The Surge

The Surge is not explicitly a bad game, it's just not for me.

There are a lot of good ideas in The Surge, just lacking in execution.
Let's take for example, the main reason why I decided to buy this game and try it out- the limb system! If you just watched trailers you might mistakenly believe that if you cut the body part off of an enemy, you just get that body part added to your inventory- then you can attach that body part to your exoskeleton?

Nope. That's not how it works, you have to do that dozens of times, which then allows you to finally craft the exo part that you want to attach to your guy. Unnecessary grinding added to combat, which makes the combat repetitive and only occasionally rewarding.

Now take the fact that you have to grind for exo part materials by utilizing the execution combat mechanic and then combine that with poor level design- basically a failed attempt at recreating the layered and rewarding level connection ideas in the dark souls series, you end up traveling through a maze of different levels and access points to different areas. At times it feels the different parts of a level are too connected, that there are too many shortcuts built in.

It would have been better to make the levels less compressed, bigger, a little bit more open with longer breaks between discovering shortcuts with more rewards peppered through the level in not so obvious places to encourage exploration more. In the dark souls series, the rewards you find allow you to achieve certain objectives with weapon upgrades sooner and in souls games there normally isn't an armor upgrade system, but in the surge it is an all encompassing system with artificial power scaling built in. Anyways, in souls games you are rewarded heavily for exploration and capability in overcoming difficult enemies and bosses as well as pre-existing knowledge of where things are and how different levels function. It is not like that in the Surge, you are not going to find a lot of really useful items that will help you gain a shortcut to becoming more powerful.

Everything is locked behind the grind, which isn't a horrible horrible grind, but the grind in this game pairs badly with the level design and the combat system.

What I mean by that is that you will get wrecked if you don't grind to upgrade your stuff and your exo skeleton acts both as a weapon and as an armor system. It would have been much better to have an exo grade system with different levels of busted exo parts that you can still use, but to find a fresh one you would need to adventure more and hopefully run into rare enemies that have good condition exo parts, that you don't need to grind for, just kill for. I would keep the current level requirement system for equipping exo parts and perk modifiers and still have that tied to souls grinding. That is a good idea, I just don't think that both having to grind for souls to level up so that you can equip the exo part you are trying to craft pairs well with other mechanics.

Basically, if the game worked the way it said it did on the cover, it would be a better game. The level design reminds me a little bit of if someone tried to do metroidvania level design in a 3rd dimension, which could be really good! Just not with the way they executed it.

Another thing that would make this game a whole lot better is if the developer was able to implement a more randomized enemy pool and a more randomized loot drop system. Adding some roguelite elements would enhance the game play of a game like this heavily.

Maybe you don't randomize all of the levels, maybe you only add some RNG mechanics to some parts of the level. This leads me to my other issue with the game, which is the fact that it is a linear story driven game. It's not that I hate linear story driven games that feel as if you are on train tracks and don't have any choices in how the game story plays out- but I dislike them a lot more if they have these other issues present.

The aesthetic is really good, the polish is really good. It is a complete game, I just am not sure if the developer got really good feedback from play testers on the progression system or combat system. The combat system does provide a lot of options in combat, which is great! I love that. But the dodge has no I-frames, and there is still a stamina cost for blocking! Which is kind of rough if you are trying to get through the game faster with not as much grinding.

Final thoughts
Its a game that some people might enjoy the way it is, but I don't have the patience or the desire to play through grinding systems that I encounter in a lot of other games especially if other issues are present. There are certain parts of the game I really actually do like! But because of the other problems, I can't really recommend it.

At some point I'll have to check out the sequel or watch someone play through it to see if they actually really fixed these problems or if some of them just got worse. If you read this far, thank you and I hope you think about these things before you decide to purchase!

This is great. My only gripe is the dlcs feel like content that should have been included in the base game. I'm not a fan of the trend of releasing unfinished products so you can extract more money down the road.

I recommend this game even I have more Cons than Pros.

Pros:
* Atmosphere
* Good combat. Finishing moves feel satisfying
* Intricate level design
* Good build and weapon variety. The "testing range" is fun and challenging
* Bosses are not too hard. Which I don't mind. The difficulty is in navigating the levels carefully

Cons:
* Early game is harder than late game
* Combat has depth but you can cheese most fights with the sliding attack move
* On one hand, the levels are intricately connected. But visually everything looks the same so you can't localise yourself properly. You have to make notes or check a walkthru

I wanted to like The Surge, I really did. In theory, it has all the right soulslike elements in place: the level design, the combat, the character progression, but I couldn't shake the feeling that it's all just... bland. Due to the garbage scattered everywhere the areas feel difficult to read, the combat lacks the satisfactory "oomph" and the character progression and equipment upgrades don't feel meaningful enough to me. The introductory sequence where the main character is still bound to his wheelchair felt pointless to me - it easily could have been a cinematic and it wouldn't be detrimental to the experience whatsoever.

The setting seems to be heavily inspired by Blomkamp's "Elysium" and while executed well, this kind of dystopian sci-fi has by now become so cliché that I can't find it interesting enough.

At the same time I can't honestly say that it's a bad game. What it does, it does right. The limb-cutting mechanic is a nice addition to the genre, there's hardly any jank and the game runs smooth as butter. It's just not for me I guess.

I wasn't expecting to enjoy this as much as I did. Very interesting take on souls-likes! It's a bit janky at times, but I do recommend at least trying it out.

I can't believe how quickly I fell in love with this game. It has good story premice, amazing setting and very brutal combat system. Weapon impact is beyond fantastic, you can slice off body parts from enemies and also feel the weight of your tools of justice. Level design is pretty solid, you always making progression to unlock new parts of maps (which are HUGE) or shortcuts. Exploration is always rewarded.
Overall in my opinion The Surge is a very underrated game, it deserves much better.

although its the only souls like ive played i believe its a great introduction for souls like games (or not but you should still buy it and then play it)

i loved the game , mechanics , story and the difficulty and many more
i do suggest to others to buy it , its also quite cheap during sales considering the quality of the game (i think it couldve been set a bit more higher)

I like it and also hate it, I love killing the enemies but i hate it to be killed many times until i rage quit but still playing it in the next day

A good souls like. Nice cut off limbs combat with a great story!

Good game, great unique souls like. If you like this one, definitely buy the sequel. Surge 2 improves in every way gameplay wise.

Good game
But boss is suck, sometime boss just move and you die, no atk animation, just move their hand 1mm

Best souls like game on the market. Amazing dark atmosphere, design and great combat system.

There's a bug which stops you from interacting with NPC's and developer decided to fix it by... ignoring it. Nice.

So, there are fewer iframes than ds2 with 0 adaptability and the game is just narrow corridors filled with anemies that can and will insta lock and kill in one or two hits, the blocking also sucks. I don't get it, how am I supposed to play this game? there is no proper way to avoid an attack, at the very least the game doesn't teach it, it only tells press A to dodge and press LB to block, which are mostly useless.
Also, the enemy tracking and AI are insulting, they just slide the distance of a football field to hit you and resets Aggro really easily, wich can be cheased.

Excellent game, so is the sequel. Play this instead of Mortal Shell.

Atmospheric and awesome game. Pretty clunky at the start and takes some time to get used to.

I finished the game few years ago and It was fun, both gameplay and story. I recommend it if you like Soulsaliki

very mid, bad camera control, bad combat system, repetitive enemies, horrible storytelling. Overall not a very appealing game, 4/10.

Love/hate relationship, mostly me loving the game and it hating me.

Was disappointed at the gameplay loop honestly, had high hopes for it, well it's still kind of enjoyable... 8.5/10

One of the best in the genre!
Difficult but fair, and most of all - extremely fun!
I can't point out one thing I dislike about this game.
Also, the art style is just superb. It's sci-fi, but still grounded and has a modern industrial feel to it.
Great atmosphere as well.
Can't recommend it enough!

A good take on the souls-like.

Not recommended at all, the game is like a dark soul with nausea and feeling sick. The motion is shit and giving you sickness. Thou shalt be dizzy throughout the gameplay and design.

Just finished my first playthrough and I have to say it's one of the best Souls-like games out there. The gameplay is fluid, responsive and fun. The atmosphere kind of gives sci-fi horror elements which is one of my favorites.

If you are fan of Souls-likes and like movies such as "Edge of Tomorrow" and "Elysium" this is a must play.

Now I have to decide if I should start NG+ and try other weapons and/or builds or The Surge 2, which I heard is also great and with way better gameplay.

10/10. One of the best games I've ever played. The story was great. The visuals were amazing. The game is kind of an open world. So many paths that become shortcuts. Just the right difficulty to die a lot at the start until you figure things out. Lots of weapon and armor choices. My first run through took me about 44 hours. After you beat it you can start over called NG+. You keep all your gear and levels and play through the game. I just started that and it's very difficult in the first section. This will be fun.

love the grind. lots of gears to choose from

This game blew me away. I wasn't expecting to enjoy it as much as I did. There is some jank, but if there was no jank, would you really be playing a Soulslike game? 8/10

This is more a rant than a thoroughgoing review, so take it as it is:
Did the concept of "shortcuts" or "checkpoints" murder and cannibalize the parents of someone who made this game?
Like I don't think there are many of us who play Demon's Souls or the original Dark Souls and say "these games are absurdly generous with bonfires and elevators to get back to bonfires that you can activate two thirds of the way through the level, I want less of that." Maybe I'm wrong! If you want to have to backtrack for 20 minutes through a level every time you die, or just want to level up or upgrade a weapon, then hell yeah, do it. You'll love this game. This game just seems very much designed to enable dumbass redditors to say "well ackshully, if you had found this one pixel 63% of the way through the level you'd be able to backtrack to 42% of the way through the level..."
It's doubly frustrating because there are cool things about this game. I kinda want to like it, all in all. But god, they make it so hard to with shit like this.
Also when you press circle on the controller to exit out of a menu, sometimes it decides to interpret that as *also* pressing circle on your controller again to use one of your (limited) healing items if you linger a quarter second too long? Just how the hell does this pass through beta testing. Shame-tier.
I'm just gonna replay Elden Ring now, or maybe a Nioh game.

its like a darksouls and space marine love child only buy this game if you like challenging combat because this is not beginner friendly and you will die a lot

Slow start with heavy learning curve for me, even after other souls likes like Eldenring and Dark Souls 1 and 3, but once I got the hang of it I was in love. Low amount of instructions to learn how to play and black Cerberus achievement was really annoying but overall after 100% I just want to do it again. Amazing DLC as well. Surge 2 does not scratch the same itch but I can understand how some people would prefer it as it focuses heavy on a parry system.

Soulslike of a different generation, taking mostly inspiration from harsh mechanics found in Dark Souls 1. Back in 2017 I did my first run on XBOX, now my second on Steam Deck. After playing many soulslikes, it's more clear to me now what The Surge does well and what not:

+ Sci-fi horror set in the near future.
– Flat NPCs and sidequests that take away immersion.
+ Character build variety through collecting and printing exoskeleton parts.
+ Easy to change build.
+ Challenging combat with targeting limbs.
– Messy hit boxes.
+ Humanoid enemies feel well balanced for 1v1
– Fighting multiple enemies messes things up, but the placement forces this at times.
– One robotic enemy type make me ragequit like no other game.
– Low enemy variety.
+ Circular level design with tons of shortcuts.
– Shortcuts often create more confusion and create boring walk backs.
+ Cool bosses with unique designs.
– Very annoying timer before reclaiming scrap (souls).

A solid 6/10. Great attempt but lacks refinement. Play the sequel for a much smoother experience, but this one is still cool (if you have the patience and dedication).

The gameplay is quite smooth and feels nice. The story isn't anything mindblowing, but it is pretty enjoyable. Plenty to play.

like dark souls but totally confounding. just play that instead.

Works smoothly, looks cool, the impression is spoiled only by the monotony of mazes and enemies.

Cyber Souls; Prepare to commit several OSHA violations

Great game well done for a syfy souls like game.

not as bad as people making it seem. i look for mindless fun when playing games, this is IT.

This game is so ass and so amazing at the same time. Also more like the splurge heh, like cum

the dodge felt weird and didnt like the limb targeting

its a good game when it comes to souls likes, its a little harder than dark souls honestly but that could be due to less i frames or something? or im just bad

Not my thing, the limb targeting is more a gimmick than anything unique or interesting, basically lock on, rotate to the least armored part, now play it like any other game. You might want to target parts specifically to get the armor or weapon or something from that limb, but when you have to do that multiple times to get the things necessary to build and upgrade those weapons it doesn't really feel like something that needed to be added to the game.

the world doesn't really seem that interesting or that it has a story that really grabs me, it's just trying to be vague and going "wow what happened here" but I don't really want to spend 60 hours in a souls like if I don't really care about that hook and the gameplay outside of that just doesn't feel good.

It's been a while since I tried it but essentially it's extremely easy to get lost in the maps due to their odd layouts, the first boss I got to seemed interesting but just shoots missiles out before running around swinging it's feet like a demented beyblade and it felt more like I just got lucky than I really beat them. I think the timer for picking up your old nano cache or whatever it's souls equivalent was is a neat idea, but when I legitimately can't tell where the fuck I need to go in order to get where I was it feels just unfair and not that it was up to me. While standard enemy fights are pretty okay, I just wasn't captivated and felt that there wasn't a base level of fairness to the experience that I felt getting better could have let me get through, and when they give you a drone with a laser gun that becomes a new gimmick shoved in there I was just done. I don't really need to play as a strange man I don't really connect to and can't customize, I don't care about the world, the main gimmick doesn't really matter and the drone being there to make up for the last boss shooting tracking missiles is just... I keep thinking about why I should play this game over any other souls like and the answer is pretty much you shouldn't, it's just a bit of a mess in most of every aspect.

Amazing and underrated game.

This is a souls-like game with sci-fi elements which works very well for this game. Especially the part gathering system which is very unique and engaging even in NG+ and beyond.

Overall, this game is worth buying.

At first when I played this game I got frustrated and put it down for a few years. I eventually decided to finish it out, and I am extremely happy that I did. over the course of my playthrough, I had ups and many downs. I felt a few enemies and fights towards the end felt unfair. However, after persevering, I managed to beat the game. I had to clap afterwards for the amazing game and ending that I experienced.

some people may deride this game, but I found great fun in both the combat and slicing off limbs to loot gear, and the surprisingly engaging lore and depth. I look forward to attempting the second game in the future.

i finished all the campaign, i think this game is like training game for any player who want to try dark soul vibe, the enemy and boss got really slow and ez movement to learn compare to any dark soul out there like lies of p or wu long that i alrdy beat too, but still its fun and good game overall.

Level design can be painful most of the time, but overall very nice game with awesome graphics and combat mechanics.

it's cool but it is the game that made me see that i REALLY dislike Souls-Like games, i just dont have a desire to keep playing the same fight 200 times.. and dying over 1 tiny flaw or incorrect gear or lack of heal, ect.

personally, there are too many games to play, so i never finished it even though i want to, i just keep getting a bigger stack of 100s of other games i find more fun to play all the way through.

the story is some dope stuff about how corporations and technology are messed up... but there are a lot of instances where i personally feel the game could be more fun, and again, this is during fight scenes, lol.

also, i dislike this... collection of weapons stuff than you cant get a unique weapon ... unless you meet certain requirements, at least give a guy a hint on how to get a unique weapon in-game.

love this for the story, not a big fan of the gameplay though... i'm stuck on trying to Max those Western Trials. i didnt give up because i lost or lack motivation, i gave up because i could be doing anything else, so i decided to just love life more, this game taught me that.... lol. Iron Maus!

i like how the map connects but too much backtracking too....especially considering you die while running back and forth, lmao

Still one of the best souls-likes along with The Surge 2

Decent soulslike if you are feeling the itch and don't have one to play.

It's alright.
Balancing is a bit weird, as the difficulty does not seem to curve, but rather stairstep -- where it repeatedly smashes the player against a wall, until a certain point is reached (either through grinding, upgrading, or determination) after which the difficulty stays flat for a while again.

I would prefer if the story was told a bit more straightforward. As it stands, NPCs are purposefully vague about stuff everyone in-lore should know about until very late into the game. But then again, this is the type of game where story is often ignored anyway.

Honestly and underrated game. One of the best non-Souls Souls games I've played so far.

Performance and graphics:
IMHO the graphics are excellent: the game looks great in 4K. I played at 60 FPS and felt the performance was also excellent. I noted maybe one or two periods of very brief lag. I didn't notice any major technical issues or game breaking bugs. The only issue I really noted is that a few times when booting the game, it would have a grainy appearance and things looked lower resolution, but it would correct when I alt tabbed twice. Overall a beautiful and technically proficient title.

Score: 8

Gameplay:
I really enjoyed my time with The Surge. Mind you it took me 4 attempts to finally reach that level of appreciation. While the combat is excellent, the difficult curve much greater than I was accustomed to initially. It felt like I got one shotted so easily, bosses were incredibly hard, and I didn't have a very good understanding of how to build my character or how to outfit my character for success. I ended up sticking predominantly with faster weapons including dual rig and staffs, and that made the game much more reasonable to play through as I was able to stunlock standard enemies and move in and out of attack range much easier once I obtained better implants: elemental damage really ups your damage output as well.

The weapon and armor variety was very different than other games I've played and was a welcome change. The techno-futuristic design of the different rigs and weapons created a cool vibe and with the flashy combat animations I started to really enjoy the combat once I got a better handle on it. The enemy design was also really good. I liked the mixture of nano-humanoid enemies and robots. I'll admit that I wish the variety among humanoid enemies was greater, but thematically it would not make sense, and while it got a bit tiresome seeing them wear the same armors I had access to, the dismemberment mechanic was really well implemented and provided a sense of exploration and fun to each encounter as I dismantled different body parts to complete my armor sets or obtain new weapons. This was much more dynamic and interesting than the traditional souls format of most weapons being found in the game world and made each encounter worth doing.

Gameplay: 8.5

Game Design:
Gear: some weapons or armors are locked behind specific requirements which made it impossible to obtain the items when some were a one shot chance. Furthermore, some bosses have two weapon variants and the only way to obtain them is to do NG+. This increases replayability, in theory, but by the time you do a NG+ game to obtain items you missed on past playthroughs, the value of these items is diminshed to the point that there would be no real benefit in obtaining most of them as they are underpowered for the late game items you already obtained. I still did my best to collect them all, since I liked seeing the models and variety of design, but toward the end of the game and on NG+ I kept to the best weapons I could find leaving many of the unexplored weapons and armor sitting in my inventory rather than being used. I liked that some weapons, usually the 2.0 versions with special criteria to obtain from bosses, had their own flare with a variant of the standard moveset. That was a cool touch. The last issue with the dismemberment mechanic is that you are often in dark hallways with difficulty seeing the weapons or armor as you are dodging for your life, leading to me killing enemies I still intended to obtain weapons or armor from, due to not being able to take the time to see whether they had something I needed or wanted to complete my collection.

Quests: the impulse to kill things on a whim was also an issue in quest design as I killed a character terminating the quest chain because I thought they were an enemy initially. With respect to quests, mistakes are very easy to make, and there is no real warning or indication as to how to approach these situations to be successfully. I completely missed one quest the first time around, for example, then messed it up the second time despite trying to be careful. This game does not hold your hand in any aspect, so there is a lot of trial and error which can be frustrating if you don't want to follow a guide step by step.

Wold design: overall it was very well done. Varied and interesting environments that aligned with the game aesthetic and motif of a techno future. The problem I had with this was the many hallways between areas that had lifts that looked almost identical, leading me to constantly backtrack and try different lifts to see where they took me and often led to me feeling disoriented and having to go back through areas over and over again to find the next spot to progress the game. Many lifts or doors are locked initially and can be activated by overcharging power stations, but the problem is that there is no indication what the power station unlocks, and you often forget which lifts or doors you have already been through versus which ones are new. Overall, this was a minor issue of backtracking and frustration, but it gave me more time to dismember enemies for gear I was missing which helped balance the annoyance.

Score: 7.5

Story and characters:
Overall, the story was interesting and kept me moving forward. Though there are few people to interact with, most people are dead or become crazed by the nanite infection so this is to be expected, I felt some logical connections were missing. It may be there were aspects that I missed to fill in these gaps, but I felt the main antagonist reveal did not really make sense to me. I can't really go into more detail than that without giving major spoilers, but the antagonists actions seemed in direct opposition with respect to their interactions with the main character and when they are revealed. It left me a little disappointed as the narrative did not pay off as well as I had hoped. Despite that, however, the voice acting was excellent, the characters you did interact with came off as very human, and were interesting to talk with, and the holotapes you find provided a lot of additional story and helped drive the narrative as it revealed key characters including many of the characters you see broadcasted on TV throughout the areas. Overall, I still really liked it, it was only the final few areas with the reveal that I felt the misstep.

Score: 7.0

Summary: overall this is a well balanced and fast paced Souls like with fun combat, flashy combat moves, novel game mechanics, varied and interesting loot and environments, with more emphasis on story than most Souls like games. It has a few niggling issues and missteps on the narrative delivery, but overall I feel this game was excellently done and an example of how to implement a beloved formula without copying it directly. This feels like it fits within the genre of games rather than an attempt to strictly clone the success of FromSoft games. I quite enjoyed my time with the game once I gained a better understanding of the game mechanics and design, and while it can be very challenging, to the point of frustration at times, I think it is well worth the investment.