The Surge was the very first souls-like I played from beginning to end, and between some specific areas taking me hours to get through (Central Production B mainly) and a few bosses kicking my ass, 2020 me managed to finish it and felt nothing but frustration. Come two and a half years later and I've played all the From-made Souls games as well as The Surge's highly improved and better sequel and I feel confident in my skills in the genre. I decided on a whim to load this game up to see how much better I might be and what could still cause me trouble despite my skill improvement over time.
To start off I just want to talk about my two biggest issues with the game, namely exploration and combat encounters. Central Production B and the Nucleus are some of the most frustratingly designed areas I've gone through in a game. They try to recreate DS1-style interconnectivity within themselves but all it does is leave two frustratingly muddled areas where it's hard to tell where you are since everything looks the same. On top of that, I don't think there's a single enemy, boss, or encounter I found fun to take out. Most of the enemies are plain and boring but a few standouts (hammer and twin-rigged guys in CPB, crystal turret things in Nucleus) made me pissed off more times than I'd like to admit on this playthrough. The vast majority of my deaths came from enemies stunlocking me since it happens a ton. The bosses aren't interesting in the slightest to me, with most of them being waaaay too easy compared to the tedious journey to get to them. It's unfortunate to me that the two things this Souls-like does poor are my two favorite things about the genre.
Now for the good. The limb targeting system is insanely cool, it's a smart mechanic for taking out enemies while also making grinding not completely tedious. I found it most useful when facing robot enemies since it takes out their main way to cause you the most trouble, but getting a unique weapon and new gearsets from enemies by chopping them up is such a satisfying mechanic. It gets even better when you realize that every time you do a finisher and chop off an enemy's limb, the amount of scrap you get is multiplied further and further, with the more finishers done increasing the multiplier. When you have a build set up where your energy is constantly high so you can always do finishers, the combat can be really gratifying.
I think this game is okay. The Walk in the Park DLC is really fun, the park is well designed in terms of interconnectivity and the enemy encounters are mostly fair. I didn't enjoy the The Good, The Bad, and the Augmented DLC but if you end up liking the combat, it could be fun to play in short bursts. Overall I'd just say skip this one and play its sequel. Surge 2 does soooo much better and I remember having way fewer complaints by the end of the game than I did with this one. If you do play this game, one massive recommendation I'd give is to abuse the hell out of the sprint attack, especially with a one-handed weapon. The vast majority of enemies can't do shit to deal with it being spammed but those that can are typically slow enough where you can just time the attack. It's a shame this game isn't better, there's some things to like here, but your time is spent better elsewhere.
To start off I just want to talk about my two biggest issues with the game, namely exploration and combat encounters. Central Production B and the Nucleus are some of the most frustratingly designed areas I've gone through in a game. They try to recreate DS1-style interconnectivity within themselves but all it does is leave two frustratingly muddled areas where it's hard to tell where you are since everything looks the same. On top of that, I don't think there's a single enemy, boss, or encounter I found fun to take out. Most of the enemies are plain and boring but a few standouts (hammer and twin-rigged guys in CPB, crystal turret things in Nucleus) made me pissed off more times than I'd like to admit on this playthrough. The vast majority of my deaths came from enemies stunlocking me since it happens a ton. The bosses aren't interesting in the slightest to me, with most of them being waaaay too easy compared to the tedious journey to get to them. It's unfortunate to me that the two things this Souls-like does poor are my two favorite things about the genre.
Now for the good. The limb targeting system is insanely cool, it's a smart mechanic for taking out enemies while also making grinding not completely tedious. I found it most useful when facing robot enemies since it takes out their main way to cause you the most trouble, but getting a unique weapon and new gearsets from enemies by chopping them up is such a satisfying mechanic. It gets even better when you realize that every time you do a finisher and chop off an enemy's limb, the amount of scrap you get is multiplied further and further, with the more finishers done increasing the multiplier. When you have a build set up where your energy is constantly high so you can always do finishers, the combat can be really gratifying.
I think this game is okay. The Walk in the Park DLC is really fun, the park is well designed in terms of interconnectivity and the enemy encounters are mostly fair. I didn't enjoy the The Good, The Bad, and the Augmented DLC but if you end up liking the combat, it could be fun to play in short bursts. Overall I'd just say skip this one and play its sequel. Surge 2 does soooo much better and I remember having way fewer complaints by the end of the game than I did with this one. If you do play this game, one massive recommendation I'd give is to abuse the hell out of the sprint attack, especially with a one-handed weapon. The vast majority of enemies can't do shit to deal with it being spammed but those that can are typically slow enough where you can just time the attack. It's a shame this game isn't better, there's some things to like here, but your time is spent better elsewhere.