Chronos: Before the Ashes

 PlayStation 4
User Score
5.3

Mixed or average reviews- based on 23 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 23
  2. Mixed: 8 out of 23
  3. Negative: 8 out of 23
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  1. BIade
    Dec 2, 2020
    0
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Awful game with awful concepts. Imagine a **** version of dark souls with slow motion. Game runs like **** and loading screens have a tendency to go on forever. The map design is pretty bad, a lot of reused assets that make every area bland. The enemy design is pretty **** with a lot of enemies just dying to R2 spam and oh yea, if you’re playing the game for the “bosses”, don’t expect anything good. Like the final **** boss is the dragon reused asset from remnant from the ashes. Bosses are not that creative, they’re pretty boring and piss easy to fight. Design choices such as having to interact with a chest from your inventory just to open it is pretty dumb and a waste of time. If you think that the aging mechanic is “unique” or that it makes the game more interesting, let me tell you that it just makes the game less fun, all this “magic gets stronger as you grow older” is bull****, the magic in this game is just particle effects on your weapon with no use, unless your activate your “dragon stone ability”, your stamina regen when your old takes forever, which adds to the unnecessary frustration to the game. And oh yea let’s not forget about the **** healing mechanic that takes forever to heal yourself while standing in place making you vulnerable to enemy attacks
    Basically just save your 30 bucks and buy something that is actually nice instead of wasting it on this ****    … Expand
  2. GrahfZeppelin
    Dec 5, 2020
    3
    Some really cool ideas and some fun concepts ultimately ruined by clunky combat and sloppy level design. I made it about 3/4 of the way through the game before giving up when having to solve an obnoxious slider puzzle which is THE laziest form of game design.
    The combat is stiff and enemies can stun lock you and there's an extremely inconsistent difficulty. The map layout is unintuitive    Some really cool ideas and some fun concepts ultimately ruined by clunky combat and sloppy level design. I made it about 3/4 of the way through the game before giving up when having to solve an obnoxious slider puzzle which is THE laziest form of game design.
    The combat is stiff and enemies can stun lock you and there's an extremely inconsistent difficulty. The map layout is unintuitive and confusing and instead of being a cleverly interwoven map like most Souls games, it's more of a dull maze.
    There WAS effort put into this game and I hope the devs have better success down the road, maybe refining some of this games ideas, but Chronos itself is just plain bad, sadly    … Expand
  3. Dronewolf
    Jan 10, 2023
    2
    Stunlock: Before the Ashes

    Yet another souls clone with puzzles. Combat is clunky and your character is way to slow to the point that the enemy can just constantly stunlock you. It takes forever to heal (And your "estus" doesn;t refill at the "bonfires", you have to die to refill your health items). I don't know devs in 2022 can look at their slow, janky combat and say "Yeah, that's    Stunlock: Before the Ashes

    Yet another souls clone with puzzles. Combat is clunky and your character is way to slow to the point that the enemy can just constantly stunlock you. It takes forever to heal (And your "estus" doesn;t refill at the "bonfires", you have to die to refill your health items).

    I don't know devs in 2022 can look at their slow, janky combat and say "Yeah, that's perfect"

    Art style is okay, but that's the only thing that has going for it.    … Expand
  4. ju_ma21
    Jan 12, 2022
    1
    Im srry but this game is really bad the first boss is literally just you parrying or dodging his attack and than pressing attack for the enhance hit and i couldnt even get myself to keep going after that because it just became so stale when the boss fight was literally the worst experience ever not fun nor hard

    not to mention the heal is atrocious in the game you cant even move while    Im srry but this game is really bad the first boss is literally just you parrying or dodging his attack and than pressing attack for the enhance hit and i couldnt even get myself to keep going after that because it just became so stale when the boss fight was literally the worst experience ever not fun nor hard

    not to mention the heal is atrocious in the game you cant even move while healing and you cant cancel it in anyway and your likely to get hit while healing almost always this game is horrible complete trash just buy Remnant from the ashes    … Expand
  5. RestRabbitRest
    Jun 3, 2022
    2
    I wish I could like this game, but I hate it for several reasons. First of all, this game is insanely clunky and sluggish. Every player character animation is unnecessarily slow, at RDR2 level. The character runs very slow as well. Usually I don't mind if the game itself has a slow pace and I'm part of it, but this game requires you to explore and backtrack to discover puzzle pieces andI wish I could like this game, but I hate it for several reasons. First of all, this game is insanely clunky and sluggish. Every player character animation is unnecessarily slow, at RDR2 level. The character runs very slow as well. Usually I don't mind if the game itself has a slow pace and I'm part of it, but this game requires you to explore and backtrack to discover puzzle pieces and find the right way to advance.

    Secondly, combat is broken. At a glance it seems it has all the general mechanics such as parrying and dodging, but neither is useful in actual combat. Well dodging has a decent length of i-frame so yes, you can dodge enemies' attacks, but you have a huge opening right after that and it makes incredibly difficult to step out of enemy's reach. Moreover, there're quite a few number of enemies with shields, and there's no way to break their defense. The only way is to flank them, or wait for them to attack for an opening. Strong enemies take 10 to 50 hits based on your attack rating, so dragging an encounter for 5+ minutes because of this forced strategy makes the game incredibly boring.

    Last but not least, the camera. When just running around it's okay, but in combat the camera could be your worst enemy. For instance 1/3 of the enemies in this game are dwarf-like creatures, shorter than you. That means if you don't adjust the camera you can't see what they're doing when they are up close. The problem is, when you're locking on to an enemy, vertical pans are locked. You can only rotate sideways. I got hit so many times in middle of a combo because of this; I can't see if they're striking back or not!

    By the way, some people defend this game for being an old, VR game ported to a modern system. But I don't buy such an excuse, because, one, it's not THAT old, and two, I'm not playing the game on an old VR system. I'm playing on a non-VR, modern system for god's sake. The developer could've and should've tweaked the game here and there, at least the overall clunkiness.    … Expand

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
68

Mixed or average reviews - based on 22 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 22
  2. Mixed: 19 out of 22
  3. Negative: 0 out of 22
  1. PLAY! Zine
    Jan 8, 2021
    70
    This is a simple souls-like game and great for people wanting to get into the genre. With difficulty settings, plenty of interesting new mechanics and a fun world, it's definitely a good game to try.
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  2. Playstation Official Magazine UK
    Jan 8, 2021
    70
    If you liked the look of Dark Souls but bounced off the difficulty, Chronos offers a solid (if cheaper), more user-friendly, yet still demanding alternative. [Issue#184, p.90]
  3. GamingTrend
    Jan 4, 2021
    70
    Chronos: Before the Ashes is a tough game to recommend to Remnant fans due to its comparatively flawed combat system and less amount of content overall. Nevertheless, I still believe that while the game does not live up to its full potential, it still has just enough charm to be worth at least a try for hardcore fans of the action-RPG genre.
    Read full review
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