Steelrising (Xbox Series X)

In 1789, a fateful Estates General convened to address building grievances amongst the populace of France. Seeking to make reforms the reigning King Louis XVI would not, this moment would help spark the French Revolution where a bloody uprising aimed to shift the government away from the monarchy. Unfortunately, it was at this point that King Louis unleashed his army of clockwork robots to violently suppress the populace, or at least that’s how the alternate version of events goes in the action role-playing game Steelrising.

 

All but outright tipping its hat to the design sensibilities of Bloodborne, Steelrising moves away from that game’s Victorian setting and steeps it skillful combat in revolutionary France, the streets of Paris featuring the era’s architectural sensibilities even if the robot-led massacre has managed to cover up much of it with the signs of battle and bloodshed. The streets of Paris can be winding and confusing paths at times, especially since there is a good degree of verticality where you might need to traverse through open windows and cross rooftops as you fight your way to undoing King Louis XVI’s suppression of the rebellion. Sometimes the city can be a bit too dark and grimy for its own good, and at times the amount of bodies laying about can feel excessive like the designers felt too much space unmarred by blood would feel inappropriate, but there are still distinct locations to be found with impressive and sometimes even lovely architecture such as the lively gardens near the Palais du Louvre while the mines of Montmartre allow for a late game shift to an area quite different from city streets. Whether its a palatial estate or a slum though, this inglorious depiction of 18th Century Paris does provide an often intricate space to explore that could have been a grand host to the game’s adventure.

The historical setting is perhaps the most fleshed out part of the experience though. The player finds themselves playing as a feminine android named Aegis who is tasked with protecting Queen Marie-Antoinette only for her to send you off to Paris on a mission. Quite quickly though, as a capable combatant against the malevolent automatons under the king’s control, Aegis makes a name for herself and soon gets roped into assisting notable figures of the French Revolution, the game featuring historical characters like Marquis de Lafayette, Robespierre, and Jacques Necker as people whose stories you see unfold as they often have connections to certain boss characters but can provide side quests that help determine your ending as well. The French Revolution is certainly the main focus in regards to how you get to know these characters, the player more likely to get to know their thoughts and feelings as statesmen and scientists over coming to understand them as people, but they aren’t portrayed as totally benevolent revolutionaries either. If you pursue their associated quests you’ll often come to know their hidden motivations or occasional duplicitous actions, and while the depth of the intrigue doesn’t go too deep, it does paint a more human picture of this period of political turmoil that would match the true uncertainty of such an upheaval.

 

The story comes in small pieces over the adventure though, most of your time will be spent navigating Paris and facing off with the automatons who patrol the area. Aegis has a range of different weapons she can acquire over the course of the adventure that differ primarily in the swing speed and strength of their attack combo. A halberd has reach but requires more time to deliver each strike, a hammer has to have heft behind a blow so it moves slow as well, but weapons like bladed claws or batons can swiftly strike a foe and are more likely to become your preferred tool. Steelrising is a Soulslike, meaning its battles focus on watching your foe for patterns, dodging their attacks, and then taking your moment to strike. Locking onto a foe and figuring them out isn’t a difficult process usually, so while they can hit hard and dodge timing is important, you can often carve your way towards the next Vestal. Vestals serve as a resting spot of sorts, a statue with an upgrade machine for Aegis allowing you to spend the Anima you collect from killing machines on either improvements to your own abilities or on purchasable items and equipment. If you die, your Anima will be left at the spot of your death and lost completely if you can’t retrieve it, but unless you’re careless, it isn’t too likely you’ll ever lose much of your Anima.

 

Using a Vestal will cause basic enemies in the area to come back to life, but it also refills your health and resources. In a fight it is quite easy to apply some oil to Aegis and get a huge surge of recovery, but there are certainly stretches of Steelrising where the space between Vestals might strain a careless player and leave them with no oil burettes. Rather than this being a good squeeze on players to encourage them to treat foes with caution though, eventually you’ll quickly accrue a secondary healing method known as Ordinary Oil Vials as a frequent drop from slain foes or just as a reward for poking around the environment. Ordinary Oil Vials provide slow healing over twenty seconds but are usually enough to completely top off your health bar, and while you will likely need your normal oil burettes for instant healing in the middle of a fight, the vials make it all too easy to retreat and heal or just passively recover between skirmishes. Generally, other elements can get in the way of the game’s difficulty as well. There are status effects like being set aflame for gradual damage, but frost is a very useful tool early on as applying it will temporarily disable even the toughest foes. Since you can have two weapons equipped, the frost-inflicting gun the game gives you early on can easily be used to cow any troublesome foe and let you land your hits. Guns and other tools use an alchemical resource but again, it’s not hard to have an excess of it, but thankfully the game does start making it harder to inflict frost with more resistant foes as the adventure goes on. Soon though, you’ll instead have gained some considerable strength in the Immobilization stat, where your individual attacks will build up an immobilization effect on a foe that will eventually render them unable to fight for a moment and leave them open to a strong attack. Immobilization is a better mechanic than frost though, as it often encourages aggression as you try to make sure you successfully inflict it, but there are again other surprisingly simple ways to turn the tables if you explore the item options even a little bit. Things like a consumable that makes your stamina infinite for a short period undo the usual toll placed on your dodging and attacking that is meant to encourage you to play smart.

Steelrising isn’t devoid of challenge despite how accommodating it tries to be with ways to tip things in your favor, the different strategies the King’s mechanical army rely on in a fight ensuring you still need to pay attention to dodging and moments of opportunity. A lumbering robot that wields a marble pillar as a club requires you to truly escape its reach as it goes for heavy hits, but the machines with weights on chains in place of their arms have the kind of reach where they try to keep you at a distance instead. Variations on enemy types can add new life to a familiar concept, the agile mechanical leopards eventually upping their game by trying to explode on you if you don’t kill them quickly enough, and there are some delightful designs like trumpeter automatons who go from jauntily playing their instrument to using it to fire chunks of ice like a blunderbuss. As nifty as you might find designs like a half-serpent robot though, the game uses a somewhat small spread of truly unique robots in total, and with the focus on learning enemy patterns to overcome them, this can mean even a new area isn’t really mustering up anything that tests your adaptability. Old foes might get a new elemental affinity or small upgrades to add an attack or two, but some of the thrill of exploration is dimmed as new distinct areas don’t always offer up novel opposition.

 

Bosses are usually large and creative concepts that might have flourished more if your access to oil was restricted. While the game will take a long time to let you even reach five oil burettes, it’s still not too hard to survive an encounter with the game’s impressively designed Titan mechs, and while they have creative attacks, it’s not too difficult to learn them in the span of the fight. An alchemist who mixes up elements to stain the battlefield with or a treasurer robot who unlocks its body to unleash attackers from within look impressive, but it seems more danger comes from raw but effective concepts like having the bishop robot have sawblades pop out of their base to repel you so you can’t lay on too much pressure. There is still some excitement to seeing how the next major boss manifests and the game can concoct even smaller encounters with substance thanks to Unstable foes who serve as miniboss versions of standard foes with some specific tricks to set them apart. However, the level of pressure to make overcoming such foes still feels off, battles lacking the excitement danger could bring but also not hollow since there is still some necessary skill and pattern identification required to earn your quick wins.

THE VERDICT: Steelrising is a little too accommodating with ways to offset the game’s difficulty and the limited range of unique enemy types already ensured its combat becomes simpler over time, but it can still have its moments of interesting exploration thanks to its alternate take on revolutionary Paris and even the battles often have some spark when you’re first encountering something new or meaningfully changed. It settles a bit too often into a familiar mold that makes it feel like your traveling isn’t challenged often enough, but you can find some swift and fluid robot fights often enough it doesn’t lose energy and it’s hard to deny the appeal of the historical setting where you’ll be the one storming the Bastille or learning how famous French revolutionaries adjust to this abnormal twist to this pivotal moment from the past.

 

And so, I give Steelrising for Xbox Series X…

An OKAY rating. Steelrising might be a good introduction to the Soulslike subgenre of action RPGs for those uncertain of their ability to handle the format, the game almost at times feeling like it was designed around alleviating some of the common concerns such high difficulty games often have. You can get a good amount of healing and yet it is limited enough that you can’t blindly charge into battle, and some items like the infinite stamina consumable can be used to push through a moment that troubles you. While the low enemy diversity does mean there aren’t as many novel experiences and surprises awaiting you as you head to the decent range of locations, it also means the pattern learning can be a more gradual process for a novice rather than needing to keep learning new threats. Steelrising maintains some degree of difficulty by adding in the minor variations and ensuring Unstable foes and Titans are present enough that you won’t just waltz through the adventure once you’ve come to understand the basic baddies, but more robots that fit new locations would definitely add to the excitement of exploration, as would stronger rewards for engaging with alternate paths or side quests. Being able to impact how the French Revolution plays out is a nifty motivation for engaging with the historical figures you encounter even if they often just send you down familiar roads for their associated tasks, but at the same time the game introduces new abilities to increase how you can explore a space so it at least has the foresight to alleviate some of the repetition it can’t help but have. Greater enemy variety could have already bumped the game up without needing to limit the player’s strength or options though, and perhaps having more unique enemy encounters throughout could even start to counterbalance the resource generosity to add some sting back into the action so victories are more satisfying to achieve.

 

Steelrising’s setting and concept does a lot of the legwork to keep it from losing its luster, it still fascinating to see a new robotic design, especially when the Titans whip out truly inspired attacks tied to their concept. It doesn’t merely coast on aesthetics since there is sound combat to be found, but sprinkling the alternate history elements throughout makes seeing and quickly slaying another snake robot easier to accept as it’s not the only form of stimulation. You will need to weave through enemy attacks and learn their movements if you want to aid this revolution properly, but the combat still has a way to go before the actual fights become as memorable as the well-realized sights.