Recent reviews by RyanRad

Sadly, I returned the game. I am no stranger to jank, I'm a big fan of all the original gothic games, the Elex games, even recently Ash and Steel. However I cannot forgive charging 70 bucks for a game that is very incomplete and needs another pass of QoL and UI development time. If this were a 25-30 dollar game I wouldn't have minded and happily played it. But frankly this game is not worth 70 dollars, I get better products from early access games for a quarter of the price!

Now don't get me wrong, I want this game to be good, and I do plan on getting it further down the road. But this game needs more time to cook, atleast another year of patches, if not more. I only got 3.5 hours in before returning but here's why I decided to return it:

-Already brought this up but 70 dollars is too steep for something that is effectively in early access or late beta. In a year or two maybe it'll be worth that.

-Controls are often-times awkward and unwieldy, can't tell you how many times I hit the wrong button when I meant to do something else.

-There are no options to change key-bindings, which is how I could fix the problem myself. (I played with controller)

-Inventory management is an utter nightmare, and while you can expand it by doing things, which I like, there is no where to store your huge amounts of needed mats for cooking/crafting/upgrading etc. You either can discard things or sell them, which some things you can't even outright sell until you do some other tasks I'm unaware of because I didn't get far enough.

-Picking up things is tedious, it requires a button press and hold, which is also your jump button, so be prepared to climb up adjacent boxes and vases while you try to loot coins or other miscellanious stuff. I think you can target and loot things, but that's tedious in it's own way. Picking up should be one button press not a hold, put hold for stealing.

-The menus and sub-menus are awkward, they also load slowly and in a delayed fashion. I sort of like the holding start to choose your menu, though still feels a bit clunky. Also why isn't the 'select' button the map? Same with run not being clicking in left stick but instead pounding the a button. woof.

Overall I think this will be a great open world game,.. eventually. I hope it does well enough so that they can continue working on it for at-least the next couple years. I look forward to playing it when it's in a more polished state. But for me? I'm returning it and will buy it for half the price in a year or two when the design decisions have been massaged.

Good game! The story is engaging and the character stories are interesting!

My only complaint is about halfway through even on harder difficulty it felt too easy. Sure it was hard at first but once I got a decent build online it became a bit face-roll. I was two shotting bosses the last 25% of the game.

Edit: I know I have a ton more hours but that's more a comment on my poor choices than the quality of the game. The game still feels empty and is abandon-ware in a way. I haven't spent a cent on the micro-transactions. Mostly I play it with my father who adores the game. There is definite depth in the crafting, but it is very grindy, even on the 'turbo server' where everything is x2. I've begun enjoying the grind a bit while I listen to audio book, but I still wouldn't recommend this to anyone.

I didn't even know about this game until they were giving it away for free. Looked pretty neat, I'm into these isometric survival runescape-esque games that aren't Runescape, haha.

I really wanted to like this game. I think they have good bones here for something great, but it's just a mess when it comes to camera angles, world building, and content. (or lack thereof)

The best part of this game is the gathering and tech'ing up. I feel like that's the one really GREAT thing about this game. It was almost enough to keep me playing - but alas, there's nothing of substance to strive for, so I petered out eventually.

It really feels like an unfinished game. Graphics I don't care about, but the horrid birds eye camera angle you can't move down at all to see in front of you is just abyssmal. I played a 2x server, so I can't even imagine how slow it is on a vanilla. Well half as slow I guess, but it was already slow on 2x, haha.

Anyways, this game is pretty empty besides the steller gathering/crafting/techning they have. I'd go play cursebreaker if I were you. I don't think it's really worth anyone's time unless you're really just into the gathering and crafting with really no goal besides that.

I love Of Ash and Steel, warts and all! It's very much a Gothic-type game, if you were a fan of Gothic 1 and 2 and Risen 1, you'll absolutely love this game. This game oozes atmosphere and personality, something you will never find in the washed out realm of the AAA RPG scene. And it's only 30 bucks! (at release) That is a steal for the amount of content in this game!

That said, now that I've finished the game, I have to admit that despite my love for this game, it needs A LOT of work. I have a lot of tolerance for jank and bugginess, especially for this type of RPG. (gothic-like?) However, as you progress through this game the wheels really start to fall off. While it is possible to finish the main quest and finish the game, there is A LOT of running around and back-tracking, and if you're like me and you frontload a lot of your exploration, it is a bit unfun - I had to force myself to finish this game despite the slog at the end.

That said, I still recommend this game for it's potential, and also, despite all the issues, this game is well worth the $30 price tag. It is very clear that the devs are very passionate for their game and the genre. The game is chalk full of general gaming references and Gothic fan service. I'm in full confidence that this game will only get better with time, and I've already gotten more than my money's worth of fun out of this game. While I understand people's frustrations, this is still an amazing game made with love and care, just needs some work.

But on to what's great about the game: (I won't bore you with the negatives, plenty of that in other reviews!)

-Exploration is fun and rewarding, constantly finding either easter eggs, loot, buried treasure etc.
-You start off weak but slowly grow your skills, stats, and equipment becoming a formidable fighter over time
-Lots of build diversity when it comes to weapon choice
-Great parry/dodge/counter system
-Combat system is pretty good, you're supposed to be bad at combat at the start. I love gradually getting better.
-Playing at a harder difficulty rewards you with 20% more xp - I've always felt that games should give some sort of in game incentive for playing on a harder difficulty and this is it!
-Lots of crafting - making your own legendary melee weapon is very cool and the system for it is neat! (if not a bit bare bones)
-The world feels lived in - with a wide variety of characters and quests
-Money remains important throughout the journey! This is not the case for a lot of RPGs.
-You can mug everyone, just like Gothic! haha

Fun game with fun vibes. I'd still recommend it, but this game feels a bit rough for something not tagged as early access. It very much feels like an EA game, I hope the devs continue developing this game and improving it.

Pros:
-Overall good vibes
-Stardew like farm building/planting/etc - I liked that watering my plants wasn't very necessary
-The world is fun to explore and it is rewarding!
-Looting and upgrading is fun

Cons:
-Buggy in some spots, I played on steam deck which was mostly fine, but opening the menu was glitchy
-The social aspect is so bare bones that it may as well not be in - luckily I was there for combat
-Combat could use some work, it's very non engaging, I just heavy attacked stuff at range and could take anything if I was patient enough.
-Item/Weapon variety needed
-Archery is.... difficult and unwieldy, I never used it for combat and hitting a rabbit is a stroke of luck haha
-I never beat the game, because the main quest is gated by collections (think stardew school house collections) and it wanted 3 Lobsters and boy howdy I spent 30 min fishing and didn't find one lobster. Kinda dropped the game from there.

It sounds like I have more cons than pros, and that's true but I think this game has a ton of potential! I'll be back to it in a year.

Great game, hidden gem made by a smaller dev, but definitely feels triple AAA, that's good and bad.

Pros:
-Many reviews say the combat is bad, I fully disagree and maybe they should play on a harder difficulty if they find it boring. There's gear and skill builds to make some very powerful combinations, and the switch between Ghost powers and Melee is pretty fun.
-The game looks beautiful
-Story is top notch, I was very invested in the main story and the characters. That's rare nowadays.
-Very polished from beginning to end

Cons:
-Many complain about time wasting traversal, and I agree. At first I dismissed these concerns but if you're one that likes to pursue all the side content, it does become a bore, and I did find myself towards the end getting very impatient with the overuse of shimmying through crevices/cliffs, climbing ropes, jumping slowly down ledges and riding/waiting on slow elevators/lifts.

-I feel this could have been easily solved by unlocking ghost traversal options to speed it up. Like warping up and down ledges/ladders. Or through crevices.

-While it's a beautiful world, in combination with traversal you can only fast travel to and from Rest fires. I truly wish they'd at-least given the option to warp to rest fires from the map. Combining this limitation with the overdone traversal was pretty rough on my well worn parental patience.

Overall though great game and a steal on sale. Specially if you're craving an excellent game story.

Good game, fun multiplayer Hades-like. Def got my moneys worth. I'd say it's more fun with friend(s). Single player, meh, maybe for a bit.

There's a ton of balancing issues. Especially as you go up the difficulties, you start to realize that the only way you'll clear is by going stagger/stun build. The rest of the blessings just aren't good enough. Definite balance issue with blessings that needs to be addressed.

There's also a distinct lack of biomes/mob diversity/boss diversity.

Basically the end game comes down to only being able to use certain weapons with certain blessings, not every build is viable, honestly only one build becomes viable, stagger.

Was a fun little jaunt. The game has some very interesting mechanics and reminds me of my childhood in the 90's opening up secret walls and finding fun loot! The combat is laughably simple and easy and the leveling is very bare bones, but it's a unique game and worth the small time commitment to play it!

Game fun, specially with friends.

Very neat game, but like many others have pointed out the end game is seriously lacking . I still had fun with it, it was fun to design my own medieval village and exploring was fun. However, you will quickly realize that there's little point to 'teching up' as there is no real goal in the end game.

There are bandits but they are few and far between until later years. Those are fun and give you a little bit of reason to tech up, but it's really something you have to go out of your way to engage with. It's random if the map generates a bandit camp in the wilderness as you move around the map.

I believe with some end game goals and fun combat encounters, or village invasions etc, would really give it a more goal oriented feel for the end game. This game has a good base game, but really needs more goals for longer games.

Still had a lot of fun with it, just wish there was more to it!