3.5/5 ★ – Lord_Hazenberg's review of Steelrising.

I am a big fan of Spiders, and to see they developed a souls like immediately sparked my interest. Steelrising is new territory for this studio as they cut their teeth on western RPGs with solid games like; Bound By Flame, The Technomancer, & Greedfall. All of which I still need to properly finish. Most importantly, does Steelrising have the “feel” of a proper souls like? Sort of. Enemies will randomly decide whether or not to react to your hits, and dodge invincibility frames are minuscule. Everything seems to have too much health as well especially given how few enemy types you’ll encounter. The weapons however feel good to use, and the stamina gimmick can be useful once you figure out how it works. I do wish the game was more difficult. I died once throughout the entire game, and it was because I fell off a cliff while backtracking for a quest item. It’s very easy to cheese every single enemy & boss by getting behind them as none of them have a move to prevent players from abusing this. The story is okay. The game tries to utilize elements from the studios rpg roots with proper side quests & dialogue choices, but the implementation could have used some improvement. Sometimes a choice you’re making isn’t clear until after you’ve made it, and can lead to frustration with a game that constantly autosaves your progress. Technical elements are mostly good. Art style & animations especially look fantastic. Some character models look like they got into a bad argument with a beehive, but others aren’t too shabby. TLDR; Steelrising is a competent souls like from a developer whose experience is in a completely different genre. Not sure if the turn to souls like was a knee jerk publisher call after the hype of Elden Ring’s success, but I don’t believe so given the game shares more in common with Sekiro.