Ashen

Hey there!
This game is pretty alright.
Wait for a sale, this game is worth $25, not the full price of $50(dlc included).
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Pros:
++(-*)Dynamic Exploration: If you see it, and it looks reasonable, you can probably get to it.
Jumping around and climbing the terrain to try and see if we could get to a place that looked out of reach was one of my buddy and I's favorite parts of the game. Very often we climb to places we think werent intended to get to, and find an item waiting for us to grab. Although, the items will come up later*.
++Fluid Combat: Games combat is very fast paced and skill based. With proper skill, you can control most combats, with difficult boss fights challenging your memory, and reactions. You are constantly being given new enemy types to play around.
+Atmosphere: Every new area you go through is a varied landscape posing new challenges and visual aspects with an accompanying soundtrack that work very well to set the tone the designers were going for. Dungeons at first feel stifling, confined, and horrifyingly dark while you are still weak. However, they feel oppressive, magnificent, and corrupted while you are strong.
+Graphics: The way this game was graphically designed is breathtaking, The lighting is great in this game, from when you're in small confined spaces, your light properly shines, reflecting off of walls and other surfaces really well, while massive caverns almost (and sometimes literally!) seem to supress the light your tiny lantern makes. The Artstyle is very simplistic, but the things that need to be detailed are. You're faceless, because you were a blank slate. Gefn, however, is highly detailed, being a goddess of sorts.
+Staying Together: While out adventuring, you will stay with your friend as long as both of you remain alive, and do not return to Vagrants rest. Vagrants rest, the hub town, is the only place where you can not be with another player, otherwise the entire world is travelable together. You will even stay together after defeating bosses, if you so wish.
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Neutrals:
=Story: The story, while having some interesting moments like meeting Gefn for the first time, or certain other suprising moments, was ultimately very bland, and not surprising. A Heroes Journey is what this story is, and it doesn't stray from that path.
=Animations: They're okay, not the worst I've seen. Definetly not the best.
+=Controls: While the controls reward you if you use precise movements and attacks, it is easy to overexert yourself by Action Queueing by inaccurate, or overusage of the various controls.
=Challenge: The Game is difficult, but fair. Satisfying in difficulty, but not brutal. Died more times to gravity and drowning than enemies thrown at us. Only died about 30 times split between us, with more than half of those being accidental deaths due to falling. Some bosses were challenging, but only two required more than 2 tries to finish off.
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-=Customization: (Full section of each aspect of customization here)
-Armor&Shields: This is a Negative because there are only a small amount of armor and shields in the game, (12 Armors/Shields in the base game with the DLC bringing 5 gimmick armors, and 2 shields.) This is only made worse by the fact that Armors and Shields have direct upgrades. There are no reasons to use some armor/shields over other ones, at all. Light Armors are all outshined by a certain set, and same said about heavy armors. However, if you just ignore the bonuses from the armors, and focus on fashion the stuff is pretty varied. My favorite was the heavy armor set Tyrant's Plating which is straight up worse than Celestial Aegis. Matched well with Gefn's Blessing, and it allowed me my facial hair. The Defiler's Veil, the Light Armor, is straight up better than every other light armor in the game. It also matches well with the Guardians Pact.
=Weapons: Weapons have 2 different styles, 1handed or 2handed, and 2 different types, blunt or sharp. Blunt weapons focus on stuns and higher base damage, while sharp weapons have critical hit% and base damage that lowers the higher the crit% is. Each weapon type (blunt/sharp(1hand/2hand)) only has 4 different movesets to choose from. If you find a moveset you like, you're likely to find a weapon with some variation of weapon types listed above at some point. There are enough weapon variations to make a varied build.
+=Relics&Talismans: Objects you find progressing through the story or defeating bosses that give you various buffs, like the ability of everytime you make a charge attack, a successful hit resaults in an AoE burst that does 10% more damage, and stuns 200% harder. Talismans are runes you can inscribe onto the relics that give you various buffs. Anywhere from Increasing in damage as you get lesser health, to subtracting 25% from armor stamina penalties. You can make some varied builds using these, but there are some talismans that are obviously better than others.
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Cons:
----Limited Storage: There is a storage chest in the hub town. It is limited in storage space. You can not collect every item in the game, and keep them at town, even having to forgoe older equipment (even if its obsolete) to make room for new items and equipment. There isn't even a way to sell items to vendors so at the very least you're making money back, rather than just discarding them forever. If you're a hoarder, or a Collector, this will piss you off. (-*)The wonderful exploration and item finding earlier becomes a negative as SOON as you have to decide if you want to pick up an item, or keep something else in your inventory, especially because most consumables only stack to 9, and thankfully the plentiful upgrade materials dont. This is my number 1 most hated thing about this game.
-Multiplayer: While the dropin/dropout online feature works properly, the game is pretty dead. I recommend playing this together with a friend as I did (hopefully you get it on sale!), as the developers intended you to find random people to adventure with, while that just does not happen.
-Connectivity: Co-op is peer2peer. It can be good or bad, but lag can create moments where you're seeing enemies phase into and out of existance as the game tries to read where they are. Also, connecting to another person is instanced, while there's no loading screens, one or the other will be brought into the others world, which may resault in enemies respawning regularly if you have a bad connection.
-Length: As you may notice I have 21 hours of gameplay. This was an hour of premptively playing the game before getting my buddy to buy it, and 20 hours of co-op playthrough where we finished everything, and collected everything. We saw everything this game has to offer in 20 hours, and that included the DLC which was roughly only 2 hours long. My friend and I are Vets of similar games, so we may have finished it quicker than others, but if you're used to how these games play, you'll fly through it.
-Town Upgrades: Scoria, the ingame money, will at a certain point, lose its value, as it is possible to buy everything in the village, which there is no reason not to buy everything, as Scoria is plentiful especially later on, and not have anything more to spend it on aside from cheap consumables which you may not even want to get due to the limited storage mentioned earlier.
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If you got this far, thanks for reading. Game is a good game, with severe flaws that hold it back from being a great game.

This game deserves way more love!
I hardly ever see anyone talking about it, and I really don't know why it's so under the radar...
It has almost everything I seek in a Souls-like:
- Very good combat and animations;
- Incredible athmosfere;
- A lot of exploration.
I must say this review will seem quite negative, but that's simply because I tend to remember things I dislike way more than things I like in pretty much everything I consume. But that doesn't necessarily mean my overall opinion is bad... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Anyway, let's begin:
The controlls all feel very familiar if you are a souls fan, and the combat is also very similar.
It's all about learning the time to dodge, to hit, learning the attack pattern of the enemies, and learning the best ways to use the moveset of your weapon.
I also like how the weapons got balanced. Those with higher damage will mostly have low critical chance or either a worse moveset, those with a better moveset will either lack raw damage or critical chance and so on. So there are options for all playstyles and there are very few objectively bad weapons.
The art in the game is simply beautiful and the atmosphere makes every area feel unique and give you a different feeling. Caves and dungeons get really dark, making it mandatory to carry a properly upgraded lamp. Which you can always place on the ground, in case you want to go for two-handed weapons in such places.
I also like how the areas are quite big and open, so there's plenty of room to explore and find secret items hidden in every corner. Sometimes you can even find hidden paths, but they are not always rewarding.
There are some interesting details like the ost played in the main town changing slightly as you progress through the game. The way as the town grows as you progress, and how the NPCs seem to gain better gear also makes you feel like you are making some actual difference in that world.
It has a quite interesting lore too, if you dig into it, but it's easily misseable. I may look more into it later...
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But of course, the game is not perfect. And has a few problems:
First the progression is a bit awkward: you spend the entire game saving Scoria and feeling like you never have enought to upgrade all the things you need. Until you get to the last two regions and suddenly gets overwhelmed with tons of it, so you get very excited to go back to the main town to do some real progress with your gear... Just to realize you was in the very final upgrade of pretty much everything, and no longer have anything actually important to use the whole bunch of Scoria you have left...
The bosses were a bit disapointing for me with a few exceptions.
Most of them just feel like regular enemies, but with a huge health bar...
They often have one unique mechanic in the fight, but it's never a big deal, and they have mostly generic movesets that willl hardly ever change during the fight. So they are fairly easy, to the point that there's only one boss in the entire game that I didn't kill in the first try... (without counting the DLC, since I didn't play it yet)
I also must say that I really dislike how Ashen deals with enemies respawns. It being by time instead of interacting with a checkpoint completely takes away the feeling of walking freely by a "clean" area. And it's even worse in closed dungeons. Meeting enemies you already killed when you walk backwards in a closed dungeon makes no sense at all!
Another issue is the multiplayer, which is pretty much dead if you don't call a friend to play with you. And even if you bring one, it's fairly easy to lose the possibility to connect in case you do a main objective before your friend.
And if you are alone you are left with the AI companion, which seems to alternate between two states of mind:
The "decent helper" and the "complete nuts". When in the second state, the AI will just do some nonsense like jump off the nearest cliff, become irresponsive at a random spot until you force it to respawn, get confused hitting the air while trying to save you from a grab attack, etc...
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And besides all that, the game could really use some quality of life changes such as:
- Unlimited storage space (honestly, you can't even store all the different weapons and armour in the storage...)
- Unrestricted inventory slots. I mean, why do I need to have a permanent empty slot just because I don't want to use potions? Why can't I just place any other consumable there? Or why can't I just have another one handed weapon equipped instead of my two handed?
- A better keybinding for the lances (having the same key as regular weapon swapping is just annoying, and creates bad situations when you need to swap between 1h and 2h quickly)
- Less multiplayer restrictions;
- And maybe the possibility to place markers in the map, so you don't have to remember everything by head when you backtrack...
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So, my final grade:
8.5/10 in coop
7/10 with AI
Probably the best souls-like I've played in a long time, but could be even better!

Genre - Dark Fantasy Soulslike with quirky graphic style
Another game that was an Epic exclusive, but it was worth the wait and there is now an added DLC that was worth a purchase too.
The graphical style might seem lazy to some, but I found it endearing and quirky. The models and terrains still look good to me.
There are only single or double handed clubs or axes to use as your main weapon, but you do get shields, spears and shields as utility items too. The AI is actually quite useful and you will rely on them in a few fights. I had a few real people jump in for co-op, but this wasn't very common.
The enemies are actually varied enough throughout the course of the game and the setting changes enough to keep your interest. The story is pretty forgettable, but the rebuilding of your main village is an attractive reason to keep plodding along.
It isn't the hardest Soulslike I've played, but is still a challenge. I do think they got carried away with the last boss though, as I nearly rage quit the game before looking up a few hints.

7/10 on sale below 15€
5/10 at 33€ because that price tag is NOT worth it
French and english versions below:
TLDR: N'achète pas pour jouer à DarkSouls mais pour jouer à quelque chose de différent. Recommandé pour les gens en manque de nouvelle expérience action-aventure
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TLDR: Dont buy this to play another Darksouls ripoff, buy this to discover a new game with inspiration in DarkSouls mecanics and handling. Totally recommend to people lacking some action-adventure games in their life.
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Un peu trop linéaire a mon gout mais le level design est au rendez-vous, le lore est cool, les personnages sont pas tous égaux en qualité, le gameplay est solide, manque de variété et de profondeur.
le dernier boss est pourri
les donjons sont challenging en mode normal, et y'a un deuxieme mode avec 50% stam et hp en moins qui rend le jeu vraiment vraiment difficile.
Je conseille aux fans de DS-like en manque d'expériences nouvelles ainsi qu'aux fans d'aventure, de challenge et de poésie, car oui c'est un jeu très poétique et ça fait tout a fait son charme
Je déconseille aux gens qui ne peuvent QUE voir l'action-aventure par le prisme de DS pcq ils finiront déçus
Maintenant je vais traduire tout ce que je viens de dire dans une review en anglais.
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The game is a tad linear but the level design is decent.
Story and lore are well explained and there is plenty there for people to explore.
Characters are not equal in quality.
Last boss is absolute shit.
Dungeons and areas are challenging and can sometimes feel a bit cheesy
Gameplay loop is ok-tier: explore all the maps, get all the loot and cash, discover and upgrade equipment as you go.
I recommend to the people loving the DS-like formula that are looking for a more poetic and linear experience
I DO NOT recommend at the normal price tag and/or people who can only see that kind of games through Dark Souls prism because they will end up totally jaded about how the game ISN'T Dark Souls.

TL;DR: Indie Souls with a beautiful art style, open world-ish level design and actual platforming, but with rough combat mechanics and few boss fights. Absolutely don't bother if you've never played Dark Souls and/or dislike the formula. But if you've already played all the other Souls games and their clones, then this is definitely worth a try, I enjoyed Ashen more than Code Vein or The Surge. The game is very short however, only a little over 20 hours for the whole thing including the DLC, less if you don't bother exploring much. I recommend grabbing the base game + DLC bundle on a good sale.
General impressions:
- Honestly very cool aesthetic and art style. The game can look absolutely stunning at times and has a very unique tribal/prehistoric setting.
- It's a coop game. While it's possible to beat it solo, a lot of the encounter design expects 2 players, either due to large groups of enemies or the need for one player to pull aggro while the other does DPS. The game gives you an AI partner at all times who's VERY competent at combat but the pathfinding can be poor, and they can get stuck somewhere (they'll teleport to you after a while) or fall off a cliff (in which case you will be stuck solo until the next bonfire).
- The multiplayer is seamless (like in Journey). If you notice your NPC partner acting more independent then it's probably a human player. Players get matched randomly if they're in the same area but will appear as normal NPC's to each other. You can use a password to match with your friend and play through the whole game together, both players can complete their objectives at the same time unlike Dark Souls.
- Generally very tight level design with good use of both open world and indoor areas, lots of platforming freedom (nothing is automated, no invisible walls, if it looks like you can make that jump then you can). Most areas have a distinct look with few reused assets. But on the downside there are no souls-like shortcuts, if you die 3/4 way into a long and hard area you will have to redo everything.
- The game is centered around building a town and doing quests for the NPC's there. There's no traditional level up system, but each NPC unlocks a crafting stand (e.g. estus reinforcement or weapon upgrades) and completing quests raises your health/stamina. The town grows over time without your input and it's really cool to see new buildings and decorations every time you visit the hub.
- The only weapon types are axes and clubs, in either 1 handed or 2 handed variations (you can't hold a 1 handed weapon in 2 hands and vice versa), no swords. Blunt weapons can stagger opponents (there's a poise mechanic), while axes and hatchets can crit (1.8x damage) and generally have a higher DPS. Some weapons have clear combos (e.g. R1-R2 or R1-R1-R2-R2), some are just R1 spam + a slow R2. Still, some weapons are clearly better than the others.
- There are also throwing spears which are a consumable. R1 is just a poke and doesn't waste the spear, while R2 throws it. They generally fulfill the same function as bows in Dark Souls, but there's only manual aiming which can be tricky.
- Equipment comes in one piece armor sets, most of them aren't very useful due to heavy stamina penalties. You can also equip 4 talismans + 1 relic which are similar to rings in Dark Souls.
- There's a lantern mechanic, somewhat similar to Dragon's Dogma except it must be held in hand and prevents the use of shields and 2 handed weapons. Many harder areas in this game are pitch black and require lantern use. However it's possible to put the lantern on the ground and pull out your 2 handed weapon or simply let your partner light the way.
- No backstabs or parries (although you can shield bash). No kicking either, but there's a charged attack (hold R2) that serves a similar function (guard breaking).
- The enemies are all humanoid with few exceptions (dogs, spiders, crabs etc).
Poor design choices:
- For whatever reason, your inventory/storage space is limited. This comes at odds with the Souls system where each weapon is unique and viable from start to finish if upgraded, yet there's not enough space to store each weapon/armor set/shield in the game. Eventually you'll have to discard at least the shields, lanterns and some consumables. Simply doubling the storage space would have avoided this issue.
- No New Game Plus, there's an optional hard mode instead, but it simply halves your health and stamina.
- Target lock is dropped if you sprint. I'd imagine a lot of Souls players open their combo with a running attack and thus make sure to lock on to the enemy before running in, but here your lock just drops automatically so you HAVE to play unlocked if you want running attacks. Very weird decision.
- Enemies can use spears together with shields, but the player can't. Can't use the lantern with spears either.
Bosses:
There are only 6 bosses in the game, 5 in the base game + 1 more in the DLC. The first two bosses are basically regular enemies with maybe 1 extra attack. The third boss is IMO the only well designed boss in the game, it has a large moveset with clearly telegraphed but punishing attacks, there's a cool gimmick that completely changes the fight once you realize it, and it's visually impressive. The fourth boss is more of a MMO raid boss (and the game even gives you an extra companion for that fight), it's just a large dude that floats around and does like 2-3 basic attacks on repeat, the difficulty only comes from his large health pool and the many adds he spawns.
And then there's the final boss which is just a regular human enemy with a regular weapon and no unique moves, but you will die quite a few times because the boss has 2 large health bars, can 1-2 shot you and there's no bonfire, the whole mini-dungeon must be redone if you die. The DLC boss is a bit better designed than the others (although still not as good as the third boss), but has the longest run up with 30-40 enemies that can't be just run past, although thankfully only 1 health bar and very easy to kill if your partner survives the run.
DLC:
It's an extra dungeon that can be accessed pretty early in the game (and net you powerful loot). There are 3 long-ish sections + a boss fight. Same tight level design but with all new assets, while the enemies are humanoid and basically reskins of their counterparts from the base game. Still, very cool aesthetic and can be quite atmospheric as it has a somewhat survival horror vibe with the lizardfolk hissing in the darkness and sneaking up on you. Has some new weapons and upgrades, but the "new" armors are just base game NPC skins (including the head).

Just writting a fun fact whenever you firstly start the game.
Whenever you start the game for the first time, Windows sent me a message to get the authorization to connect on Epic Games servers.
And I do play the game on Steam. XD
On a serious note, I enjoy this game. As the people in the reviews mainly focused to the Tag "Similar to Dark Souls" really thought that game would be an exact copy/paste mechanic from the beginning to the end.
Yes you lose your coins when you die and you can get them back to where you died. Yes, the fight mechanics feel like Dark Souls. But to me, I just lowered that Dark Souls feelings and you do get an Half open world game with an interesting world.
The secondary quests are really important to do because you do get rewards to improve your stats or adding more NPCS/Options in your main village. I would agree with some players about that you do encounter so many drops and loots with spearheads and Moss/Roots than gears. But gears come in either as an Axe or a Blunt weapon, a single hand or a dual hand handle. As you can use both in your gear slot, both use their own strengths and weaknesses as each one of them has different stats of damage, critical chance or blunt effects. It is also good to manage your inventory before you will get your stash, later in game. you really don't have a bank or something similar. Inventory management is a must at the beginning of the game.
For the story, it is pretty alright. It is not the best but it keeps you interesting to continue the game.
For the enemies, they are a few, yes. But their variants when you go further to the game they can really hurt you and die in a few seconds. Watch out with the big encounters.
In overall, Ashen is a small game. Maybe not with at its full price, but it has its charm to play. Coop/AI bot or going without a NPC are both optional to experience the game itself. I do enjoy it and I can tell you that it worths the experience to play it if you prefer to play the game as a low or lite version of Dark Souls.

Alright, why does this game have "mixed" reviews again?
Pros:
- Graphics and Atmosphere are amazing, i love the "low-poly(ish)" art style of the game and some of the environement were stunning!
- The combat syteme is not perfect but it works pretty well, obviously it resemble dark souls but it lack some diversity in weapons (all the weapons kinda work the same way unfortunately).
- The overall world and L O R E are pretty neat, they're not the most interesting thing but i really enjoyed it.
- The sound design and animation makes the game feels very satisfying in combat.
- Also music's pretty neat.
Cons:
- The game is not really meant for multiplayers even though you constantly are followed by a companion during the whole game wich is a shame.
- That said companion hav a very dumb AI ad sometimes won't work perfectly.
- Exploring in the game is very fun but you don't fell very rewarded considering you only get the same few items during the whole game.
Conclusion:
In conclusion I really enjoyed the game, it is far from perfect but it is a very good game. Most negative reviews are because of the "lack" of a multiplayer (coop exist but it's very poorly done so it might as well be inexistant). The second point people don't like about the game is that it isn't dark souls... Yes you have a map with a very clear objective point, yes the world feels pretty linear (even though exploring the ruins is a tone of fun in my opinion) and yes you have a companion to help you during the whole game. So Ashen feels like a good introduction to the "Souls-Like" genre for more casual people. It doesn't make the game less fun, it's just different.
I think people have treated this game poorly and it deserves better reviews.