I’ve never played Returnal, so reviewing this game as a sequel isn’t something I can do. I think the last game I tried from Housemarque is Alienation. That title is still about shooting things, but it’s a completely different genre. However, what I do have an abundance of experience in are other rougelike third-person shooters. Risk of Rain 2 and Megabonk are probably at the top of that list. I also quickly recognized where the title in review, Saros, may have picked up its inspirations from. So I’ll be talking about this game while using these other games as context. Ideally, I should be able to do that while referencing Returnal to note the improvements from their last game, but well, I simply was not the one in charge of their game at that time. So instead of me saying that it’s a lot like their previous release, I’m going to say that Saros feels like if Touhou and Vanquish decided to meet up in Dead Space. I hope you can keep up with the references, so here we go.
This is probably the first game Housemarque came up with that’s very similar to their last release. To the point that we can consider this a sequel to it. It tells me that they have a lot of confidence behind what they made last time, and have new ideas they want to expand on going into this title. What I found was a game that decided to keep things simple in terms of how you can play it, but offers you to take risks, wants you to think on your feet, and is also very interested in repeatedly sending you back to the start at every chance it can get. You play as Arjun, who is part of a team trying to investigate what has become of the colonists sent before them, as communications have mysteriously stopped. Being the man capable of scouting ahead and fighting whatever’s out there, you forge forward.
Production (3.5 / 5)
Impressive is probably not what I would use to describe their visuals, but rather, consistent. I mean, we’ve seen this all before: detailed face sculpts, textures on suits that make them more interesting to look at, and lighting effects that help build the atmosphere. However, I enjoyed the fact that the frame rate never dropped and that the level of detail matched the environment they were in. Having things like shadows with respect to the sun and reflections on surfaces probably would have made the game too-busy looking. There’s already a lot going on when you start getting deeper into the game, so I commend their decision not to make the game too flashy as to keep it from getting distracting.
It’s actually a little hard to get distracted by the environment at all, considering all of them can be classified under “wide open wilderness” or “ruins of some sort.” And I’m not saying this as a strike against the game, it’s just that’s literally it. Their designs are meant to keep the battle readable but different enough to be discernible. They do function differently, which mixes the game up well enough, which I’ll cover later in this review.
Again, what they wanted to make sure of is that the gameplay you see in front of you is easy to read; this way, you can react to every situation accordingly. And this is probably why a lot of the environment and even enemy models are generally of a neutral color. They make up for this by making their silhouettes easy to read, and generally stay still when attacking. Their attacks, on the other hand, are very bright, with a shape that’s easy to see. You can tell what’s happening even at a distance, which is highly important when you’re attempting to kite a room full of monsters trying to take you down, and it doesn’t take much for that to happen.
For a third-person shooter, better sound design could have really helped out the experience. The AI’s behavior defaults to trying to get you surrounded and attacking you from your blind sides. Sure, there’s this mini-ring radar around Arjun that indicates threats are approaching around you, but looking at that space of the screen is one of the last places you’ll go to. I eventually got used to simply constantly moving around to keep all the enemies in roughly the same direction, which might have been the adaptation they had in mind. There’s also the mini-map that tells you where they are all the time, but again, it’s really at a place where I won’t care to look if I’m constantly fighting something else. Apart from that, the voice work is decent, but they really shine when you pick up audio logs as you explore the world. Where they share their thoughts and stories as you traverse the world they left behind.
Mechanics (4.5 / 5)
This is a straight-up run-and-gun game, where your best strategy is to always be moving during the open stages, but this can change when you finally reach the stage boss, where much more disciplined movement is rewarded.
So you can run, gun, and jump? What else? Well, you can take advantage of the ability to dash, which you can pretty much do anytime, so long as it’s off cooldown. This gives you a temporary window of invincibility to most projectiles. Alternatively, you can also choose to block them. You can produce a shield that’s kind of like Ikaruga or Giga-wing, where you can absorb a specific type of attack and turn that into your own weapon.
That weapon would be your “Power Weapon.” Put simply, it’s a spell you can cast. And you can generate mana for that spell by primarily absorbing enemy attacks with your shield. You’ll later find that there are other ways to charge your ability, but that’s how it starts.
And when you can guard, you can parry. This will be an ability you’ll unlock later, but it’s probably one of my favorite things to do against boss attacks. Since they throw so many balls at you, it starts looking like a Touhou game; throwing them back is just that satisfying. You’re dodging so much in this game, I think you can consider this part-platformer.
You eventually also gain a third type of attack, basically Arjun’s ultimate, which serves as a great damage burst. Generally, you only charge it by attacking enemies, much like Devil Trigger in Devil May Cry. It’s a bit dramatic, but it really does a lot of work for you, and it breaks the loop of kiting and shooting quite well, so it’s something I welcome completely.
As you progress through each stage, you’ll find upgrades either on the way or in optional areas easily indicated by the map. Artefacts are what you’ll find most of the time, giving you bonus stats and maybe a specific upgrade that maybe slows enemies when you hit them, or you regain a bit of life for every enemy you kill. Some of them might be quite strong, so you have to balance them out; they apply some penalties to other parts of Arjun’s kit. It could be taking more damage, having fewer lunite drops, having the dash ability have a longer cooldown, or something entirely different.
One thing that I wish were different from this game was the fact that you only held one weapon at a time. Each of them had its own strengths and weaknesses, so having a second one that covers the weaknesses of my primary weapon would have been nice.
Content (3.5 / 5)
To make your playthroughs worthwhile, Saros has a stat progression system that’s permanent. It doesn’t really give many interesting buffs, as most of it is just making your numbers go up. But it certainly plays a big role in making stages something you can finish. It looks like the sphere grid system, where, in general, you become tougher to kill, or you kill things faster. It has nodes like making your melee attack (which is also your parry) stronger, healing items can drop more often or are more effective, and other variants that generally point in the same direction.
To prevent power-levelling and making the game too easy from the start, future nodes are blocked off by boss nodes, and to unlock them, you need to beat the boss featured on them. Something I didn’t realize until I was on my third boss, thinking I was missing some key item.
Saros features 7 stages (or rather biomes) for you to fight in, which look different enough but aren’t that interesting to look at. But play quite differently, which to me matters a whole lot more. Some of them will feature jump pads that get you some instant verticality, or grappling points that let you zoom across the arena with ease. There’s a sort of zipline feature that gets unlocked later on. And finally, for the Miyazaki fans out there, poisonous swamps. Yes, it made it there, too. He would be proud. All of these gimmicks for every stage build up towards making a unique experience for every fight, allowing you to make these intense moments of outsmarting the horde that’s after you and quickly repositioning to safety, or even make use of them to chase down far-away targets that are causing you trouble. Like those snake things that shoot lasers that I hate so much.
To expand on these stages, there’s also a mechanic where, to unlock the rest of it, you’ll have to start an eclipse. Where enemies become harder, they start shooting out corrupted projectiles that reduce your maximum HP, and everyone seems just that much more into praising the sun.
What you fight is actually quite a healthy bestiary, where you can more or less classify them into fewer than 10 enemy types. But they also have variants as types who are shielded, become aces, and they also gain new attacks in the latter stages. Having their formations mix and match makes you employ different strategies, switches up your priorities, and makes me decide what to do every few seconds based on how I can kill them faster. In other words, it’s all pretty engaging.
To top them off, stage bosses are all very unique in what they do and how they challenge you. Initial ones are more about just testing out if you have indeed understood the basics of what you’re already supposed to know. While the latter ones test if you can actually handle what they have in store for you. So out of respect for those who want to encounter them completely fresh, I won’t really go into talking about them in detail. Just know that I liked all of them.
And what else makes me like fighting them better than the weapons I get to use against them? I’d say that each weapon does hold a unique identity, and even within those 5 main weapon types, they still have sub-types. Like a burst-fire handgun, or a disc launcher that loops the bullets back to the gun instead of constantly latching onto a target. Each of them employs a certain type of strategy, and does well in many situations but not so much in others. Let’s say you have a handgun that ricochets bullets to other enemies instantly. Sounds like a dream when fighting swarms, but quickly loses its charm when you’re fighting literally just one enemy in a boss room. For this reason, I’ve gravitated towards using the repeater crossbow and the assault rifle. And other weapons gain much less favor from me, even if the weapon level is a difference of 10.
Actually, it’s a bit hard to distinguish how strong a weapon is by level alone, but more on the augments it carries, which only increase every 10 levels. This becomes further vague by the Artefacts you carry, since you don’t get to bias towards a certain stat, they always gravitate to being a well-rounded build. So you won’t get to test the command power of say 50 vs 100 to see the difference.
So, what about the story? What’s the lore behind all these cryptic visions you get in the game? Are you fighting in what feels like another type of Dead Space deal? And well, no. In fact, nothing really became clear about what the whole civilization was about. Or at least, how it got to that point. The specifics of the review agreement prevents me from divulging too much on this, but I’m just going to say that there were a lot of loose threads left behind. It’s this part of the game that makes me think Saros was rushed out the gate to some extent.
Features (3.5 / 5)
Saros allows you to customize the difficulty of your game, from the rate of damage you deal and take to the type of projectiles you can zip through. However, it doesn’t want to make you overpowered for free. If you want to get something that will really change how the game plays out, it will demand that you balance it with something else. You get fewer upgrade drops, enemies become more aggressive, you suffer corruption faster, and more.
And yes, you can make the game easier, which lets you use these modifiers with almost no restrictions. And for the sake of being able to finish this game on time, I resorted to using it on the latter stages because, man, they’re hard. I mean, I could probably eventually beat them normally, but I also need to see how the game ends in time. So I’ll take the “skill issue” jab, thank you.
There’s also a post-game campaign that feels rather convoluted, given how little I cared about the story. It felt like an excuse to play a few stages again, which I would do anyway. Your upgrade tree should be far from finished by the time you get here, and some areas were previously unreachable because of abilities you could only gain by playing through the story. It might have been better for them to apply the world modifier restriction as a second playthrough, and simply add maybe another phase or win condition when encountering the same bosses a second time, like in Sifu. That would have made much more sense.
Conclusion
Saros is a simple game, really. Shoot everything down before they overwhelm you. But it’s in the simplicity of that goal that Housemarque was able to design creative ways of getting to it. Packing so many uses for shield, dodge, and parry. And stacking that with your movement gimmicks across maps, timed evenly with your bestiary getting stronger and more aggressive. The variation of weapons and spells you get to use also keeps the game interesting if you’re the type to explore what they have to offer.
I wish I could say the same for the story and characters, which simply revisit twists and turns that I’m actually all too familiar with, and made me itch for the skip button more often than I would like to admit. I was ready to hear more about how a civilization came to be, what caused them to have these weird powers, and what this could mean for the universe. But, they kinda just left a lot of that hanging. I was quite upset over this.
But if you take that part away, it’s a fun and simple game that figured out how to make the controls feel great, that made sure that every weapon deserved to be part of the game, and that Saros was the sort of game that was willing to meet us with challenges we wanted to take on. It’s a solid experience that had me playing until I realized I had been playing it for the better part of the day.
But I’m not so sure if I’d tag it at 70 USD. While the gameplay itself is polished, I think the content offerings feel a bit rushed. I think this could have used some sidequesting, Maybe a secret stage. I simply think it’s a little thin to be standing on the same level as Triple-A game prices. So I can maybe recommend this on a lower price point.
Saros does shine like the sun, but is unfortunately eclipsed by its price, scoring 3.5/5.
The game is available exclusively on the PlayStation 5.