4/5 ★ – DanteHR's review of Cronos: The New Dawn.

I had the opportunity to try one of the most anticipated Survival-Horror games of this year, which not only exceeded my expectations, but also made me appreciate Sci-Fi games even more. Developed and published by "Bloober Team", the studio that brought us last year a remake of a masterpiece from the "Silent Hill" series, namely the one with 2 in its name. I was very surprised to see that Bloober NOT only learned from the mistakes they had in the previous game, but managed to do the exact opposite, when it comes to level design, remaining an excellent choice. Indeed, the game started development at about the same time as "Silent Hill 2 Remake", but it was clear that the teams collaborated all the time and explored the basic ideas in making a must-play Survival-Horror game. As I have mentioned in other reviews, I am not a big fan of Sci-Fi, there were a few exceptions that made me love the respective piece of fiction, but 9 times out of 10, I end up disliking it. Well... Cronos managed to be the 10% exception and make me really like everything it has to offer, including the introduction, about which I want to mention 2-3 things. The game starts abruptly, explaining the main premise and the narrative elements revolving around the main character also called "The Traveler", who in turn revolves around the catastrophic event that changed humanity and brought creatures called "The Orphans" to the present, past and future. When it comes to gameplay, Cronos: The New Dawn managed to surpass many other games, at least in the combat part, where everything is done by the book and it is clear that the developers have worked on franchises with pedigree. The design choice that I noticed in combat was the heavy style of the main character, but also of the enemies, where each fighting zone requires an "above average" IQ level in order to organize yourself and not take major damage. In the first hours, I found it in bad taste that you don't have a dodge like in other games of this genre, but then I realized that it was very well thought out for the design. It clearly feels like our main character is carrying an armor that looks like it's made of lead, but also an entire arsenal of weapons and ammunition.. probably not everyone can reach the performance of Leon S. Kennedy, who can fall over despite carrying things that weigh over half a ton. Jokes aside, I was also mostly satisfied with the gunplay, where each weapon had to be loaded 2-3 seconds before hitting, just to place a "Charged Shot". However, when it comes to a classic Survival-Horror experience, Cronos: The New Dawn meets every requirement, being a game in which you struggle to find resources and the difficulty being very hard, I found it to be the most difficult game of this type in recent years, even surpassing Silent Hill F, which is classified by many people as a "Soulslike".. The puzzles, however, are very simple, usually non-existent, you just have to look for a handle or a capsule to open the respective area and get further. Enemy number 1 will always remain your inattention. The striking "Unreal Engine 5" also made its appearance in Cronos, where the level of fidelity was sensible, but the icing on the cake remains the artistic design. As we are all used to, most games in 2025 use a high level of fidelity, with a ton of "tools" that help you have a more realistic and beautiful experience. In most cases, I support this ideology of the developers, but.. the game cannot be "eye candy" without a department that thinks very well about the artistic vision. In Cronos, the visual style is Retro-Futuristic Horror, the action taking place in a distorted version of Poland, the country of which the studio is part. What I noticed in my playthrough was that the game has a lot of gloomy fog and the emphasis is placed on dense shadows. If it didn't have that fog, I could say it's a lost brother of the "Dead Space" series, another exceptional Survival-Horror franchise. As for the sound, I have nothing but praise to say, Bloober chose the right people who took care of the SFX. I think it was the first game of this type where the sound really scared me, throughout the game, I was terrified by the sounds that the creatures were making from the walls. The music, the same thing, I felt that the main inspiration was from "Stranger Things" being a kind of 90's Retro. One category that I didn't pay so much attention to was the story, and I feel that it's the only one that dragged the game down a bit, don't get me wrong, it's not bad at all, just mediocre, not having anything very special. The main premise of the game is an apocalyptic story where the world has been devastated by a mysterious event that has transformed people into monsters, the event called “The Change”. The main character, also called The Traveler (ND-3576), is a government agent called The Collective. The main mission is to dive into the past to extract “Essences” from certain people to find out the truth about the disasters that have happened. Just like in Silent Hill or Resident Evil, the action is divided into different areas, hospitals, caves, etc. With excellent gameplay, a superb soundtrack and an artistic style that reminds me of my childhood, Cronos: The New Dawn managed to deliver us a solid experience, without too many problems. However, in terms of story and personality, it fails to stay at the top, which is true, it also has a few “flaws”, bugs that make you restart the save and enemies that get stuck in walls. However, that doesn't make it a bad game, and I even recommend it to anyone looking for a new adventure in the "Survival-Horror" genre. 8/10 Made by DanteHR