Developer Heart Machine’s first title, Hyper Light Drifter, was a solid debut that took the trappings of an early 2D Legend of Zelda game and layered in a beautiful pixelated aesthetic and simple yet satisfying combat system. Solar Ash, the team’s second game, is radically different, keeping an inherently alluring visual style, but taking place in a small, 3D semi-open world. However, unlike the studio’s last game, Solar Ash lacks any sort of mechanical complexity or narrative hooks and is a thoroughly unfulfilling and hollow experience.

Read the full review here:
https://www.comingsoon.net/games/reviews/1203819-solar-ash-review-ps5

An ambitious, janky, beautiful, frustrating game. When the movement works, it feels marvelous, gliding through levels with a gripping sense of momentum, pausing time and cracking heads as you go. But you can lose that momentum just by hitting a corner of geometry wrong, and the game stumbles in similar ways. Enemies quickly become a matter of just trying to guess when you're in the radius that a grapple autokill will work, and exploration turns into trying to figure out mapless exactly which cloudy enclave you might have left unviewed.

The bosses are the worst part by far. They ask the player to navigate between waypoints at a breakneck pace, which could be exciting if it were less repetitive and failures felt earned. But instead, any hiccup of geometry dooms a run and pushes the player out to scavenge up another shield box and try again.

Very solid follow-up for Heart Machine. Not quite as profound and mesmerizing as Hyper Light Drifter, but a very good dip into 3D games for them. The "minimal semi-open world puzzle-action game" genre that Solar Ash and other games such as 'The Pathless' fall into is one that I can really get with as a more relaxing, simple experience in between longer more demanding games. Solar Ash is an enjoyable, ethereal ride through a beautiful and broken world that I can comfortably say lived up to what I was hoping for in this game.

8/10

A la sombra de la sombra del Coloso.

Pros:
- Su movimiento es ágil y preciso, aportando un enorme dinamismo.
- Su apartado gráfico, sin ser de sobresaliente, es de una originalidad y calidad bastante notables.
- No llega al punto de hacerse pesado pese a su cierta repetitividad gracias a su ajustada duración.

Contras:
- Cuando tu referente es un juego tan memorable como "Shadow of the Colussus", resulta complicado que el peso de su figura no acabe aplastándote.
- No hay apenas variaciones en el gameplay a lo largo del juego, pecando en todo momento de simplista.
- No consigue crear una narración que se siga con interés, y se queda en un punto medio en el que intenta abarcar muchoquedándose demasiado corto.

It's fine, I guess.

But you're better off just playing Hyper Light Drifter.

Or replaying Hyper Light Drifter.

The speedy, rail-grinding and double jumping gameplay of Solar Ash kept me glued to the TV from start to end. With each area climaxing with a huge boss, I was constantly awed by the scale, the score and visuals of this game. The main downsides include performance issues (a lot of frame drops on PS5), wonky camera (This can create frustration with certain bosses as you can't easily see the next needle) and the (in my opinion) unnecessary voice acting. I'm continually amazed by the unique game Heart Machine creates and cannot wait to see the next one.

This is definitely carried by an innate pleasure derived from the movement in this game and the stellar audio-visual experience, offering beautiful set pieces and surprisingly varied environments to skate through. What drags this game down though is first, an extremely shallow mechanical depth, offering the same experience throughout the game from the first minute. There are aspects of mastery, but not to a degree that reached a meaningful enhancement of the experience. I wish they leaned into the momentum of the movement way more heavily, allowing for emergent gameplay to happen where it already naturally feels like it could be there, just bubbling under the surface. The main collectibles in this are one of the weirdest systems I have ever seen in a game. It is a generic red substance in form of blobs or crystals found all over the place. It has one use: To upgrade your health bar. The problem: You can easily upgrade your health bar to the maximum before even fighting the first boss, after which you will lose one health upgrade, which you can just as easily rebuy again without any meaningful engagement or choice happening in the process. Either go all in: Remove all health upgrades at a boss and make it really useful to have them for the fights creating a decision for the player or just offer any kind of alternative, be it cosmetics. The current system adds to the overall feeling of the gameplay and systems not fully supporting the vision of the visuals, sound and story. I still immensely enjoyed my experience with Solar Ash, though and loved finding all the secret stashes and just being in this world.

A brilliant follow up to Hyper Light Drifter, one of my favourite games of all time. Solar Ash brings the beautiful worldbuilding, surreal score, and melancholy tone that Heart Machine is so good at into a 3D-world with one of the most fluid movement mechanics I've played since...Prototype on PS3? I guess? The scope and scale of this world is ridiculous - It's never felt so good to feel so small.

This game is the perfect combination of Hyper Light Drifter, Shadow of the Colossus, and Sunset Overdrive.
Highly recommended!

Some thoughts
-The overworld platforming challenges range from ok to pretty good but all the bosses are an absolute blast and really carry this gameplay wise.

-Rei is great but holy fuck please stop her from thinking out loud in the overworld that shit sucks.

-OST has some incredible orchestral accompaniment that really elevates it during the boss fights and the overworld tunes are all very very nice too.

- I love the art direction a lot in this game and really think heart machine nailed the transition to 3d

- the movement and control is actually just on another level of smooth, huge fan

Held off on this one for a while despite absolutely adoring the directors last game Hyper Light Drifter, but what comes with this graphical leap forward is met with a mechanical and conceptual step back.

Solar Ash released to somewhat mixed reception but got consistent credit and praise for it's bosses, and although they can sometimes offer a breathtaking spectacle, a spectacle is all they are; I'd struggle to call any of them truly great. The bosses, and the game as a whole really, all suffer from repetitive connect the dots combat. You'll be playing as Rei, the galaxy's most aggressive acupuncture specialist, and the brunt of the gameplay revolves around finding red weakspots across huge masses of black goo. If you think this sounds boring, well... too bad! That's the game!

Skating across the sunken clouds of a pastel coloured, shattered world can sometimes feel a touch euphoric but again it needed to be backed up with more compelling gameplay and exploration that's rewarded with more than just currency and the odd, equally uninteresting text file. There was potential here but Solar Ash feels destined to be forgotten, with no hope of joining the high ranks of indie game masterclasses along with Hyper Light Drifter. Solar Ash feels more like an experiment of aesthetics and movement, hopefully for something greater down the line. Maybe Hyper Light Breaker will impress more.

It's a shame this released a year after 2020's Haven too, its had the same cloud skating traversal but paired with a much more compelling plot, nuanced characters, and a whirlwind romance that felt absorbing. The soundtrack too, much better. Speaking of Solar Ash's OST, man... it's no Disasterpeace that's for sure! Throw on your favourite Tangerine Dream album for some more appropriate otherworldly ambient synth because what you get in the game feels bland and sterile.

Don't let the score fool you though, a 6/10 is still a 'good' in my books. No matter if it's tilting towards mediocrity. If you've seen gameplay and thought "that looks cool" like I did then hey, give it a shot!