- Publisher: Curve Digital
- Release Date: Jul 29, 2021
- Also On: PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One
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- Critic score
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- Unscored
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Jul 29, 2021Despite some of the more minor issues listed above, there was very little that was able to pull me away from The Ascent in the past week or so that I’ve been playing, and it’s certainly a game I’d like to revisit post launch with a fresh character so I can toy around with different builds and loadouts a bit more. Again, it’s an absolute no-brainer if you’re a Game Pass subscriber on Xbox, but even if you’re looking to purchase the game outright, it’s absolutely worth checking out.
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Aug 4, 2021The Ascent reminds me of the good old days of Xbox 360 and its robust indie offerings on the old Xbox Live Arcade service, where games like “Shadow Complex” or “Super Meat Boy” were not afraid of making small twists to classic formulas.
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Jul 29, 2021The Ascent combines excellent worldbuilding, satisfying role playing, exciting combat, and stellar visuals to deliver an astounding action RPG.
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Aug 9, 2021The Ascent brings us all the frenzy and strategy of a chaotic and futuristic cyberpunk-style world, where our character must discover the places and secrets that this universe hides. Despite its flaws, it becomes an Xbox essential.
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Jul 29, 2021With the recent experience of Cyberpunk 2077, The Ascent has managed to amaze me with its aesthetics, its artistic section and its powerful and impressive graphics.
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CD-ActionOct 12, 2021Style over substance – I bet Neon Giant has this cyberpunk principle printed above the office entrance. The design of their game is absolutely breathtaking, with huge, vertical, crime-infested cities and masterful use of lights and shadows. Add a pulp-style story and good dialogues (or rather monologues, as the protagonist is silent) immersed deeply in the cyberpunk lore, and you’ve got a pure gem for anyone who enjoys this setting. The shooting mechanics and progression system might be overly simple, but they get the job done and make it easier to catch the game’s flow. [10/2021, p.56]
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Aug 2, 2021The Ascent is a wonderful experience that is easy to recommend thanks to Game Pass. It has some technical issues, some bugs, and also takes a while to get to the point, but it is worth the investment. There is little reason to not check it out if you have Game Pass. This is a game that is great with friends and even solo manages to entertain. I hope they continue to clean up the bugs over time, but for now it is easily one of my favorite experiences of the Summer.
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Aug 10, 2021The Ascent is an essential experience for anyone that enjoys tight action-RPG combat or beautiful, neon-colored Blade Runner skylines. Go play this solo or with up to three other friends before its world becomes reality.
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Aug 4, 2021The Ascent is a solid and fun action-RPG, capable of providing many hours of fun thanks to well-paced gameplay and powerful and inspired graphics. Too bad for some flaws such as the poorly executed cooperative mode, annoying bugs and the lack of Italian localization, which prevent the first job of Neon Giant to shine as it deserves.
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Aug 4, 2021Experiences like The Ascent don’t come along often. Game Pass may well turn out to be The Ascent’s redemption. This is an experience that’s best had in co-op, and a day one launch on Xbox’s service means that almost all obstacles are removed. So, find three friends and take your time with The Ascent, refuse to play in long sessions, and you and your partners will find worlds and gunplay that blow your augments clear off.
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Jul 29, 2021Beautiful to fall for, fun and nervous, The Ascent is a generous twin stick shooter, which evolves in a coherent world with neat lore. If the optimization of the game as the ergonomics of the navigation or the interface remain to be reviewed and can sometimes be frustrating, the whole is sufficiently solid on its shoot part as an RPG to occupy you for long hours, solo or with friends . A great way to get back on track for the small team of Neon Giant, whose game is available as soon as it is released on the Game Pass.
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Aug 19, 2021A visual feast that, along with the great audio design, makes for a very atmospheric experience. It's not perfect, though. Navigation leaves a bit to be desired and some technical shortcomings put a damper on the fun.
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Aug 18, 2021The Ascent offers cyberpunk lovers a setting where they can unleash their dreams of steel and neon.
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Jul 29, 2021The Ascent is an ambitious work, which fascinates with incredible atmospheres and visually breathtaking scenarios. Unfortunately, the exceptional production effort carried out on the sets and modeling of the game world does not hide some problems related to the balance of the gameplay and the quality of the script. In short, as far as the creation of the imaginary is concerned, we can say that we are faced with a great little blockbuster of the Microsoft and PC offer: a shame not to be able to remember the splendid streets of Veles as an absolute excellence of the indie market.
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Jul 30, 2021A gorgeous looking cyberpunk world and intense shoot-outs: The Ascent is visually impressive and delivers bucketloads of shooting fun. But it is a complete failure in terms of storytelling and has a few (co-op) flaws.
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Power UnlimitedAug 6, 2021The Ascent is a top-down Cyberpunk 2077 with a Blade Runner vibe and Housemarque-esque gameplay. Of those three influences, only the Blade Runner part is unfortunately really successful, because the atmosphere is thick and the game is incredibly beautiful thanks to subtle lighting and convincing particle effects. The twinstick shooter action is a bit less successful and the RPG elements also leave something to be desired, so you probably won't disappear completely in this. Although it is quite clever that a twelve-strong studio has delivered this end product.
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Aug 4, 2021Despite my complaints, though, I legitimately love the world Neon Giant has crafted here and would love to see even more of it. There’s loads of potential in this setting for straight-up better stories to be told, and I think The Ascent itself is kept from greatness from a lot of jank, technical issues, and weird design decisions. All that said, I think once I get my hands on a Steam Deck, I’m absolutely going to treat that as an excuse to go back for more. Hopefully, by then, they’ll have a lot of the technical issues addressed.
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Jul 30, 2021Although The Ascent is far from perfect, it gets more right than it does wrong and is most successful at creating a world that is filled with interesting characters and fun to explore. The sections that require some grinding might frustrate, but there is enough variety in the combat to keep the gameplay from becoming stale thanks to the wide array of weapons and the cover mechanics. Add in the possibility for co-op multiplayer with some friends and The Ascent can certainly provide hours of riotous fun, especially with a release on Xbox Game Pass day one.
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Jul 29, 2021The Ascent is a solid evolution of the twin-stick formula, offering some of the most detailed and impressive visuals the gen has to offer so far. However, The Ascent needs a couple of polish passes as of writing, due to bugs and other glitches. Additionally, the game suffers from a lack of testing, with balance problems and structural issues that weaken the latter half of the game.
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Jul 29, 2021Fans of twin-stick shooters and action RPGs are likely to get a good amount of fun out of The Ascent, especially if they have the patience to work though some of its issues. The fact that it looks so pretty, at least on Xbox Series X, means that some may find more of a reason to persist with it, too. With its merely passable story and small assortment of gameplay frustrations, however, it’s not quite the game it could have been. It simply feels a bit rough around the edges, though perhaps a patch or two could smooth them off.
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Jul 29, 2021The 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.
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Jul 29, 2021The Ascent is an unapologetically familiar twin stick shooter, with a detailed cyberpunk world that feels alive and especially dystopian. Some mistakes in the way the map is implemented and a fast travel that is unreasonable limited could have been alleviated, but nevertheless the action is top-notch and cathartic.
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Jul 29, 2021The Ascent nails the cyberpunk aesthetic but doesn't really attempt to capitalise on its themes of corporate slavery. The solid audiovisuals and competent action-RPG twin-stick shooter hybrid gameplay manage to glue the experience together, even when glaring flaws such as lacklustre quest design and an overreliance on backtracking threaten to derail it.
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Aug 9, 2021All in all, The Ascent is a lot of fun at times, but there’s just something about it that doesn’t quite stick for me. Combat is fast, with the three height system technically offering up more options for arenas, but I found this aspect to be generally underused. Initially complex looking, the upgrades and skill trees are simple to follow, albeit underwhelming in use. But there’s no denying just how pretty it all is, and as a next gen showpiece it delivers here. I just can’t see myself being drawn back to it long in the long term.
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Jul 29, 2021A grim, dystopian future shock, The Ascent is an action-packed ARPG brimming with guns and ultra-violence. It's enormous fun, especially in co-op, but bothersome bugs and repetitive quests unfortunately put a dampener on things.
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Aug 12, 2021The cyberpunk world of The Ascent seems dazzling on the surface, but much like your standard cyberpunk world, the grime underneath all of the neon and futuristic landscapes ends up revealing a hefty mess once you go exploring it. The top-down shooter gameplay is fun on a basic level, but quickly becomes monotonous as it drags on in order to keep up with the RPG-styled length and ambitions, while the RPG side of things has a good story and some nifty gameplay tweaks, but its desire to keep the gameplay focus on being a top-down shooter means that any potential when it comes to depth and variety is never fully realized. If you’re a die-hard cyberpunk fan, don’t mind a lot of repetition or have friends to join along, there can be fun here as you ascend, but the rest might be better skipping the trip up.
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Aug 8, 2021The Ascent is worth your attention, but only after the developers iron out most of the major shortcomings.
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Aug 5, 2021If you’re playing with others, I imagine you’ll have a great time with The Ascent. While it still isn’t anywhere near perfect, the beautiful graphics and solid gunplay should be enough for those who just want something cool to play with their friends. There’s plenty of loot to collect along the way, too, letting you each put your stamp on your character. If you have no one to play with, though, I wouldn’t recommend The Ascent. The game feels like it’s fighting against you the entire way. It never stops feeling like this game wasn’t meant for you.
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Jul 29, 2021The Ascent is a beautiful and entertaining action-RPG when everything is working as intended, but those moments are sadly much rarer than they should be. We know the team already has several patches planned so hopefully, a lot of the issues we encountered will be ironed out by the time you dive into the game — I'll be keeping an eye on these updates and will look to update and/or modify this review should things be significantly improved, because I'd have liked to have scored The Ascent higher. Combat is frantic and fun, the world is amazing, and there are some really satisfying abilities to bust out against foes, but you need a hell of a lot of patience to put up with all the technical nonsense going on with the game in its current state.
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Jul 29, 2021Even 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.
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Aug 3, 2021The Ascent opens impressively and displays a solid core, which regrettably starts to sour early, especially if you play on your own. Load times, illegible text and repetitive structure mean that the console experience is lacking.
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Aug 2, 2021In The Ascent, which offers a menu of main and side missions and runs to over twenty hours, there is only one strategy: shoot those in front of you until they are in front of you no longer. True, we get the standard stream of skill points, to feed into our preferred areas: aim, balance, movement speed, etc. And you can upgrade your cyberdeck, the better to melt the circuits of enemies and locked doors. But it all comes back to open-plan gunning, and it takes more than ballistics to persuade us of real freedom.
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Jul 29, 2021While The Ascent is a true visual showcase for the Xbox Series X, it lacks depth and clarity. There's a fun game in here, but it's ultimately overburdened.
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Jul 29, 2021A deeply disappointing co-op shooter that squanders its excellent graphics on a bland and repetitive attempt to make a sci-fi Diablo.
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| This publication has not posted a final review score yet. | |
| These unscored reviews do not factor into the Metascore calculation. | |
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Jul 29, 2021As we draw our conclusions, it seems important to note that The Ascent was created by a small team of skilled developers. And what else is there to say except maybe that they completed the challenge with flying colours. For almost 15 hours, Neon Giant’s game puts the RPG aspect aside to embark us on a huge romp through a larger-than-life city, whose AD rivals that of Cyberpunk 2077. Those fond of finesse and detail-oriented builds will need to go somewhere else. For the others, it would be difficult to miss the Swedish studio’s first game as it was released in the Xbox Game Pass on its launch. Visually speaking, this one is quite outstanding and is a pure action guilty pleasure made of gunpowder, metal and blood. While waiting to be able to enjoy a 4-player coop session, we’re already dreaming of a probable second part developed by a larger team. Hopefully, this would be enough to improve what needs to be improved and revamp the game from being a pleasant surprise to being a must-have.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 346 out of 453
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Mixed: 40 out of 453
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Negative: 67 out of 453
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Jul 30, 2021
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Jul 31, 2021Weak storyline, mediocre and boring gameplay, poor optimization. You can pass by, you will not lose anything.
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Jul 31, 2021This is not an RPG, its just another boring game not bringing anything new to its genre and at the same time not executing the ideas too well.