The Ascent review: A visually stunning cyberpunk shooter hampered by frustrating gameplay flaws
Introduction
The Ascent delivers one of the most visually impressive cyberpunk worlds in recent gaming history, wrapped around a solid twin-stick shooter core. While Neon Giant’s debut title shows remarkable ambition for a small team, persistent gameplay issues prevent it from reaching greatness.
This cyberpunk RPG shooter blends breathtaking environments with intense combat, but numerous technical flaws and design missteps create frustrating roadblocks throughout the experience.
Technical Achievement and Visual Splendor
The Ascent’s dystopian megacity represents a technical marvel, with every alleyway and neon-lit plaza bursting with detail. Ray-traced lighting transforms environments into living paintings where digital billboards cast dynamic glows on rain-slicked streets. What’s most impressive is how this visual fidelity maintains rock-solid performance even during the most chaotic firefights.
Combat encounters showcase the engine’s capabilities, with hundreds of NPCs reacting realistically to explosions while particle effects and physics objects fill the screen. The game smartly uses UI elements and camera placement to maintain clarity during these intense moments – a lesson many similar titles could learn from.
Pro Tip: Enable ray-traced reflections for the full visual experience, as the game’s puddle-rich environments showcase this technology beautifully without significant performance hits.
Gameplay Value and Content Depth
The Ascent offers substantial content for its price point, with a 20-hour campaign bolstered by meaningful side missions. Its loot system stands out by emphasizing meaningful choices rather than linear upgrades – you’ll constantly weigh tradeoffs between armor protection, accuracy bonuses, and special abilities.
The vertical combat system adds fresh tactical considerations. Unlike standard twin-stick shooters, you must account for elevation when targeting drones or using cover. This creates dynamic firefights where positioning matters as much as reflexes.
Common Mistake: New players often overlook the importance of augment combinations. Pairing damage-boosting augments with rapid-fire weapons creates devastating synergies that can overcome difficult encounters.
Critical Gameplay Flaws
The Ascent’s most glaring issues stem from inconsistent difficulty and technical problems. Enemy levels fluctuate wildly within the same areas, with no visual indicators to warn players before engaging overpowered foes. This creates frustrating scenarios where you might one-shot basic enemies only to be instantly killed by a hidden high-level opponent around the corner.
Boss encounters exemplify the balancing problems. Some become trivial when overleveled, while others remain brutally difficult regardless of preparation. The final boss is particularly problematic, with frequent bugs causing enemies to become invincible – requiring complete restarts during our testing.
Workaround: When facing invincible enemies, try reloading the area or using area-of-effect attacks that sometimes bypass the bug. Playing cooperatively significantly reduces these issues, as teammates can revive you during unfair encounters.
The broken fast travel system compounds these frustrations. On our test build, attempting to fast travel consistently crashed the game, forcing tedious manual navigation across the expansive map. While patches may address some issues, these problems significantly impacted our overall experience.
Final Verdict
The Ascent delivers a breathtaking cyberpunk playground hampered by inconsistent execution. When everything works, it provides some of the most exhilarating twin-stick action available. However, frequent technical problems and balancing issues create too many frustration spikes to ignore.
For players willing to tolerate these flaws, especially in cooperative play, there’s an impressive game beneath the problems. Just be prepared for a journey that’s as frustrating as it is beautiful.
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