Solar Ash

I love the story, I love the art, I love the music. Gameplay is initially phenomenal. I do have a lot of issues with it that hold it back.

- Too much dialog. Heat Machine made Hyper Light Drifter, a masterpiece in visual storytelling, but they learned no lessons from that, apparently. Rei needs to shut up sometimes. One of Echo's lines would've been infinitely more impactful if Rei didn't make one dumb unnecessary comment half an hour earlier (you'll know it when you see it).
- Late game is lacking in variety. They should've added more things later on in the game or maybe subway surfers at the bottom of the screen. The same gameplay mechanics with almost nothing added on to it gets repetitive after 6 hours.
I don't actually remember the other issues. But these two were the largest, anyway.

The other more negative reviews all are accurate to where the game is flawed: enemy combat, no punishment/meaningful upgrades, and meh story. But, where it excels, it really excels.

The movement and platforming remain the core aspect of the game and there are nice puzzles and iterations to present a steady challenge for you each level. The movement is so fluid and fun and can lead to really great stretches of sheer momentum when you're in the zone.

While there isn't any meaningful punishment, the boss battles can take a decent amount of time to complete from failed attempts. The vistas, sounds, and vibes are all A+.

I rate games on three factors: story, art, and gameplay. If 2/3 are great, it's a great game in my eyes. I think it's undeniable the art is great. For myself, I think that where the gameplay matters and what it is focusing on, it succeeds. The story to me is generic but not nearly bad compared to most games.

If you don't mind combat taking a backseat and for the game to challenge you mostly in platforming/puzzles, then this game is a gem.

I went into this game completely blind after looking forward to its Steam release. I am a big fan of Heart Machine's aesthetic sensibilities and this game is no slouch in that regard. There are some beautiful vistas here and the use of vertical landmarks helps the world feel cohesive while simultaneously making it easier to navigate the levels. Every area of the game has a distinct visual style and color palette with music that helps reinforce the tone. The music fell into the back of my mind for most of the game, unfortunately, but it was still enjoyable.

The game itself is a sparse collectathon platformer of sorts with a focus on fluid movement instead of tight jumps and acrobatic maneuvers. The controls feel responsive and the physics for the movement are satisfying, although I kept wishing that I could just hold down a boost button to gain speed. There is a boost button in the game, but it only provides a quick nudge forward with a short cooldown period. You can use the boost to gain extra jump distance and airtime when zooming off of ramps. The levels you skate around are "open zones" where you are assigned a set number of things to find or destroy. As you might expect, there are a few basic enemies dotted around to fight you. Every area has a boss that you kill by skating around on its body, essentially acting as timed platforming challenges. There is a clear "Shadow of the Colossus" vibe with these fights as you mount the beasts and struggle to stay attached to them long enough to deal damage. There is a great sense of scale and spectacle, too, since every boss is wandering or flying around the level that you just completed to get to the fight. These must have been quite the challenge to create and they were the biggest highlight of the game for me even though they all felt samey by the end. The essential objectives have waypoints and everything else is up to you to find, which I liked quite a bit. The game isn’t “holding your hand” for the most part. The levels aren't big enough for it to be annoying when you have to comb through it a few times to find the last part of a side quest, which is good because it keeps the pacing of the game brisk. Solar Ash isn't that long, but I think that ends up being a point in favor of it for reasons we'll get into…

So far the game's construction is good on paper, but this is where I pull the rug out from under you and reveal my true thoughts on the game: it's not engaging. All of the content outside of the movement mechanics and the bosses that are closely tied to them feel malnourished. The combat is even more bare bones than Super Mario 64 while you're traversing the levels; you attack with one button and most enemies die in only a handful of strikes. None of the enemies pose much of a threat to you. Even if you do get hit or die by their simple attack patterns, there isn't any kind of punishment for it. You lose a couple of seconds of your life and move on. That's fine, of course, but it also means that there is never any tension when a group of enemies gets the jump on you or are floating around an objective you need to complete. Even when playing on the hardest difficulty the enemies never registered as a threat to me. There isn’t much to find when you go exploring; there are some pink goo collectables that you can use to upgrade your health, evil goop eyeballs that you need to kill to activate the boss, and audio logs scattered about that give you some insight into the plot.

Sadly, the story is so dull that I can't even find much to say about it. Every level has audio logs from a specific character and they all have their own thoughts on their planet’s impending doom. The "Voidrunners" are trying to destroy the Ultravoid using some technology called the Starseed because it's threatening their planet, which is a serviceable premise for a game like this. Unfortunately, the dialogue is not very interesting stuff, nor does it tend to move the plot forward. I found it harder and harder to sit through 30-60 seconds of narration every time I discovered one of the audio logs. I'm disappointed that you have to sit and wait in a text modal for the voice lines to play in a game like this, they should have just let you move around while listening to every audio log. I can think of countless games that have taken the "audio log" approach to storytelling, but the biggest ones in my mind while playing this were System Shock and Bioshock. Both of those allow you to continue wandering around the environment or fight enemies while their audio logs run in the background.

Every time you beat a level, you get a cryptic cutscene between a pastel goth dommy mommy named Echo and Rei, the main character, where they debate the futility of trying to activate the Starseed to save the world. The first one of these cutscenes was interesting and I thought it was setting up some mysteries for the plot to explore. Who is Echo and why is she so mad? Why is the Starseed needle thing stabbed right through her chest? There are answers to all these questions (and more!) but they are not revealed until the very end of the game. There are some hints about the true nature of the Ultravoid and your circumstances scattered around the game, but the plot fails to move itself forward in any of the cutscenes between Echo and Rei. They all end up being the EXACT same kind of bickering and vague dialogue with the same conclusion, even down to using the same animations of Echo and Rei to start and end them. The game sets up its plot in the first 5 minutes and then boosts across the finish line in the last 5 minutes. Everything else is just waxing poetic about the meaning of life, the Ultravoid's threat to Rei's world, and fungi. This is "fine" for a video game, I guess, but I was thoroughly uninterested in the story by the end. The big emotional climax fell flat for me and the plot twist made me roll my eyes because of how little it means for Rei and Echo as characters. The entire finale felt forced, but I suppose it was about what I expected by that point.

I commend Heart Machine for trying something new and not just churning out a sequel to Hyper Light Drifter with higher production values, but the Sophomore slump hit this game hard. The game's strong art direction and boss fights are sadly not enough to save it from the Ultravoid of mediocrity. If you do want to play this thing, don’t buy it for full price.

Unnecesarry voice acting ruins the atmosphere and results in this game to not have an atmosphere as strong as Hyper Light Drifter. Movement is nice but because the levels have lots of rugged surfaces, it doesn't flow well enough. Exploration is hampered by not having more substantial rewards.

Solar Ash does have some cool ideas here and there, and although they were easy, bosses were really fun, but this game is a let down for me which makes it really difficult to recommend.

BB#11
Pc

Nice art-style and setting, beautiful atmosphere, the movement is great and satisfying, collectibles and secrets, nice bosses

BUT

Laughable combat, enemies take no skill to kill even at the highest difficulty, story-wise is not exceptional