The Ascent Reviews
The world of Veles is a grim one, indeed. Beneath its multi-hued, rain slicked surface lies a world run by the corporate and served by the desperate. The small settlements that fill in for towns are filled with light, as if to hold back the encroaching darkness, the murky landscape that threatens to swallow them whole at any moment. It is Blade Runner without the soul. It is Shadowrun without the depth. In the end, perhaps a more fitting name for the game would have been “The Descent.”
The Ascent is an excellent top-down shooter with a great cyberpunk aesthetic, exhilarating combat and some neat RPG systems to boot. If you like arcade action and fast-paced combat, this is the game for you. It's a great start to what I hope is a new franchise because I certainly would be down for a sequel, a few years down the road.
The Ascent is a highly enjoyable sci-fi twin-stick shooter with outstanding visual and audio presentation. It is let down at times by some boring downtime while moving through areas and some inconsistent AI but the overall gameplay is a blast whether you’re playing solo or with friends. Fans of twin-stick shooters and cyberpunk worlds will want to have this on their to-play list for sure.
The Ascent can be great fun with three other like-minded players. There are lots to explore in Veles and many challenges. On the flip side, much of the game falls apart or is otherwise tedious solo.
The Ascent provides a vibrant, living environment for you to run around in and shoot at. The world is brimming with walking-talking NPCs and neon-filled areas. While the story isn't really that memorable, it's decent enough for you to push on to the next mission, which will lead you to diverse locations and up against different enemies. The bigger enemies can be a bit too much bullet sponges, but otherwise the gameplay and diverse possibilities are quite satisfying.
Review in Dutch | Read full review
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.
The Ascent is, for fans of a good isometric RPG with a futuristic theme, one of the best experiences in recent years. Aesthetically beautiful, it is not the most innovative experience in terms of both story and gameplay, but it manages to be competent in everything it proposes, resulting in an intense and surprisingly immersive journey.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
I must reiterate that The Ascent is gorgeous, and for a team of just a dozen developers, they have outperformed themselves in that regard. Unfortunately, because the narrative is so anaemic and there is so little that connects the narrative to the aesthetics and gameplay, The Ascent ends up feeling empty. There’s nothing memorable about the characters, the world is dull and far too large for how little it offers, and while, yes, the story hits those key cyberpunk talking points, the developers largely missed the nuances that elevate cyberpunk beyond pulp fiction. So, again, the game’s fine, if you are looking for a generic sci-fi shooter (and can ideally drag a friend along). As a work of cyberpunk, though, it’s a failure.
The biggest takeaway from my playthrough of The Ascent definitely has to be the amount of polish that went into the game. The Neon Giant team is made up of a number of AAA developer veterans and it really does show in the final product. The experience is fairly similar between the Xbox and PlayStation versions though the extra immersion via the DualSense controller makes this the definitive version of the game.
The Ascent is far from perfect. It has so many issues that normally I would not give it a second look. Despite all the issues and the fact that the gameplay is pretty basic, the story completely forgettable and it lacks any depth, I had fun with it and once I started playing it I was lost to the rest of the world.
The best assets of The Ascent are the visuals, the music and its lore and world building which has made Veles feel like a real living, kicking and breathing place but the gameplay feels just OK with a not so smooth UI.
Review in Persian | Read full review
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
The Ascent has the kind of graphical and audio design prowess that many games can only dream of. While some technical and mechanical issues disrupt the immersion, there’s no denying the sheer sadistic joy that comes from shredding through the neon glazed tiers of Veles. A critique of the Cyberpunk genre this isn’t, but damn is it a blast to play.
The Ascent on PS5 is the same game with a few tweaks. Best played with friends, it provides a gorgeous, if inconsistent, experience.
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.
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.
The relatively good scenario works procedurally, while the attempt to belong to more than one species, leaves us at best indifferent.
Review in Greek | Read full review
I know this is beautiful — how bad could it be — but please avoid it at all costs, no matter how cheap it is on sale.
The Ascent manages to create an unbelievably detailed and dirty cyberpunk world for you to explore and find your place in. All the while you’ll unravel cyberpunk-esque corporate schemes. I couldn’t stop playing the game, The Ascent is absolutely dripping with cyberpunk aesthetics and is a true love letter to the genre by clear lovers of cyberpunk fiction.
The allure of a cyberpunk themed game proved too strong for me to say no. Bright neon lights, futuristic scenes and a range of seemingly devastating weaponry caught my eye. My interest well and truly piqued, I wondered what lay in store as I began my journey through The Ascent. Was I wowed by the lights, or tricked by the glare? Read my Rapid Review to see how I got on.