Ashen

 PC
User Score
6.0

Mixed or average reviews- based on 224 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 111 out of 224
  2. Mixed: 40 out of 224
  3. Negative: 73 out of 224

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  1. Dubeau
    May 25, 2019
    4
    Ashen is hard because it's unfair and full of cheap deaths. I did love the story, the voices, the graphics. But the combat is horrible. You are suppose to get an AI companion. That's when it works, it get stuck near a wall or corner, stops walking or fighting. The armors are useless. You get a shield but it does almost nothing. The saving system is just awful. You have long and big dungeonAshen is hard because it's unfair and full of cheap deaths. I did love the story, the voices, the graphics. But the combat is horrible. You are suppose to get an AI companion. That's when it works, it get stuck near a wall or corner, stops walking or fighting. The armors are useless. You get a shield but it does almost nothing. The saving system is just awful. You have long and big dungeon with no saving point of any kinds. Let me tell you, it's easy to get kill in one of those. Even the lantern is causing an annoyance regarding fighting. I give it a 45%. The saving system could have soften the blow of some of the other issues in this game. But no, just a retrograde saving system.… Expand
  2. gfizzle
    Jan 11, 2021
    0
    Unless you have a friend to play this game with it is not worth it at all. The companion ai is downright broken. I wish i could use nastier words to describe just how pathetic the companion ai is and just how pathetic the programming behind it is. playing this game nearly 2 years after release you'd think the ai would have been fixed; it hasn't. And i don't know if this is a joke or notUnless you have a friend to play this game with it is not worth it at all. The companion ai is downright broken. I wish i could use nastier words to describe just how pathetic the companion ai is and just how pathetic the programming behind it is. playing this game nearly 2 years after release you'd think the ai would have been fixed; it hasn't. And i don't know if this is a joke or not but the dungeons are designed with lots of drops and you can bet with absolute certainty the ai will fall off at some point. Whether it's because you were fighting and it got hit and fell or that it fell due to it's own attack animation or that it fell because you tried running past the enemies because you knew it would fall off if you stayed to fight and instead of following you it decided "no this enemy has insulted me i must face it no matter what". The game is absolutely designed for 2 players. playing it alone makes it harder but not in a dark souls way just in an unfair overwhelmed by numerous large health pool enemies way. The game is dead now anyway because it's mediocre at best and despite balancing it for solo play or fixing the ai the developers twiddle their thumbs and sell a crappy game. You can most certainly finish the game on your own but if you have any self respect and value your own time you'll give this game a hard pass no matter how aesthetically pleasing it may look. The game gets a 0 for how much stupidity has gone into its design and the overwhelming lack of foresight on the developers behalf.… Expand
  3. MGee
    May 24, 2019
    4
    It's so uneven of an experience. The exploration is top-notch. The "dungeons" are all at least twice as long as they should be with some really crappy checkpointing. The difficulty is kept at a fairly low level until suddenly it's ramped up for a single fight, at which point it becomes a quiet, serene game again. I'm not sure Ashen knows what it wanted to be.
  4. Gamerjohn
    Dec 12, 2019
    0
    For a year old game it's quite buggy. I was expecting more considering the whole of taking the epic deal was to IMPROVE on the game's development. Paying full price and buggy AF game on GOG is disgusting.
  5. wandrinman
    Dec 28, 2018
    2
    This is essentially a Dark Souls knockoff done pretty well. However, I cannot recommend it in its current state. It's just too buggy.

    TL;DR: Dreadful AI and abominable camera make this a chore to play. Ashen is designed for co-op, and while the player base hasn't scaled up enough just yet to allow the co-op the developers envisioned, it should pose no problem due to the inclusion of    This is essentially a Dark Souls knockoff done pretty well. However, I cannot recommend it in its current state. It's just too buggy.

    TL;DR: Dreadful AI and abominable camera make this a chore to play.

    Ashen is designed for co-op, and while the player base hasn't scaled up enough just yet to allow the co-op the developers envisioned, it should pose no problem due to the inclusion of AI companions. However, the follower logic is utterly **** for brains. Succinctly, this game has some of the worst companion AI I've ever come across.

    In a game that's essentially about about scaling rock faces and fighting tough enemies, the last things I'd expect to see are my companion getting stuck behind an ankle-height surface; suiciding into deep water for no apparent reason; or just flat refusing to fight an enemy, instead standing motionless and blocking the only feasible escape. I've also found that, even with multiplayer disabled, AI companions frequently disappear altogether - sometimes in the middle of battle without having been killed. It's incredibly sloppy and a constant cause of deep frustration.

    Secondly, the camera's just woeful. Devs should've kept it simple. Despite having disabled all of the camera's gimmick settings, I find it constantly swinging through 180 degrees during a dodge, to face the enemy, and in the opposite direction from the intended direction of the dodge itself. Inexplicably, this also alters the direction of the dodge after the fact, as well as the screen coordinates. What's worse is that there's apparently no trick or technique to get around this illogical and involuntary pivot, which sees experienced players of Souls-like games rolling towards assailants due to buggy camerawork, or fatally off ledges in an attempt to pivot manually to surmount it in tight spaces.

    The game is visually impressive and sounds great. The story and mechanics are generally fine, but are nothing groundbreaking. As other reviewers have pointed out, the crafting feels overly-simplistic; the selection of weapons & armours limited, and made more so by similar movesets across many weapons; and there is no character building whatsoever. It seems strange to omit something so pivotal to roleplaying games - but the general breadth & depth of Ashen both feel greatly reduced in relation to its competition.

    Although fairly deep in, I haven't yet finished the game, and I'm not sure that I will, either, should those bugs persist - or, worse, be fully intentional. The AI & camera issues are game-breakers, for me, and my overall opinion is that Ashen shouldn't have passed quality assurance ahead of release with good conscience.    … Expand
  6. Broyax
    Dec 17, 2018
    0
    L'indé du jour est un bricolage inspiré des Dark qui soûlent, les infamies sado-masos complètement pétées (de saké) bien connues... sauf qu'ici, "fraîcheur" indé oblige, c'est en 4 couleurs dont du gris et du marron... et les personnages (?) n'ont pas de visage ! c'est un "nouveau" concept. Un con-cept. Avec bien entendu la pettie musique d'ascenseur qui va pas bien.

    Les personnes    L'indé du jour est un bricolage inspiré des Dark qui soûlent, les infamies sado-masos complètement pétées (de saké) bien connues... sauf qu'ici, "fraîcheur" indé oblige, c'est en 4 couleurs dont du gris et du marron... et les personnages (?) n'ont pas de visage ! c'est un "nouveau" concept. Un con-cept. Avec bien entendu la pettie musique d'ascenseur qui va pas bien.

    Les personnes sensibles et naïves trouveront certanement de la poésie dans ce petit monde de lumière blafarde face aux méchantes ténèbres (quelle originalité, dites-moi !) et la même non-jouabilité des combats avec barre d'endurance vidée en 3 coups, roulades qui vident la barre d'dndurance en 3 fois et coups des ennemis qui vident la barre de vie en 3 coups de cuiller à pot.

    On a -attention- un coéquipier pour nous aider que l'on doit ressusciter parce qu'il est trop con et qui reste aussi bloqué régulièrement à tel ou tel endroit parce qu'il est encore trop con... pour nous suivre. J'ai aussi vu l'un des ennemis à capuche qui restait invulnérable avec à peine un dixième de ses points de vie... voilà qui promet ! Et voilà donc surtout un étron de plus à rajouter à la longue liste (interminable) des étrons indés qui sentent très fort.    … Expand
  7. Sal
    Dec 8, 2018
    3
    An average soulslike, thats only stand out due is a unique aesthetic. If you are looking for a new soulslike, hit up The Surge, Nioh and Lords of the Fallen before this.
  8. Kleptomacer
    Oct 5, 2019
    0
    **** clone of dark souls and egs exclusive on top of that. avoid at all costs
  9. BadCaptain
    Jun 15, 2019
    3
    The game was easy before mission "listener's heart". I wasted around 5 hours on this mission and didnt beated. I quited the game. Mission is simply dumb: 10 min of easy mobs, then mobs who oneshot you, no checkpoints. Just restart time after time. This mission also hightly depends on you retarded AI teammate. AI sometimes not even appears, sometimes it dies, sometimes it just taking aggro,The game was easy before mission "listener's heart". I wasted around 5 hours on this mission and didnt beated. I quited the game. Mission is simply dumb: 10 min of easy mobs, then mobs who oneshot you, no checkpoints. Just restart time after time. This mission also hightly depends on you retarded AI teammate. AI sometimes not even appears, sometimes it dies, sometimes it just taking aggro, sometimes it falling down from the cliff. Hated the expirience and strongly not recommend this game cause of this only mission. What lies ahead? Who knows?

    PS. watched youtube video, found shortcut for this mission, reinstalled the game. Passed mission on second try. Now almost beated the game. Game was easy again until second last boss. Took me a few tries to beat    … Expand
  10. Tito256
    Jan 12, 2019
    1
    Anyone who rates this above a 6 has not played past the first three areas of the game.
  11. hoanns
    Jun 6, 2020
    4
    I played 2h. The world feels empty and underdeveloped. No real plot. You always have to manually lock onto enemies or you miss. The only outstanding thing is the art direction.
  12. winterstorme
    Dec 10, 2021
    3
    Of the 10+ "soulslike" games I've played this has to be the least fun. It's just a big open (mostly empty) map filled with the same 3 enemies or enemies that look different but do the same things. You'll spend most of your time doing "fetch quests" or going from marker to marker on a map. The combat is a clone of Dark Souls, but with a lot of mechanics removed and nothing added to replaceOf the 10+ "soulslike" games I've played this has to be the least fun. It's just a big open (mostly empty) map filled with the same 3 enemies or enemies that look different but do the same things. You'll spend most of your time doing "fetch quests" or going from marker to marker on a map. The combat is a clone of Dark Souls, but with a lot of mechanics removed and nothing added to replace them. The bosses are completely forgettable. There are few weapons and armors and none of them are interesting. No skills or weapon arts or magic or anything of the sort is in the game... just a quick attack and strong attack and the classic dark souls role.

    The game is not very difficult compared to most games in the genre. Most of the difficulty I found was from traversing very dark dungeons filled with cliffs and bridges and having to fight enemies on top of them. Even while holding the lantern it was still very difficult to see. Oh and the game is filled with ambushes, almost all enemy encounters have ambushes.

    So that's all the difficulty in here, darkness and ambushes. The actual enemies and bosses are not that hard to fight, or fun. Compare that to a game like Sekiro where the bosses and enemies are much harder, but a lot more fun to fight.

    The only thing this game has going for it is a unique art style. I liked the aesthetics of the game, except for the fact that characters don't have faces. It's supposedly an art design choice, I didn't like it.

    If you can find this game on sale for around $10 you can give it a shot, but for $40 it's not worth it at all.    … Expand
  13. Cg014
    Apr 10, 2023
    0
    Worse souls clone ever. Cool art style but that is pretty much all I can say about it positively. Dark souls is difficult but fair, this game is difficult because it’s unfair since the developers couldn’t figure out a creative way to make the game challenging. Uninteresting story. Broken mechanics (lock-on) and much more. Shield auto unequips in combat, super useful….not. Bosses one comboWorse souls clone ever. Cool art style but that is pretty much all I can say about it positively. Dark souls is difficult but fair, this game is difficult because it’s unfair since the developers couldn’t figure out a creative way to make the game challenging. Uninteresting story. Broken mechanics (lock-on) and much more. Shield auto unequips in combat, super useful….not. Bosses one combo you if you’re not trading agro with AI companion. No traditional leveling up. Boring side quests. Bull**** enemy attacks. Enemies can use the same weapons you do but they use the same attack patterns as you do but much faster because ‘fair and fun’. 4 years since release and it still crashes. Oh and your AI companion literally commits suicide for what seems to be no reason so you get to solo yolo dungeons that literally have no checkpoints and shortcuts making you have to do it all over again and they can be very long, copy and pasted, but long. Don’t complete the dungeon before you run out of healing items? Do it again. Fun. Regret buying it for a quarter of the full price on a sale.… Expand

Awards & Rankings

48
#48 Best PC Game of 2018
48
#48 Most Discussed PC Game of 2018

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
81

Generally favorable reviews - based on 21 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 17 out of 21
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 21
  3. Negative: 0 out of 21
  1. Games.cz
    Feb 28, 2020
    70
    Are you still striving to gather enough courage to enter the unforgiving world of Dark Souls? Try Ashen instead. It’s a natural beginner’s choice in the genre of brutally difficult action RPGs.
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  2. Worth Playing
    Apr 26, 2019
    85
    Ashen is a great title. The Souls formula may be adapted nearly wholesale, but the art style gives the game a different vibe. The presence of co-op at all times makes each run feel feasible, since the odds rarely feel impossible to overcome, and the presence of a community to grow gives you a real sense of progression and purpose. Unless you're completely burned out by the formula, Ashen is an adventure that's well worth checking out.
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  3. The Games Machine
    Jan 17, 2019
    70
    Ashen is a souls-like game with a particular focus on the co-op multiplayer. Sadly this feature rarely works as intended, but despite its flaws, the game developed by A44 is still an enjoyable variation to the formula created by Miyazaki and From Software.
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