Skip to content
Steelrising from Spiders has finally release, and I have been interested in this since seeing the early footage.
Spiders are a smaller French developer, who previously released the rather good Greedfall – which I reviewed on PS4 – and have also now bought a copy for Xbox. They also put out underrated Mars: War Logs, The Technomancer & Of Orcs and Men, which introduced us to Styx the Assassin, who saw two games released by Cyanide.
So what we have with Steelrising is a game classed as a Souls-like title, much like Lords of the Fallen, The Surge, Mortal Shell and Nioh to name but a few. You have a crushing difficulty from the outset, and learn to overcome the challenges presented through death and trying again, until you succeed (I’m still stuck on the Fire Giant after all these months after reviewing Elden Ring!)
The setting is absolutely fascinating. Much like Assassins Creed Unity, Spiders have used the French Revolution as the backdrop, and the city of Paris once you leave the initial tutorial level. You will meet various people throughout the story, and side quests behind the revolution. King Louis has been massacring the French people with automatons. You play as Aegis, an automaton who is able to speak, and is the protector of Queen Marie Antoinette, who is being protected at Château de Saint-Cloud (read that as captive!). You are tasked with heading out to Paris and finding out what is going on, and stop what is happening round the city.
There are quite a few different customisation options for Aegis, and will be able to set her up to your liking with hair, face, metallic colours and so on. It is literally down to your personal taste. Once you have the look sorted, you will then pick a starting class. Two are heavy weapons, and the other two are light weapons, so you can pick a play-style that best suits to start out. Once you get going and explore the levels, you’ll find various weapons and new armour sets, then can change things up to your play-style, much like the Dark Souls games. You can also install mods that you will find or buy, which will change stats. These can be swapped out easily enough, as the game pauses when you go into your inventory. As an example, once you get to Paris, you’ll come across enemies with Fulmination weapons (electrical), so you can change a mod to give you better protection against that status effect. The same goes for the different clothing sets you come across. Each set has different stats, and are easily changed to better protect against enemy types.
The world layout has a lot more in common with Demon’s Souls, rather than the interconnected areas of Dark Souls. You will explore different areas and as you progress, unlocking three specific skills you will revisit earlier areas to access additional locations. There is a grappling hook for getting up onto the rooftops, a mid-air dash which allows you to travel forwards after jumping, and a ram for getting through walls and gates. You will receive these skills once you take out the Titan bosses that you encounter.
Combat is what you would expect from a Souls-like. Health and stamina bars with ranged, light and heavy attacks. There are no shields in this game to hide behind, though, so you have to dodge out the way of incoming attacks or parry them. The fighting style is kind of similar to how Bloodborne plays, which is no bad thing. When getting low on stamina, if you run out during attacks, you are limited to just standard movement for a few seconds, so have to be aware of the battle, and management is key. You can quick-replenish your stamina with cooling at the press of a button, which reminded me of the active reload on Gears of War!
Now, an interesting aspect with Steelrising is the accessibility to all gamers. As we all know, Souls-like games have the crushing difficulty to be endured and overcome as you learn enemy patterns and dodge/attack timing. Steelrising plays exactly like this, and will please fans of the From Software games. However, you have an Assist option, once in-game for players that are struggling, or even new players that would normally avoid games like this. This option allows you to set how much damage you receive when hit (0-100%), not losing your anima (souls, basically) upon death, faster stamina regeneration and easy cooling where it does it automatically. If you do activate Assist, it locks you out of New Game+ on your save, and you cannot get some of the achievements that are based around difficulty. This is no big thing, though, with regards to achievements, I am happy to say that this will entice new players to this style of action RPG. Activating Assists changes the ebb and flow of the game, if you are wanting something more like the Devil May Cry series. Of course, hardcore fans will want to endure and every battle will be a challenge, which is cool if that is your thing!
Visuals and sound are great for a smaller AA developer. I love the designs or the various automatons from the basic enemies with single handed weapons, the ball and chain enemies (Acolytes that were used in a church), and the larger enemies with powered-up abilities, followed by the huge Titans. Best way I can describe it is Clockwork Punk! The city, itself, is beautiful but desolate, with dead bodies strewn about the streets where the automatons have gone on the rampage to try and stop usurpers. Like I said at the beginning, it is a fascinating time period regardless, made even more interesting with the story and enemies.
I have loved every minute spent with Steelrising. The Assist mode is an excellent addition and shows that these tough as nail action RPGs can be for everyone, regardless of skill level. Visually, yeah, it can be a bit quirky with stiff animations, camera clipping and face animations that show little emotion, but it is a AA game from a great smaller developer. Just like I said in my Greedfall review, I have always had a soft spot for Spiders and the games they create, and with Steelrising they have done it again. They understand their player base and gamers in general, and how to draw people in to their stories.
A big thanks to our friends at Nacon and Spiders for supplying us with the review code.
Steelrising is out now on Xbox Series X, PS5 and PC.
Important info:
- Developer: Spiders
- Publisher: Nacon
- Players: Single-player
GRAPHICS
SOUND
GAMEPLAY
ENJOYMENT8
8
7.5
7.5OVERALL 7.5 
Retro at heart and lover of all things ’80s, especially the computers, the music and the awesome movies and TV shows! Crazy huge retro gaming collection spanning the ’80s and ’90s with hundreds of tapes, discs and carts for various machines on top of a 600+ strong Steam library that is ever-growing. No I am not a serial hoarder, just a dedicated retro gamer!