The Ascent Reviews

The Ascent is ranked in the 56th percentile of games scored on OpenCritic.
85 / 100
Apr 2, 2022

Overall, The Ascent is a fun twin-stick shooter that comes to the Playstation with an absolutely beautiful world design. The wholesale violence is very engaging but may feel a bit redundant as you can be pretty well maxed out about halfway through. I had a lot of fun with The Ascent, especially with multiplayer. It’s a beautiful-looking game that’s a blast to play that’s worth checking out.

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8.5 / 10.0
Mar 24, 2022

A robustly entertaining cyberpunk dungeon crawler wrapped up in some of the most sublime audiovisual presentation and thoroughly satisfying combat to come along in a good while, though it isn't quite as ambitious as I would like it to be, the Ascent is nonetheless a fantastically entertaining offering that will appeal to genre fans of cyberpunk settings and dungeon crawlers alike.

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7 / 10
Mar 24, 2022

The Ascent's a solid, if somewhat repetitive shooter, propped up by eye-popping environments and a reasonable amount of RPG depth. If you can stomach some grindy mission design and the occasional buggy interaction, then there's explosive fun to be had here.

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GameMAG
Top Critic
6 / 10
Aug 8, 2021

The Ascent is worth your attention, but only after the developers will iron out most of the major shortcomings.

Review in Russian | Read full review

Ken McKown
Top Critic
8.5 / 10.0
Aug 2, 2021

The 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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92 / 100
Jul 29, 2021

Setting aside it coming from such a small team, I think The Ascent is miraculous in a couple of ways. First, the detailed world-building, environmental storytelling, and atmosphere are maybe the best expression of the cyberpunk aesthetic I’ve ever seen in a game. Second, the developers have seemingly cataloged every annoying mechanic in RPGs and action games — from death to rapid travel to inventory management — and found a way to make them less onerous or disappear altogether. The Ascent is not an easy game, either mechanically or thematically, but it is completely engaging if for no other reason than to see into a very convincingly realized future.

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9 / 10
Jul 29, 2021

The Ascent is for the most part a polished experience that's tons of fun to play and behold. The narrative will carry you along to many interesting places with different baddies to fry, though a few encounters feature enemies that are pure bullet sponges. You will need to pick the right equipment and keep up with leveling, but these issues can be overcome. Hardware requirements shouldn't hold you back too much, and glitches are few and far between. The overall quality makes this one a must play for cyberpunk and isometric shooter fans.

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8.4 / 10.0
Jul 29, 2021

The Ascent is a fast-paced twin-stick shooter immersed in an impeccably designed cyberpunk world, yet its plot fails to fully take advantage of this wonderful setting. Luckily, the shooting mechanics are quite satisfying, while the many different character customization options guarantee a fair range of approaches to the shootouts. There are also a bunch of technical issues that can be easily circumvented, but are still annoying.

Review in Italian | Read full review

Jul 29, 2021

The 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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Unscored
Mar 24, 2022

The Ascent comes on PS5 with an offer substantially superimposable to that of the counterpart for Xbox Series X, obviously considering the state of the game after the updates published in the months following the launch. For this reason, the latest edition of the Neon Giant title keeps intact its balance of strengths and weaknesses, the latter for the most part linked to some superficiality too much in the playful definition of the title.

Review in Italian | Read full review

Gameblog
Top Critic
6 / 10
Sep 5, 2021

The problem with beauty is that it lets us imagine perfection on all levels. And The Ascent, despite a truly sublime setting, is far from meeting all the requirements that would allow it to rise to the level of the most memorable experiences of 2021. In 15-20 hours, we navigate between the happiness of discovering environments that do more than tickle our Cyberpunk fiber, to fight hard but correctly against hordes of enemies and a certain frustration.

Review in French | Read full review

7 / 10.0
Aug 11, 2021

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.

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Aug 6, 2021

The 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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Unscored
Aug 4, 2021

The 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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7 / 10
Aug 2, 2021

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.

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Jul 30, 2021

The Ascent’s savviest move is making the arcology its main character. Trains run on their own schedules, NPCs carry on conversations whether you stop to listen to them or not, and there’s no exposition for concepts like “Escher loops” and “the First Law.” You’re not a hero, only a replaceable employee. The commune of off-the-grid coders aren’t relying on you, and there’s nothing you can do to help a traumatized recent arrival who woke to find that his family of 70 years was merely a cryosleep-induced dream. And so you look, listen, and empathize with the concerns of this vibrant, lived-in arcology. It’s a terrible place to live, and a terrifyingly believable premonition of where we might end up, but a wonderful one to get lost in.

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Jul 29, 2021

Although 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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7.5 / 10.0
Jul 29, 2021

The Ascent is an ambitious work, which fascinates with incredible atmospheres and visually breathtaking scenery. Unfortunately, the exceptional production effort made 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.

Review in Italian | Read full review

8.8 / 10.0
Jul 29, 2021

The Ascent picks up the glove to become the "Diablo with guns" and the result is a game with astonishing action and a superb design.

Review in Spanish | Read full review

Unscored
Jul 29, 2021
I strongly recommend: The Ascent (Review) video thumbnail