you do then congrats. Sadly there’s a downside as instant cooling slightly builds up one of the game’s status afflictions that being frost. Build up too much frost and Aegis will be shortly stunned, and you especially don’t want this building up when fighting enemies with frost damage. Just keep your cool and you’ll manage your health well while out in the field. Yeah that’s pretty much all I have to say. It’s as simple as soulslikes get, but that can be a good thing. Let's just hope your robot hands can spark the revolt needed to change the world once more. 

Thoughts

Steelrising is a good game. I initially started this game last year, but bounced off as the opening hour wasn’t great. I decided to give it another chance recently and found myself becoming quite engaged. Not for the story, world, or riveting moments. That we’ll criticize shortly, but I kept on playing because Steelrising is just fun. Spiders understood what it meant to make a soulsike, and they put enough of a good spin on the Souls formula to not come off as another clone. Combat is fun, but as I said you may bounce off it at first. Attacks aren’t as silky smooth like a majority of modern soulslike. It’s clunky more so than the original Dark Souls and Demon’s Souls, and not in a good way. A huge chunk of this game is focused on combat. Being fast, reactive, and able to adapt to a problem that pops up at any given moment. You don’t want clunk controls when trying to make a combat focused game, but once you do get used to them it’s nice. Timing your attacks well, the satisfaction of them landing, and pressuring enemies enough to land critical blows. The instant cooling mechanic is fun to mess around similar to how ki-pulse is in Nioh. Allowing you to swing away endlessly or maintain combos through careful timing. One thing I did notice was that Steelrising puts a heavier incentivization on using consumables. Whether it be your vials or the many elemental grenades you pick up during your travels.

Afflictions you can receive can also be dealt to enemies. There’s even a stat called Alchemy that deals with elemental equipment. You can throw fire to burn, stop them with frost, slow all their movements with lightning, etc. Picking up more consumables is easy as every checkpoint has an item shop. Steelrising despite being clunky does give you a decent range of options to mess with. Level design is also surprisingly good despite not being as connected as Dark Souls. Most areas have to be traveled to rather than lead into each other, but the areas themselves are vast. Filled to the brim with loot if you’re willing to take the time to find it. Traversal upgrades like I stated are not just keys to move onward. They can help you find more secrets or alternative routes instead of having to deal with every single combat encounter. The game even contains a few platforming sections that force you to utilize these tools. Something I’m surprised more 3D soulslikes haven’t done aside from Another Crab’s Treasure. Even if you do get exploring these mazelike spaces the game gives you a compass at the start. Using it shows you where to go for both the main plot and side quests, which is nice. Steelrising is a very accessible soulslike and if someone wanted to get into this genre without being beaten over the head then this is a good start.

I have mad respect for Spiders making Steelrising as approachable as it is. Not every game needs to be hard and there are certainly soulslikes that have gone too far in terms of difficulty. Nioh 2 is often regarded as one of the genre’s best, but it’s one of few games I swore never to return to just after rolling credits. Steelrising is easy and that’s fine, but part of the reason why it’s so easy is due to how some mechanics and design choices are broken. I mentioned how elements are fun to mess around with and stuff enemies can inflict can be done back. Enemies struggle a ton, but for you it’s not really a problem. Fire is dealt with by dodging repeatedly, frost is dealt with mashing the dodge button, and shock isn’t really anything to be honest. Most of the time shock will wear off before you encounter an enemy to deal with. Instant cooling despite having the drawback of filling up the frost meter doesn’t do enough and is done quickly. On one hand here’s a little mechanic to mess around with. On the other hand there’s no punishment in spamming it. At least in Nioh you couldn’t regenerate all your stamina each time ki-pulse is used successfully. You have to keep track and know when to pull out of a combo string. I like how Steelrising has two ways of healing, but one of them was accounted for in a very poor manner.

When I wrote my Horizon Forbidden West critique back in 2022 there was a section that talked about how important health is in video games. I mentioned it briefly earlier on how health is not just a representation of how many hits you can take, but how much further you could potentially go. It’s why healing resources in Bloodborne, Dark Souls, and games of such are important. You must manage and consider when to down an item. Whether to push on through a level or to run back to a checkpoint. The risk being that enemies respawn and you gotta redo some progress. It is FromSoft’s way of throwing survival into an action RPG. A lot of that careful consideration is lost when you can carry an infinite amount of healing items. You can have five oil cans at max, but oil vials can be carried in high amounts. The game attempts to balance this out by letting the player purchase so much at a time. Forcing them to progress to buy more, but if you play well you never have to down so many.  It’s the Dark Souls 2 problem again where you got an infinite pocket of healing sh*t. It breaks so much of this game’s balancing and difficulty!

The game also just doesn’t have enough enemy variety, which oddly enough also contributes to the game’s easiness. It attempts to have some, but is just the bigger foes with different elemental afflictions. Which is not interesting, because it means this new version of the same enemy can be dealt with the same way. Their attacks are easy to understand, telegraph, you start killing them without ever getting hit or needing to down a vial each time. You want to know what’s worse. I did not die a single time against one of the major boss fights in this game. Partially due to infinite pockets of healing sh*t, and partially due to how every boss can be dealt the same way. Here’s a large arena, here’s a slow and easy attack pattern, and now dodge behind to slash away. Just like the enemy variety, the looks of the bosses aren’t varied enough either. Think about Bloodborne or Lies of P. How you could be thirty hours into the game and it still be throwing different dudes and designs at the player. I feel like I’m asking too much, because Spiders is a Double A studio and doesn't have the budget most developers have. Yet again, indie titles such as Nine Sols and Blasphemous have larger enemy variety. This is why I argued that Steelrising needed more time in development. More time to flesh out certain ideas and create more stuff.

The biggest comparison to Steelrising to me is not the series it took inspiration from, but another game going for a setting similar to it. We just mentioned it earlier, so give a round for Lies of P. Is this comparison fair seeing how Lies of P released a year after Steelrising? No, but what lets Lies of P stand out more is its setting and story. Both soulslikes follow a premise of robots going mad and one being tasked with stopping it. Where it differs is how the plot unravels and the way they handle their protagonists. Lies of P using its premise to explore the idea of what makes us human. Our protagonist is based on a dead man’s son, and it raises the question of whether this individual is their own person or simply just a replica. The morality of using clones to replace a person we care for, and if it tarnishes the memories we held with said person. There is also the reveal of the much greater evil beyond the mad puppets you’re trying to stop. Steelrising doesn’t have this, in fact it wastes its premise! The main character, Aegis, is powered by an individual, but said individual is alive. Aegis despite being a voice character doesn’t really grow or change as a person. She doesn’t emote or feel aside from one cutscene near the end, but the emotional payoff of said cutscene isn’t great as not much led into it for me. Most of what you do is receive a task from someone, go out, do said thing, and come back so you can be given another order. Lies of P avoids this by proposing multiple questions where the right choice often follows you going against your code. Disobeying orders and forming your own individuality. 

Not a lot of Steelrising is memorable. For a game whose premise is, “French Revolution but now there are robots,” it’s presented poorly. The supporting cast isn’t great as it’s all historical figures. All of whom have the exact same personalities and follow the role of, “I need you to do this.” All the locales despite being different look the same, have the same architecture, and blend together. Here’s a city street, natural life, a city street with a section containing natural life, and near the end you visit a fortress. Why am I complaining about this even though the core gameplay is good enough? Yahtzee Croshaw made a statement last year that with time I have come to agree with even more. It’s the argument of why story matters in video games, and the people who dismiss it are disrespectful of art. “No one says the story doesn’t matter in games if the story is good.” It’s what leads to a lot of games being more memorable even if the gameplay is just good enough.

Black Flag could’ve just been a good game for how it handles on the sea exploration and naval combat, but it’s elevated thanks to a fantastic story about self growth. Lies of P could have been a good enough soulslike, but it’s elevated thanks to its story about humanity and moving despite past regrets and grievances. Steelrising does not have any of this. It has a story about a humanoid robot who doesn’t do much to grow as a person, and the cast of characters there because it is cool to name drop a historical individual rather than develop them as characters. It’s forgettable. I don't want to sound unfair when I make argue this. I'm not saying every soulslike needs to be like Lies of P, or that it needs to constantly redefine a genre. Some games are good enough being their own thing. Some games have charm in having flaws, because you get to see where devs go from there. However, in this case it's a good idea that needed more time to bake. To fully flourish so it can stand tall. Which is not going to happen seeing how the developers shut down and Steelrising much like a majority of their previous work didn't sell or review well amongst most major media outlets.

My summary of Steelrising is that it’s good, but not fantastic. It would be a shame to call it mediocre or mid, but I definitely would not say it’s setting a new bar. There’s enough fun to be had with its combat and level design. I do think it’s worth picking up during a sale if you enjoy soulslike games much like myself. However, it’s not doing enough to make it one of the greats. If you haven’t played any of the other major genre entries such as Lies of P, Remnant, Ashen, or a large chunk of the 2D titles then I don’t see a reason why someone would choose Steelrising over them. It also lacks the content and replay value a lot of those other soulslikes have. Making it one of few recommendations I’ve made where I urge you to really think whether you want to play it or not. To say it one last time, shame Spiders shut down, because if they were still around I bet they could make a better soulslike. One containing the ideas they learned, but with a better story to follow along and refinements. In the end I am gonna have to give Steelrising an 8/10 for being enjoyable enough.

8/10, Enjoyable