The Ascent

The Ascent has issues, but those issues don’t detract from my overall enjoyment of the game. I won’t write my thesis on its commentary on capitalism, but I’ll fondly remember my co-op sessions where I tore through this cyberpunk world. That being said, the shallow RPG elements, lack of meaningful narrative, and exploration frustration were constants that really dragged the experience down. Neon Giant has made a solid foundation to build on, and I hope we can see future installments grow into something truly worthy of ascension.

The Ascent constantly reminds you that it's an indie game, having both ambitious ideas you won’t find in your typical AAA blockbuster and not-so-brilliant execution. Despite the missed opportunities, it still is a fascinating universe and an enjoyable isometric shooter RPG.

Outstanding cyberpunk visuals and fun top-down shooting make The Ascent worth playing in single-player. But it could have been even better with less tedium, tighter pacing, and fewer bugs.

The Ascent equally frustrates and impresses me, one moment dropping my jaw with the city's neon-soaked beauty and the next making me clench my fists in anger. Veles is a brutal, unforgiving world, but it's one I enjoyed blasting my way through...when the game was being fair about it. Navigating the menus is a chore, but building a character is fun and the story is interesting enough that I don't mind the technical issues that pop up. It's not a perfect game, but if this is the beginning of a new franchise then it's a solid foundation from which to make its Ascent.

It's impossible not to be impressed by The Ascent's graphics and presentation: Veles has a remarkable vividness, while it manages to be simultaneously crushing and suffocating. The RPG side of the game falters for being superfluous, which unfortunately removes some potential from the game's action elements. Still, it offers a good two dozen hours of fun, especially if in co-op mode.

A twin-stick shooter that looks and feels great all the way through, but doesn't do enough new to keep your attention as you invest more time in its RPG systems and world.

The game will easily hook you with its well-crafted, hyper-focused narrative and immersive worldbuilding, if not its combat.

The Ascent is by far the most beautiful top-down shooter we have ever played. Fun combat and a glorious world make the experience worthwhile, even though the story, RPG elements and co-op modes leave a lot to be desired.

The Ascent is a gorgeous adventure that, while enjoyable, is held back by some design flaws.

The Ascent is mostly a mindless, violent jaunt through a meticulously rendered cyberpunk city; what little portrayal of the themes of depravity and inequality are merely set-dressing for the game. Yet for all its facelessness, what was most indelible was still its city, the disparity between the powerful and powerless depicted in its spaces: from the cramped, unsanitary alleys home to the ceaseless chatter of its most downtrodden, to the shine of the marble floor in the wealthier districts, soon to be sullied by the dead bodies you leave behind.

The Ascent’s satisfying gun-tastic action-RPG gameplay loop mixes with its beautiful cyberpunk aesthetic to create an overall enjoyable experience. Neither its story nor its characters are all that memorable, and its enemy encounters can stumble toward the end, but its gunplay and ultra-violence in a neon-soaked world combine to craft a co-op-friendly game you don’t see every day.

Despite difficulty spikes and a few odd design choices, The Ascent is an enjoyable, and gorgeous, sci-fi blaster.

The Ascent wants to make changes in a genre but it falls short and is not polished enough to offer a satisfactory experience. The setting is successful, it picks up the essence of the Cyberpunk style, giving it a further point of decadence and an extra element with the alien touch, with interesting character designs and offers an interesting action proposal that may fall short too. The biggest drawback comes in its optimization where there are many rough edges that present problems.

To summarise it in a way that should make sense, The Ascent features a mix of systems and mechanics that don’t play all that well with each other. Exploration suffers too, with certain Side Missions being locked to the main story without any word as to why.

The Ascent looks fantastic and offers grandiose combat. Frequent technical problems and annoying bugs, however, spoil the fun.

Visually stunning, The Ascent offers a incredibly rich universe visually speaking. Which is the main reason you want to play it. And keep on playing it, as it is kind of a satisfying but basic top down shooter experience. You won't remember its story nor its characters, but will surely think about its world and some gunfights. Let's hope Neon Digital will be able to take us back in it with some tweaks.

That becomes a bigger problem late in the game, where it resorts to the cheapest method of raising the difficulty by simply throwing high-level enemies at you in increasing numbers. In one battle, you're tasked with holding a position for a given amount of time, before being told that isn't enough; you must now finish off all the remaining enemies. At which point it has become clear that no matter how effective the synergy of our augs, mods and weapons may be, our survival hinges upon us grinding side-quests to raise our level. What a shame The Ascent should make the final steps of its climb so arduous - even if there is evidence here that its maker could yet go all the way to the top. [Issue#362, p.110]

The Ascent is an atmospheric power fantasy, a cinematic cyberpunk escape where you can disengage your brain and indulge in copious virtual violence. If you’re a Game Pass subscriber, it’s worth a try – at £25, it’s harder to recommend.

The Ascent is a tough game to recommend for solo players in its current state. Its buggy, tedious at its best and utterly frustrating at its worst. While I’m sure playing with friends will resolve some of my chief complaints, more fundamental issues like a rather boring overworld can’t be fixed with a few laughs with friends.

Definitively the kind of game you'll use to show of the power of your high end PC or Next Gen console : the visuals are amazing. But the gameplay or the story don't offer anything of note. The Ascent is Kinda fun for a while, but quickly repetitive and is obviously lacking depth.

Even if The Ascent was fully functional and balanced in a way where building up a character to become the ultimate Indent warrior felt great, there's the fact that so much of the game is designed to feel like servitude. As you climb the superstructure housing all of Veles, you serve a progression of masters, and the payoff for the game's central mystery--where did the mysterious group running Veles suddenly run off to?--isn't nearly enough to offset the hopeless grind. Your bosses insult you when you go on your task, ignore you when you've done well, and provide no rewards for success. For so much of the play time, The Ascent feels like, well, an uphill battle.

The Ascent isn’t the game of the generation but it is a lot of fun, and with its addition to Game Pass on day one, the cyberpunk world, great weaponry and so-so everything else might make it good enough to be the game of right now, at least. Worth a blast for fans of shooters or cyberpunk.

This 10-15 hour journey at $30 on release is riddled with bugs and housed in boring game design and even worse execution. Nothing excites me about playing The Ascent. If only this were an adventure game.

In theory, a co-op, loot-based isometric RPG like The Ascent has the potential of being a great cyberpunk-themed experience to play with a group of friends. The world-building is appealing visually and aurally, but it’s ultimately unsatisfying and often unrewarding during exploration. The lack of replayability, broken cooperative play, bugs, and unbalanced artificial enemy difficulty make it tough to appreciate its positive elements. It’s sad to say that The Ascent is another over-hyped cyberpunk game that is all fluff and no substance.