I don't like soulslike games. I saw somewhere that this was a soulslike game and I ignored it, played anyway. I didn't like it very much. I don't know if this is not the genre for me but even without much experience in this style of gameplay I still feel that this game is not that impressive in gameplay aspects. I was hooked by the style of the world and the characters and this didn't disappoint. I liked exploring the world, slowly discovering new areas, the mega dungeons were fun, except when I was dying repeatedly. The bosses were hard, especially the final boss, I got stuck and frustrated. I don't know, but I feel like this game would be awesome if it didn't have soulslike elements. Maybe they always imagined the game to be this way and I am asking too much.

This is the type of game that I really can't tell if the game is good and I am bad or if the game is bad as well. Shouldn't had played it as one of my first soulslike games, that's for sure. Gonna try the classics next to see if I can get used to it, because I know that there are some great games in this genre, otherwise it wouldn't be loved by so many people.

This starts off great. A nice little action rpg that feels like it blends Dark Souls and Zelda, having quite a chill atmosphere. The expansion of your little base camp is nice to watch as it grows every time you have someone back, or progress the game. It's really good seeing how things improve.

But then I hit a wall after a few hours. It started to feel like a real slog and a grind. With a dungeon that seems endless, and there's no spawn point/shrines or whatever, and it's fucking infuriating if you get killed in a cheap way, like getting knocked off a narrow platform, then having to go all the way to the beginning again. Nah, get fucked. At least Dark Souls had bonfires on runs that long.

Otherwise, it's a really nice game to play, and I enjoyed exploring the world with my pal, and kicking in bad guys, rescuing folk, expanding the base. All good things, let down by a crappy big dungeon that I can't beat.

And then I started playing a better, and I was done with this for the time being.

Really, really wanted to like this more than I did. l adore Soulslikes and Ashen does a great amount of this things really well, which makes its major failures all the more heartbreaking.

Other than it being absolutely gorgeous and feeling great to play, I genuinely adore how progression is handled. Not having the ability to level up and instead getting stat bonuses from exploration or doing sidequests is an insanely fresh take on character progression (in this genre at least), and I really like that an AI companion accompanies you the whole way through (other Soulslikes like Code Vein do this but a lot less successfully imo). It’s a shame, then, that the five bosses in the game range from mediocre to downright abysmal, and it’s even more saddening that most of them are on the lower end of the spectrum. Similarly, the level design is middling. The open areas are fine but the two labyrinthian dungeons in the game are an absolute slog to get through.

Still, I’d say I enjoyed my time with Ashen, and I’m hoping the team gives the IP another shot.

I was there when they announced Ashen and I was intrigued.
I was there when it became an Epic Games Exclusive.
I was there when they released it on Steam at almost double the price you could get it on EGS, a year later.
And you know what? Not even at 6€ with a coupon on the latest EGS sale would this game still be worth your money.
At all.

Obviously, this game is not AAA, and I wasn't expecting perfection, but I was expecting a good video game. When I decided to buy the game I was aware the experience was around the 15h mark, and I was ok with it. Some games like Abzu, Inside, Journey, and Undertale are also made by small game studios and are even shorter, yet they manage to be consistent and most importantly, have well-thought-out ideas.

But what is Ashen?
A Soul-like that fails the genre and copies from it without really knowing why, where the game mechanics are just plain worse.

So let go in order.

You open Ashen and you get to create your character.
We already have a problem here. If you don't have a controller you better forget about rotating your character. The game SAYS you can, you can't. You'll get to really customize your character with lots of customization options: four, excluding gender.
You can change hair, beard, skin color, and hair color.
But I'll glide over this part, your character customization counts nothing in this game, more on that later.

In my case I was playing with a friend, so we proceeded to put in a password and disable AI companion to then spend an hour not understanding why we could not each other, and especially WHY DOES JOKELL KEEP COMING?! I disabled NPCs, didn't I?
OH, right: Ashen, with the thousands of customization options it has, doesn't show other players with their custom look, that would have been crazy! Players take the appearance of the NPC of your active quest. Even if said NPC is 2 meters tall and all animations are kinda screwed up.

Once we figured it out we started exploring the way too linear map.
The only option is forward, with no crossways or different paths. Just go straight ahead.

One of the signature gameplay mechanics of the game is climbing together, not that you'll ever need it since you could also just spam jump and eventually climb anyway.
You also get to NOT customize your character with armor and weapons.
Weapons are basically just perfectly balanced stat sticks, making one option the same as the other, even against the starting weapons. Do you want a 30% Critical Chance? Sure, there's an axe with that, and 30% less damage to counter it.
The same thing goes for the armor. If it gives 10% more good stats, it will have 10% more negative somewhere else.
A good thing about weapons, though is that they do have some pretty nice and unique movesets, although not many.
When it comes to armor, though. Welp~
Armors are full sets, you cannot do ANY fashion with them. They completely change your character too. You have long hair? Beard? Nope. The armor covers it off or changes it. There are just 2 sets in the whole game that keep your look under it, one of them is the starting set, and the other is from a boss.

Talking of bosses, the game has a single-digit count.
Not gonna say how much, but it's very close to the vote I'll give to this game.
Not that numbers matter, but you would think that with fewer bosses there would be better ideas, and it does seem like that until the final and the DLC boss. The fact that the last two bosses in the game can influence my opinion on boss design so much, says a lot.

Talking of the sorry excuse of a new map called "DLC": It adds a very mediocre Boss, some weapons which are all the same, so I'm not even gonna mention them, and 5 (!!!) armor sets.
The armor sets are the ones of NPCs you've already met.
No, not their armor, but a literal skin.

Let's talk of Loot.
Or, better, the lack thereof.
You're very quickly gonna stop caring about the items around the map, especially because of the lack of any variety in them.
It's, in order of map progression:
- Spear Head to craft stronger spears – very good, you can even throw them at bosses while walking backward to make every fights more trivial then they already are
- the equivalent of Titanite but you find them everywhere
- Scoria - aka Souls – bags

After a bit in the game, you're gonna unlock a storage box.
Even if you choose to store no consumables and only armor and weapons, you can't fit all of them. There's just not enough slots for them.

Talking of consumables, let’s talk of one of my favorite game mechanics.
Imagine.
You're in an hour-long no-checkpoints dungeon, you equipped the classic items on the quick slots, in this case, your "Estus", and the equivalent of a "Homeward Bone" to go back to a checkpoint.
Which you ask? The start of the game, so until you unlock Fast Travel that is NOT a good choice.
But back to the scene: you have the item equipped and when you want to heal, mistakenly, you use the "Homeward Bone" instead of your "Estus". What do you think happens? A prompt asking you if you REALLY wanna do it?
Nope. It just straight-up teleports you out of the dungeon.
To the start of the game, let's not forget.

You know how in souls games you get to recover your souls in case you die?
Well, that is also a mechanic in Ashen, but while Dark Souls leaves them in your latest safe spot, Ashen does not.
It just spawns them exactly where you died, even if that is in the middle of Lava.

But, it's not a big deal, as scoria matters only until half of the game, and after that losing it means nothing since you can only use it on upgrading weapons and the “Estus”.

There's one more thing you find around the map, and it's the
"Ashen Feathers". They increase your Stamina and Health.
Of 2 points.
This is not the progression system of the game, instead Stamina and Health increase by completing steps of side quests. A quest step gives around 15HP or Stamina.
More than 7 feathers are required to barely match the reward of one objective of any mission.

The game has a "Ring" system, having equipable runes with different effects. Some of them are broken, and most of them are just bad. Like a 5% increase in stamina, being called a GREAT upgrade, and even with max Stamina, it's 13.
Again, less than one step of any mission.

I do believe you show a lack of good game design when enemies deal a LOT of damage, but one "Estus" literally fills your health bar from 0 to MAX.

There's no logic in the way checkpoints are placed.
Sometimes they are too close, sometimes you don't get one for 2h in a failed attempt at Blighttown.

Last thing, but probably the most infuriating:
If you fall in water, you don't die. But you gotta get out of there quick.
If you fall in LAVA, you don't die, you can even heal. But you gotta get out of there quick.
If you fall in a PIT, YOU DIE™.

And, to me, when a game has a jump button, not a jump mechanic, it loses the option to kill me from a fall. Do you fall into a pit? Good, you respawn with less health. Would that be broken for Ashen? Then make me spawn near my companion who has to pick me up like during bosses, if that even works since sometimes even in a fight it does it doesn't.

But if you make an hour-long dungeon, in the dark, with platforming and you make me die for just a fall: that is frustratingly bad game design.

Conclusion

This game is mediocre at best and doesn't deserve your money.
The DLC is a 40m dungeon with a bad Boss at the end.
But overall the game was fun.
I do wonder if it was the game fun or the friend I played it with.
I'm leaning more toward the latter.

3/10, like the number of good bosses.

Played it with a friend online Coop.

It was the first soulslike for both of us and we greatly enjoyed it! Near the end it felt a bit unbalanced with upgrades, wepons and souls gaining, but maybe it is optimised for single playing.

It was challenging, we had tons of fun and had to figure strategy and tactics to complete some dungeons

Algumas vezes é melhor apenas aceitar que uns jogos não vão me divertir e seguir em frente.

Movimentação travada e lenta, inimigos que não parecem sentir os golpes e bugs e mais bugs de cenário.

A quem for encarar esse game: Boa Sorte!

We approach the cave exploring the nearby area. My friend and I swear over our headsets peering into the dark. Not because the absence of light produces the traditional primal instinct of fear, but because we know Ashen is about to be irritating through design.

I unhook my shield to carry the lantern, an item that only works when carried by hand rather than on a belt. It's a mystery why. I'm sure the developers thought the mechanic would provide a fun challenge. They are wrong. My friend proceeds as the vanguard with shield raised as I try to light the way. We progress slowly. Soon enough we stumble upon an enemy we called a wraith who raises her arms to do a charge attack. She dashes forward, I dodge to one side but her lock on tracks me mid jump and hits me anyway. The dodge is often useless.

Whilst pinned my friend comes to help hit her off me. A different enemy crawling along the cavern floor comes running from the darkness at him. His lock on fails for no reason leaving him flailing at the barely visible foe. He puts his shield away to bring his own lantern out hoping to set it on the ground to provide light. This allows the enemy to land the final blows with no defence and slow animations. He dies stumbling to his knees hoping for a chance I may revive him, the odds are slim. The wraith finishes her attack allowing my badly eviscerated character to get up. As this happens the camera spins at an angle leaving me confused as I am killed next to my friend frustrated. The lanterns go out.

There is only silence in the dark, but there is max brightness in the settings.