Steelrising is Spiders' most impressive effort yet. I was skeptical of their ability to push themselves into creating a true soulslike game, but Steelrising delivers. There is quite a bit of jank and budget here, but I liked this game a lot.
The gameplay is fairly standard action RPG combat that is responsive, but can feel a bit loose at times. Defense has an emphasis on dodging and the game is very permissive here, with generous iframes and stamina usage. I used a fast, dual-wielding elemental build and found the difficulty to be essentially negligible for the whole game, which is fine -- I am not playing a Spiders game for the extreme challenge and, to be honest, I don't know if their mechanics can really deliver.
Combat centered around elemental effects for me (I think other builds would be straight damage or poise breaking), and each of them has a unique effect that is fun to try to play around and stack (though ice is just overpowered). Enemy resistances also have a big impact on which you can lean on, so type matching can keep things a bit interesting even when the lack of enemy variety becomes apparent.
There is a cool mechanic that lets you hit a button when you run completely out of stamina to gain it back instantly, a bit like a perfect reload in Gears of War. It puts a stacking debuff on you, but if you play well it can allow you to have near infinite stamina, which feels satisfying and effective. A weird bug where sometimes it gets in a state where you can't regen and can't trigger the recovery does sour it a bit, unfortunately.
This game is the best playing of Spiders games thus far and I was legitimately surprised by how much I enjoyed the gameplay. It is just expressive enough to be fun and not so punishing that the jank and inexactness of the mechanics feels bad.
Steelrising looks good. I don't think I like it visually quite as much as Greedfall and it definitely feels like there is less actual variety to the environments -- you will only ever see French cities, gardens, and some rural areas. They nail a certain level of oppressiveness here that matches the chaotic French Revolution setting very well. Steelrising doesn't shy away from the horror of the historic event even while injecting it with a weird clockwork army twist.
I really like the designs of the machines here, especially in contrast to the player character, Aegis. Enemy machines are mostly jangly weirdos who flop around, making their attacks initially feel very unpredictable and hard to deal with. Aegis (as a dancer) is fluid and lets you feel like you are literally dancing circles around enemies while you fight them. It is a cool take on this clockwork aesthetic that feels unique as compared to Steelrising's contemporaries.
As I mentioned earlier, there really aren't enough enemy types in the game, with many of them being reused with different elemental types. In general, the game content is just stretched too thin. This is pretty surprising, as I felt like Greedfall managed to make really good choices about how to use its content and didn't overstay its welcome quite as much as Steelrising manages to.
The story here is pretty wild and Spiders leans all the way into it. This is a retelling of the French Revolution (including all of the major historic players) but with Louis XVI using a clockwork army to enact his oppression on the people. Things get a bit weird with the members of Estates General speaking at length about liberty and politics and country while an army of automatons is killing everyone, but I am here for it. You make some choices about which factions to prop up that I am sure I would have understood if I knew anything about history. I went with Lafayette because he seems like a cool dude in Hamilton, but he is probably a fascist, so, you win some you lose some.
Spiders is a French studio and it is great to see them tackle their home turf like this. You can see the passion and lived experience in their capturing of the city of Paris and the general feel of the environments.
All the acting is fairly well done, despite the animation only delivering about 30% of the time (again, budget). There are a couple of standouts such as Nicolas Flamel, who is over the top in just the right way. I was also very impressed with Aegis as she (somewhat predictably) becomes less robotic over the course of the game and the acting choices are subtle and believable with a final performance that is super solid.
I liked Steelrising and am happy that it continues Spiders' general upward trend. I think the world and storytelling in Greedfall is a bit better, but the gameplay in Steelrising is much better than any of their previous games and I had a good time throughout!
The gameplay is fairly standard action RPG combat that is responsive, but can feel a bit loose at times. Defense has an emphasis on dodging and the game is very permissive here, with generous iframes and stamina usage. I used a fast, dual-wielding elemental build and found the difficulty to be essentially negligible for the whole game, which is fine -- I am not playing a Spiders game for the extreme challenge and, to be honest, I don't know if their mechanics can really deliver.
Combat centered around elemental effects for me (I think other builds would be straight damage or poise breaking), and each of them has a unique effect that is fun to try to play around and stack (though ice is just overpowered). Enemy resistances also have a big impact on which you can lean on, so type matching can keep things a bit interesting even when the lack of enemy variety becomes apparent.
There is a cool mechanic that lets you hit a button when you run completely out of stamina to gain it back instantly, a bit like a perfect reload in Gears of War. It puts a stacking debuff on you, but if you play well it can allow you to have near infinite stamina, which feels satisfying and effective. A weird bug where sometimes it gets in a state where you can't regen and can't trigger the recovery does sour it a bit, unfortunately.
This game is the best playing of Spiders games thus far and I was legitimately surprised by how much I enjoyed the gameplay. It is just expressive enough to be fun and not so punishing that the jank and inexactness of the mechanics feels bad.
Steelrising looks good. I don't think I like it visually quite as much as Greedfall and it definitely feels like there is less actual variety to the environments -- you will only ever see French cities, gardens, and some rural areas. They nail a certain level of oppressiveness here that matches the chaotic French Revolution setting very well. Steelrising doesn't shy away from the horror of the historic event even while injecting it with a weird clockwork army twist.
I really like the designs of the machines here, especially in contrast to the player character, Aegis. Enemy machines are mostly jangly weirdos who flop around, making their attacks initially feel very unpredictable and hard to deal with. Aegis (as a dancer) is fluid and lets you feel like you are literally dancing circles around enemies while you fight them. It is a cool take on this clockwork aesthetic that feels unique as compared to Steelrising's contemporaries.
As I mentioned earlier, there really aren't enough enemy types in the game, with many of them being reused with different elemental types. In general, the game content is just stretched too thin. This is pretty surprising, as I felt like Greedfall managed to make really good choices about how to use its content and didn't overstay its welcome quite as much as Steelrising manages to.
The story here is pretty wild and Spiders leans all the way into it. This is a retelling of the French Revolution (including all of the major historic players) but with Louis XVI using a clockwork army to enact his oppression on the people. Things get a bit weird with the members of Estates General speaking at length about liberty and politics and country while an army of automatons is killing everyone, but I am here for it. You make some choices about which factions to prop up that I am sure I would have understood if I knew anything about history. I went with Lafayette because he seems like a cool dude in Hamilton, but he is probably a fascist, so, you win some you lose some.
Spiders is a French studio and it is great to see them tackle their home turf like this. You can see the passion and lived experience in their capturing of the city of Paris and the general feel of the environments.
All the acting is fairly well done, despite the animation only delivering about 30% of the time (again, budget). There are a couple of standouts such as Nicolas Flamel, who is over the top in just the right way. I was also very impressed with Aegis as she (somewhat predictably) becomes less robotic over the course of the game and the acting choices are subtle and believable with a final performance that is super solid.
I liked Steelrising and am happy that it continues Spiders' general upward trend. I think the world and storytelling in Greedfall is a bit better, but the gameplay in Steelrising is much better than any of their previous games and I had a good time throughout!