Ashen

Great Souls-like game.

Good game, some fun for fans of soulslike games,
This "open world" vibe fits the game well!
I like how some parts of the world change as you progress in the game!
Not many bosses, but the final boss is hard!

Hey there, Pack Members!

I'm Cryptic Paw, and I chose to play and rate Ashen on my YouTube channel Cryptic Paw Gaming!

I like to analyze games from a casual POV to give indie game devs advice and insight on what worked and how to further improve their games. You can find the rating and game design analysis video at the link below.

https://youtu.be/8gNrb7WYEMY

Happy Gaming!
Alice of Cryptic Paw

My favorite soulslike

Highly unremarkable and a bit of a slog to play, to be perfectly honest :/

I wanted to like this game, I got it after years of putting it off just to play co-op with my wife but... It's just so... Boring.

The story personally for me was very dull, the voice acting feels out of place with the tones used, and the lack of rewarding gameplay really drove the stake through the heart.

I have to agree with all the negative reviews I've read on here. It's just really dull and takes from all the bad aspects of a souls-like but neglects any of the good parts.

Worth on sale, maybe, for a quick look. Never pay full price.

I really gotta point out here that having such a limited stamina pool system topped with no ability to level up or improve, combined with armor upgrades you find that debuff your stamina further is just an outright terrible idea.

Graphics and gameplay are great, the only issue is the multiplayer connection. It's a bit finicky but most of the time it's still fine and managable with a bit of patience.

Easily my favorite souls like game out there. Too bad I can't play it longer than a minute. What a waste of money. EVERY TIME I boot it up, it closes before I can even make it through the first cut scene. Indescribably disappointing.

As someone who was done everything in this game unlike 99% of these reviewers. Dont waste your time or money, go play any other souls-like.

I cant play, every time I run this game it kicks me out with out any crash

While this game has one of the most stunning art styles I've seen in a long time, the gameplay is very poor. I've gotten to the 4th area and beaten the second boss, and this game just continually frustrates me. The difficulty is almost entirely sourced from ambushes or ganking. Many attacks are strangely telegraphed, with a really long wind up, then very quick, blocky attacks coming out, with other attacks that will just have a quick windup and huge distance closer. The village progress system is neat, but there should probably be additional village icons that help you locate specific upgrade benches, as it can be confusing if you don't just check each bench to find what you want. I really wanted this to be a game for me, but it is just not. It is souls-like that appears to have taken most of the worst aspects of a souls-like and not the better ones.

I have 100% All Dark Souls, Elden Ring, Lies of P... etc.

I'm always looking for MORE of that feeling.

After 3 hours, this is already more than "mixed" in my book.

This is super chill souls. So damn chill, and I appreciate that feeling.

I feel like I am playing a 3D version of Deaths Door mixed with Dark Souls and a splash of Breath of the Wild.

We shall see how this turns out.

Update 13 Hours : So the game is more about the journey than the bosses for sure. The bosses have been easy for me at least (3 so far), I did not die once to bosses, but I died countless times getting to some of them. Loving the journey and the world just oozes ambient atmosphere. I recommend!

I can't speak on anything outside of my own single player playthrough, but I enjoyed the game a lot. The core combat works perfectly fine even if it isn't particularly great, and the overworld and dungeon level design has some moments where it shines very brightly. However, I can't recommend this game without caveats because the devs chose to make the enemies have quite a lot of health, deal a lot of damage, and exist in pretty high numbers sometimes. I assume this is meant to be balanced around co-op or the AI companions, but when the companion does do a bad job at this, the difficulty and the problems around it (repetitive mechanics, long runbacks, unmanageable enemy counts) become a real chore. Much like Dark Souls, this game has some surprising highs and some lows that make me question what the devs where possibly thinking. All in all, I would heartily recommend Ashen when it is discounted, to those who really appreciate Dark Souls and Demon's Souls style dungeon crawling and world exploration.

The fighting mechanics are completely f***ed up. No fun at all.

Relashen, só na boa

Great fun game. Multiplayer works and is great.

Pretty good game, the world is amazing and the story and characters are extremely well written.
Gameplay wise it could have been better, very few weapons and armors that are actually useful and the progression is very limited.
The coop option tho makes it much much better, if you have a friend to play it with, then it's a must buy

Bought the game for coop -> Coop sux a$$ -> Uninstalled immediately.

Really enjoyed and highly recommend! The game gets a little same-y by the end, but it's such a competent souls-like game and the coop, while a little finnicky, worked well :)

I played through this with a friend and had a blast. Ashen is lean compared to other souls-likes, but full of content. In particular, the level design is a blast to explore and find all the hidden nooks, crannies, and sapient roots (hehe).

This is an excellent co-op experience, especially for fans of the souls-like genre.

i played this for three hours, didn't like it, didn't touch it again for four years, tried it again and still didn't like it

Ashen is a tricky game to review. On one hand it is an enjoyable experience and the world is pretty interesting. Characters are well designed and the story is simple yet pretty good. On the other hand I dislike a lot of the game play (it is a video game after all). The way you level your character or lack there of. There is not really any diversity in how you can build your character (other than the very limited weapon and armor selection and "runes" you can use to make SMALL tweaks). The combat is just okay. A lot of the enemies are a bit repetitive and the attacks are not the best telegraphed. Ranged enemies can be annoying more than challenging and the bosses are kinda lack luster in their design. The missions are kinda fetch-quest centered and can be kinda uninteresting. I found myself about half way into the game telling myself "I am sure it will get better" and it did get a bit better...but not a whole lot. I was excited to play Ashen even with it sitting at Mixed reviews. The art style looks great and it looked like an interesting souls-like. I just think the game play can feel a bit repetitive and that really hurts the game. I found myself just wanting to finish it instead of just enjoying the game as I played. The final boss was the nail in the coffin for me. The attacks were not really well telegraphed and they dodge a lot...and I mean a lot of your attacks. It becomes annoying and frustrating how often they are running away from you. The second phase of the last boss fight is also kinda boring and can be annoying as well with a lot of running away . Plus, if you die it is also a run back through an entire area with strong enemies (Hint: although if you clear it and run back to the ritual stone you can refill your heals and head back through without fighting enemies...it just takes a lot of time to do so). I would not even characterize the game as a difficult souls-like really. I mean it can be challenging yes but a lot of the enemies become annoying instead of challenging or difficult. That is what it came down to for me. I was going to recommend the game even with the flaws and if I could say "mixed" I would but I get yes or no...so it has to be a no. It has positives and a lot of people enjoy playing it and I think that is great! My feelings are mixed just like the reviews on steam. If you are still interested then buy it at a steep discount like I did, but probably stay away at full price. It sucks to not recommend it because I wanted it to be really good and it just ended up being kinda meh.

I bought this game a long time ago, played it for a few hours then, and then put it down. I remembered it today, and gave it another try. It reminded me why I didn't want to play this game.

This game has enough frustrating elements that I just don't really see myself wanting to play it. The visuals are cool and the combat feels familiar if you've played Dark Souls- but something about it just feels slightly off to me. Not so far off that it's devoid of fun, but more like it just slowly builds frustration. At least that's how I felt.

I think this is due to the fact that enemies are scattered everywhere, will frequently surprise attack you, and gang up on you (think 3-7 enemies at once. You do have an AI companion, but they can die and are not always very helpful- still better than not having them though). This would be fine if the game was more generous with save points, but the checkpoints somehow feel very far apart. Not to mention, this game borrows the Dark Souls mechanic where you lose your currency when you die and have to go back and pick it up. It felt really novel and exciting to me when I first played Dark Souls, and for someone who hasn't played those games it might feel that way in Ashen too! But for me, I just feel tired of that mechanic after playing so much of Dark Souls 1, 2, 3, Demon's Souls, and Elden Ring. It doesn't add excitement for me anymore, it just makes me a bit frustrated. Maybe that's just me not being in the right head space for this type of game.

The game also has an interesting world structure, which feels kind of like a mini open world. I don't know how large or long the game is because I only played it for a few hours, but from what I did play it seems like there are several small, self contained zones with paths connecting them. The lack of loading screens makes it feel like an open world game, but the lack of good mobility options and sheer volume of enemies waiting to ambush you, and lack of meaningful or interesting things to find in the map other than enemies stops it from feeling like a true open world game to me. You have a jump button and can climb small ledges, but I frequently got frustrated trying to climb things and just sliding off or not even gaining any height. With the way the game's combat encounters are designed, I would probably like it more if it was a much more linear game/story with frequent checkpoints and a sense of forward momentum and direction.

The lantern mechanic feels kinda cool to me: you can drop your lantern somewhere to light up an area and then pick it back up later when you need it, or otherwise carry it in your left hand while moving around. It's a fairly cool way to emphasize darkness as an aspect of exploration, and the atmosphere can definitely be scary or unsettling at times. However, I question why you can't attach the lantern to your belt and use a two handed weapon while running around in the dark. I don't hate that you can't, but I wish that you could.

The graphics are simultaneously very cool and stylized, yet also feel somewhat lifeless to me. Maybe it's the lack of faces. Maybe it's the lack of saturation. In any case, it's not a world I really want to be in. The exception is there was one moment of spectacle that was very cool to me, when a giant person rose from a chasm right in front of me. That was impressive feeling and enhanced the magical feeling of the world. But generally, my time in the game felt like somewhat aimless wandering, fighting vague bandit type enemies and the occasion creepy spider or wolf-like creature.

My other problem with the combat is just how far the enemies can move when they are dodging or approaching you for an attack. It makes actually catching up to and hitting the enemies feel very difficult, which I'm sure is intentional, but it made combat a bit frustrating to me.

The number of items I picked up and didn't know what to do with was fairly high, and yet I could also see that the inventory size was pretty small. That didn't become a problem for me in the time I played, but it made me concerned, as I don't like inventory management very much.

And the characters seemed kind of interesting, but... I think without faces, I just had a hard time latching onto them.

I don't think I can recommend this game in general. It might get better later on, and what I played had cool elements, but it wasn't for me. I had a sinking feeling that I had already experienced the majority of what the game would feel like, and it just wasn't fun enough to keep me for the whole experience.

I really enjoyed this, this like a simplified much more mellow dark souls. its like if lofi was a souls game. very chill play through does get intense at times, i think only to remind you of how mellow the other areas are. I love the lighting and atmosphere. all of the characters and the world feel like they were sculpted out of clay. ahh yeah good game., great job.

Lets get this out of the git-go, this ISNT Dark Souls and will never be. Me and my friend described it like if Journey and Dark Souls had a baby (and then Dark Souls left the household)
Yes, the bosses and enemies are repetitive and not that hard and enemy density is high and some runbacks are awful but its because of the rough treatment it got from its Dad.
The online works pretty fine, just remember to set a code and disable the AI and it works within 10 seconds.
When talking to NPCs, probably works best if you just wait for your teammate to finish the dialogue before you start so it doesnt bug out.
Overall some cool ideas, like progression through quests, I wish the chest got unlocked faster and Ive not seen a poison swamp yet so its a 7/10 at best. (Miyazaki disapproves of no poison swamp)

A wonderful and very fun game. It was successfully completed for the fourth time and 100% achievements were collected.

Thanks to the developers of the game, and I hope it will have a second part

The game looks pretty sometimes. And Eila is very funny.

It's well made as far as souls like goes. Probably more fun playing with a friend tho.

The final boss ruined this game for me. The shallow combat, the repetitive enemies, the linear map, and the ridiculous dungeons had all taken their toll on my patience, but I managed to soldier through anyway. I enjoyed the world of Ashen; it sparked genuine wonder in me, and reminded me of how it felt playing Skyrim for the first time years ago. But this was death by a thousand cuts, and the killing blow came at the very end. The final boss comes out of nowhere, is visually boring, has poorly telegraphed attacks, and dodges virtually all of your attacks. Most of the fight is simply chasing after the boss because it rolls and jumps around so much; you'll be lucky to land more than one hit at a time. The second phase only compounds those problems. But worst of all, if you die, you are sent back to the hub town. You will will then have to run back to the dungeon, fight all the enemies, then run down a ramp, then skip a cutscene just to try again. Horrible.

not pog

I will give this game a recommend but with several gaping cavities.
-Interesting design
-droning noises doesn't count as music so no score there
-combat is fine
-Weapons and armor all look interesting
-Rune system is nice and thoughtful selections make a noticeable difference
-Despite the shortness of the maps their loopy nature and distance from save areas means a death can set you back a surprising amount of time
-AI companion is painfully stupid and spends a worrying amount of time walking off cliffs or trying to res you before killing the enemy and dying. WHEN your companion dies it takes a LOOOOONG time before they come back
-You can do 2 jumps, the first is so short it just looks like you tripped, while the second is so insanely far you will often just fly over what you were aiming for and fall into the abyss
-Dodging is easy enough and blocking drains so much stamina that I stopped bothering before I even found a second shield
-The shadow enemies can bug out and will just appear right next to you or start and endless charge that will see them whip around corners and just fly from across and entire room
-Potions can be crafted but I never found the game hard enough to bother worrying about them
-The inventory system is pointlessly small and your HOUSE storage isn't even large enough to hold all the equipment you will find in the game....... All of which is EXCLUSIVE so you will have to pick and choose what stuff you will loose forever.
-The darkness and light mechanic would be cool if equipping the lantern didn't remove the ability to use 2H weapons....... The character literally wears the lantern on a pissing loop on your waste but you can't just turn it on. If you want to use 2H you have to play a retarded little mini game where you hope your granite brained companion doesn't walk off a cliff and take their light with them, OR swap to the lantern, set lantern down and swap back to 2H weapon..... While being attacked..... Then go back and pick it up...... This is in a game where many of the foes jump scare attack you, have leap attacks, charge attacks, or just chuck crap at you. This makes the levels designed around darkness a HUGE slog if you wanted to play with the other 50% of the weapons in the game.

Over all the game was good enough but there are enough random issues to make an note of and it's not a game I will play more than once.

I had this on Switch before getting it on PC. It's fun, don't understand the mixed reviews.

I do agree stamina consumption is bonkers though lol

It took me three attempts to get into this game, but I eventually realised I was just missing doing an important first step at the beginning.

I'm so conflicted on this game. The visuals, the music, the atmosphere - all of this is great. However, the game gets ruined a bit by a few questionable decisions (specifiaclly the listeners' dungeon and the final boss fight, as well as most of the dlc). Ashen gets *this* close to being perfect, if not for the problems mentioned above

"I could not play for more than a few minutes without the game closing up or crashing. After a quick Google search I found a weird solution to the issue. Many people also encountered this problem. After some reading it seems to be a software issue and not necessarily the game's fault. Again, I feel like this needed to be addressed nonetheless." - Upon Arrival

Dont even get me started on the "co-op" it does not work

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☑ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☑ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Game Size }---
☑ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☐ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☑ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☑ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☑ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☑ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☑ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☑ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10

though the game isn't perfect, it is still a quite enjoyable souls-like
plays generally quite well on the steam deck!

про производительность не слово, её тут нет😀😁😂

This is a very fun game with many intricate systems, fun yet challenging combat, and is easy to play. I would recommend the game to anyone even people who don't usually like souls like game. My only complaint is there is a glitch where If your computer runs on 11th gen intel then you won't be able to play the game. It crashes immediately or after a minute. This issue has been present for at least 3 years since 2021 and still has not been fixed. Luckily there are multiple fixes that work to subvert this problem that are very easy and take almost no time. Just look up the fix and spend like five minutes setting it up then enjoy hours of fun.

While i have to agree with some points about the game feeling clunky at times, it is really a thing of getting used to it. It has a very distinct art style and in my opinion looks fantastic. Some moments in this game are very epic and especially the second to last boss while very hard is super cool designed. I had a great time and when i got frustrated it was really my fault. I'd say if you'd like to try a soulslike with an a bit clearer narrative i'd say go for this. Sadly with 15 hours its a bit short, although i definitely didnt search around in all corners for all the scattered items, but since most of it is cheap consumables i probably missed out on some cool items because it was too tedious to fetch them. I'd say get it on sale. All around a 7.5/10 in my book, very solid.

combat is a little janky sometimes but overall i really love it

good fuggin game

great game! I am playing this after elden ring, and I like the open world + soulslike elements. It feels a bit easy and perhaps boring at the very beginning, but does become more challenging later on

Let me begin by stating my thoughts about what I found to be good in the game:

- The minimalistic art is phenomenal. I would not say unique but certainly wonderful.
- Some incredibly lovable characters.
- Solid storyline.

Now, let me state what I think may not be the game's fault but I feel like it needs to be mentioned:

I have been a PC player for many years now. Never have I ever encountered a game that ALWAYS launches on my secondary screen. Each and every time this happened. No matter what I did, it always launched on my secondary screen. No bid deal. SHIFT+WINDOWS+Right arrow key and the game is back to my main screen.

I could not play for more than a few minutes without the game closing up or crashing. After a quick Google search I found a weird solution to the issue. Many people also encountered this problem. After some reading it seems to be a software issue and not necessarily the game's fault. Again, I feel like this needed to be addressed nonetheless.

Now for the absolute bad of this game:

Combat is absolutely horrendous. It is clunky and feels very, very slow. Stamina consumption is off the charts. If you though DS1's stamina was bad, this game's is worse.

Even though there are a lot of weapons, the variety is terrible. Your only choices differ from slight variations of axes or clubs. You can equip a one handed weapon and a two handed weapon and switch between them. It's terrible to be limited this way. I don't know why they got rid of being able to one-hand or two-hand ANY weapon.

You have to PAY to equip talismans!

There are no stats in this game. Your weapon's damage is level up like any other souls-like, though upgrading it. However, your health and stamina is only increased by completing side quests, or finding some items to make it go up (not by much through the items though).

While not a new concept (Resident Evil I am looking at you), your inventory is quite limited. In good old souls-like fashion, this is not explained to you. Something that is also not explained to you is the "storage" chest you get later in the game. Because of this, I found myself constantly dropping weapons or other items that I would lose forever to make space for new stuff. Perhaps this is my own fault for not checking around the hub area enough.

This game is supposed to be co-op. However, online play is terrible. So, I resorted to using the AI companions. They are terrible though. They die or make stupid decisions all the time, which makes this game much harder. Dungeons lack any sort of checkpoints or even shortcuts. If you die close to the end of a dungeon or by the boss, you HAVE to tackle the entirety of the dungeon from start to finish. This is terrible level design.

You cannot wield a shield if you wield the lamp, and the lamp is pretty much mandatory to navigate the dungeons.

Enemy aggro is terribly inconsistent. Some enemies have an aggro range of a small square box. You step on it, they come after you. You get out of said little box and they start rushing back to their default position, like quickly. Some other enemies, particularly the Resident Evil's licker looking like monsters in the 2nd dungeon, have what seems to be an infinite aggro range. If you don't kill them, they will follow you to the end of the earth.

I hate to be negative about this game. I know they put a lot of effort into the creative art and the story and characters but there is just so much wrong with it that I cannot recommend it.

Good for solo, almost impossible to connect with friend.

It game

good game i will say, but if ur game crashes its bye bye to say cause it get corrupted, i played 8 - 9 hrs ggs

I'm a sucker for Souls Likes and minimalism, and this game is delivering in spades. The setting is grimly stunning, the combat is simple but tight and challenging, the story is vague but charming, the voice acting is surprisingly fantastic. Plus there's a fun collision bug (feature) where the enemy corpses fly into the air sometimes. Definitely worth a try for anyone who wants an understated Souls Like experience.

This game has really helped me go through my extreme stress while graduating university and going into my Master's soon afterwards. It reduced my anxiety a lot and it just gives me comfort with it's gameplay and general atmosphere. It's such a beautiful game in terms of world-crafting, music, and sound-design.

I know it's a meme, but this game gives me as much comfort as Skyrim did back when I was younger. It's the Skyrim of soulsborne games for me. I'd definitely recommend if you want a relaxing souls-like.

great art bad gameplay dont recommend it

So ... it's a really good game. The environment and the art style is just amazing, the map is well designed, the areas as "populated" (content, buildings ...) and seem natural and well integrated. Combat is responsive, dodge and parry works well, the weapons add a unique style on their alternate attacks, character designs are all good, and they work well as companions as you explore... over all is a game i recommend even more the Dark Souls it self (if you haven't noticed yet ... it follows the dark souls formula ...), as it gives a more enjoyable experience.

Honestly, I'd recommend it. Enjoyable about 15/20 hours.