I don’t normally like a Soulslike game. I can appreciate them, I can fall in love with the artistry behind them, but this is a subgenre of gaming that feels like a slap in the face to what gaming is supposed to be. You look at video games as the best form of escapism, and within that mix, a Soulslike (badly designed ones anyway) can be a dismal and frustrating process. Despite that, Steelrising, from developer Spiders and publisher Nacon, is the first time that I’ve actually enjoyed the dance of death that is a Soulslike – thanks purely to a few simple sliders.
Our full review is in the works for Steelrising, a French revolutions per minute alternate history take, in which the French monarch of the time has gone a tad mad with power and has decided to unleash his army of automata killing machines upon the populace, resulting in some clockwork carnage. As Aegis, bodyguard to queen Marie-Antoinette, it’s up to you to get to the bottom of the Robot-Spierre madness before it’s too late, and find a way to stop all the mechanized 18th Century madness.
Headed into Steelrising, I had that immediate dread that this would be another case of Eurojank gameplay attempting to imitate the most beloved examples of fan-favourite Soulslikes. I really, really, didn’t want to play another Dolmen. So consider my surprise then, to find that Steelrising doesn’t just look great, it feels fantastic as well.
There’s no denying that Steelrising pinches a liberal amount of inspiration from the From Software playbook, with combat featuring a distinct flavour of Bloodborne mixed with Sekiro. You’ve got enemies that will brutally knock you down a few pegs, fast-paced counter-offensives to weave into your automated aggression, and delightful parries that can soften foes up so that you can land a killing blow.
The gameplay in Steelrising feels incredibly well-honed, polished, and smooth to dive into while exploring a version of Paris that has been ransacked by a swarm of war machines. Where Steelrising developer Spiders makes a huge leap forward in this genre, however, is by offering players a mix of options to help tailor the experience to their particular needs. This opens the game up to more than just a particular crowd of hardcore masochists.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with wanting a challenge, and if that’s your cup of tea, more power to you. But every single time a Soulslike fan has told me that their game has gotten better because they spent 87 hours memorizing every single frame in a boss fight while painstakingly researching the most optimal route through a dungeon, I feel like my eyes will achieve escape velocity from the sheer speed at which I roll them into the back of my head.
With the options available in Steelrising, you can tailor the gameplay to be traditionally brutal… or you can go to the other extreme and run around in what is essentially robot god-mode. There’s leeway to have an element of danger where you still need to carefully consider every move that you make, but you’re also free to hit those sliders and dive headfirst into a battle without having to worry about your health bar being depleted.
Some of you might be scoffing at this – scoffing to the max even – but this is genius feature. The one problem that I have with Soulslikes is that they seldom have options to ease players into their systems, with a learning curve steeper than the profile of the Empire State building, and the fact they’re about as forgiving as the traffic cop who administered your driving license test. If you want to have a lethally difficult game where you have to come up with strategic attacks on the fly while skillfully countering enemies, great! That’s your decision to make.
But if you also want to get to grips with the Soulslike genre, learn its systems at your own pace, and gradually increase the challenge, even better. The fair compromise made here with Steelrising is that using its accessibility features will prevent you from earning some Trophies and Achievements. A completely reasonable trade-off, and one that subtly pushes you to tackle the game with fewer training wheels attached.
Having that agency to play the game how you choose to approach it, makes it wonderfully accessible. It turns Steelrising into a title that I don’t dread to play; that I actually look forward to booting up just so that I can savour the sights and sounds of old Paris. I mean sure, all the corpses and rampaging robots kind of ruin the tourism scene, but it’s a small price to pay when you want to revel in opulent architecture from a bygone era.
We’ll have more to say about Steelrising as we dive deeper into Paris, but for now, Steelrising is off to a fantastically strong start. It won’t topple Elden Ring from its Game of the Year contender perch, but there’s no shame in taking the silver medal this year. If you’ve been looking to try a terrific Soulslike that oozes atmosphere, has a fantastic combat system, and imaginative bosses to duel – and actually invites in more players to sample its artistry! – don’t sleep on Steelrising.
Steelrising is out tomorrow, 8 September for PC, plus next-gen Xbox and PS consoles.