The Surge
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Top Critic
A solid Soulslike that stops a few steps short of greatness.
Top Critic
The Surge isn't the same as Dark Souls but comparison's inevitable. Like that cyborg whose torso I severed, it struggles to stand on its own.
Top Critic
The Surge makes good use of its detailed sci-fi setting and provides an engaging experience throughout the 30 to 40-hour campaign, mostly thanks to its widely customizable inventory and wickedly fun combat system. It may struggle to keep the action moving and tell a strong story amid the chaos of battle, and its weapon progression plateaued early, but it offers some interesting ideas and delivers a solid new take on a familiar genre.
Top Critic
An even better Dark Souls clone than Lords Of The Fallen, but there are too few unique ideas and the difficulty often undermines the rest of the gameplay.
Top Critic
A promising entry into the budding “Souls” genre that delivers excellent combat and far too much repetition in the enemies and environments
Top Critic
The Surge is an entertaining twist on the Dark Souls formula that strikes a tenuous balance between iteration and invention.
Top Critic
The Surge successfully builds on its inspirations and finds its own voice
Top Critic
The Surge gives a lousy first impression with it bland sci-fi setting and grab bag of obvious influences. Given time, though, there's an unrefined gem in here for those willing to put up with its quirks. If this is Deck 13's next step to building something truly great, it's solid, if flawed one.
Top Critic
The Surge is a mix of interesting ideas and hiccups in execution. While there's no doubt that it will resonate with a specific, hardcore audience, it's missing just enough to alienate a generalized audience. Its combat is challenging, but not perfect; its story starts with a compelling hook but falls flat shortly after. There are echoes of something special running throughout The Surge, but it never escapes its own shadow.
Top Critic
An interesting addition to the souls-linke genre. It doesn't reach the greatness of the big ones, but the combat system and, especially, the dismemberments, make it a pretty fun experience.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Top Critic
The Surge has been able to exploit the essentials of this genre: A highly additive combat system, great setting and an outstanding level design. It may not be a huge innovation, but Deck13 has created a great game within the action RPG genre.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Top Critic
Bugs and a weak narrative aside, The Surge is a much more confident take on the emerging Soul-like gameplay style. It takes the known tropes of being challenging and having progression dependent on learning attack patterns while adjusting your play style to accommodate, but it also has some fresh ideas that not only make perfect sense, but could shape future games. It's nice to see a developer give a gameplay style a second shot and Deck13 have almost nailed it here.
Top Critic
The Surge has tried to rely on quality more than quantity, there are only 5 main zones for roaming and 5 leaders and events can be completed in less than 8 hours if the user avoids the majority of the confrontations and only run around the environment around him, in contrast the game offers a variety and changes in the design of weapons and enemies and their abilities - away from the leaders - but unfortunately each part suffers from a gap that contributed in one way or another to reduce the fun of events, whether the design of the same battles or leaders that did not bring anything new or the story, which could not keep it raised for a long time .
Review in Arabic | Read full review
Top Critic
The Surge is a game of many triumphs, but it's also one that will cause you more frustration than any other Souls-like.
Top Critic
The Surge is technically strong, has good ideas and fascinating environments, but also a lot of flaws, especially when it comes to important elements for the soulslike genre, like level design and character's customization/improvement.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Top Critic
The Surge is a rather unfair experience. It tries to be a difficult product but ends up lying in flagrant errors.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Top Critic
The Surge offers an interesting world to explore, and a few new tricks that set it apart from the competition, but often falls short of its inspiration due to wonky combat and uninspired enemy designs.
Top Critic
The Surge's unique spin on combat and customization coupled with some tried and true gameplay mechanics from the Souls series coalesce nicely for what feels like a familiar experience in an entirely new setting.
Top Critic
The Surge is shonky, inferior and more than a little derivative. But if you fancy a shortcut-filled robotic challenge, it's not all bad. Just be ready to get deprogrammed.
Top Critic
The Surge is a Dark Souls-style game with sci-fi trappings and a unique combat system that is held back by repetitive gameplay and frustrating controls.
