The historical period of the French Revolution has certainly impressed the world of entertainment more and more times, including films, musicals, books and, no less important, the various videogame productions made by teams of various sizes and fame. If in the past few years we have been able to get our hands on titles such as Assassin’s Creed: Unity by Ubisoft or the less famous Banner of the Maid and We, The Revolution. If these video games are part of a recent past of sectorial production, we are now ready to get our hands on a new all-Italian job, born from team Naconalready active with Rims Racing. Now it’s back with the new title, Steelrising, officially released on September 8 for PC, PlayStation5 and Xbox Series X | S. For this important occasion, we were able to test for you the version on the Sony home console, of which we immediately tell you all our impressions in our Steelrising review.
Steelrising, the story of an iron heart
French history has been briefly revisited by Nacon and Spiders: in this version, in fact, we are in 1789, the year of the storming of the Bastille and the beginning of the fall of the monarchy, but the events are partially modified. Louis XVI here is a watchmaker who has designed an army of automatons to quell the insurrection, a powerful and cruel monarch who does not want to spare anyone and violently punishes the rebels. Paris is now on fire, where men, women and children are massacred. This situation is partly told and summarized in the first, short clip, where we are introduced to the fears and fears of Maria Antoniettaconfidati a Gabrielle de Polignac. She reveals to the queen that the bodyguards at their disposal are now different from those they have always known. Among these check Aegis, once an automaton dedicated to dancing for the pleasure of the Court. She has now however become a warrior as well bodyguard by Marie Antoinette.
Charged by the queen herself, Aegis must make her way through a Paris where machines wreak havoc and every battle against mechanical enemies is a challenge to our skills. After a brief but satisfying Aegis customization, that when observed closely in some places it reminds us of 2B of NieR: Automata, we can also select one of the four character classes. These range from Bodyguard, Soldier, Alchemist and Dancer, each clearly with their own technical and variable specifications. In fact, weapons and resistance values, agility, power and anything else that can be useful in battle change.
An important note concerns the details related to each class, of which we have a varied specific menu with lots of data to support SU as the behavior of Aegis varies depending on the class we are going to choose. Player forewarned, forearmed.
Strolling through an unprecedented Paris
Following this wide selection, we can finally proceed with our mission assigned to us by Marie Antoinette herself. We must stop the king to save the kingdom, and try to clarify the disappearance of the dolphin, his son. So here we rediscover a level design quite similar to the aforementioned AC Unity, as well as the historical sources they have once again been fully exploited to make the ville lumière available to us before the ville lumière. Discovering Paris in the 18th century through the reworking of the Spiders team was truly a moment of great satisfaction. Especially for gamers who are passionate about history and lovers of French culture.
The locations that can be visited are the Hôtel des Invalides, the Castle of Saint Cloud and other emblematic symbols of the city, such as the Louvre, the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris or the Invalides. Not even the various ones are missing monuments that have disappeared today such as the Grand Chatelet, the Pont au Change or the Bastille.
Returning therefore to gameplaywe have a wide menu able to give us a lot of useful information. Among these, the inventory to always have an eye on the tools owned, the statistics of Aegis and other items. The map, on the other hand, is lacking in information, not too precise in giving us our position. Furthermore, we cannot display any position markers on the screen that can suggest us in which direction to move to complete our mission.
En garde against robots and bosses
The moments of battle against enemy automatons, which replaced the Swiss guards killed by the very same machines, are one of the main features of the game. The clashes are made rather complex by a specificity of Aegis: the overheating. Any action performed leads to the consumption of the autonomy of the automaton. Once this gauge runs out, Aegis can no longer fight, dodge or jump. Therefore it is important to activate the quick cooling function. An easy solution, but not painless: to restore our autonomy in this way, however, we are going to suffer damage from frost.
It is true that too enemies risk finding themselves in trouble, when we manage to paralyze them and attack them further with a critical attack. We admit it: the first clashes already put us in difficulty, due to Aegis’ easy overheating, to a level that the combat was not easily overcome. For this reason, we had to remedy the necessary changes to the game menu by activating the assisted mode to reduce the damage suffered directly by the meni.
We easily stumbled upon the game over, here announced as “Aegis is broken”. Consequently, how to fix it? By activating the Vestals, statues scattered on the map and able to become control points to be able to repair it. Not only checkpoints, but also places where we can increase the attributes in case of soul essence. This is the reward we get after defeating each enemy, increasing and upgrading equipment and obtaining it in exchange for soul essence. But beware: it will not always be possible to activate them as soon as we get close. We may also need to fulfill certain requests before making use of a vestal, to complicate matters a bit.
Paris is well worth a mass (but with some flaws)
We could not fail to observe technical and artistic pros and cons of this title, to provide you with a complete analysis of Steelrising. As we mentioned earlier, the soundtrack it is definitely something unique and truly touching. He manages to get to the ropes of our soul, almost moving us and recreating an atmosphere that recalls both the epic tones and the historical ones that well connote Steelrising. Also backdrops They were faithfully made, even to the reconstructions of monuments and places that no longer exist. Another pro to having this title in your library.
Alongside these decidedly positive aspects, however, we remember the excessively high level of some clashes and Aegis’ energy recovery, and cooling. Not without some technical defect. There are indeed some imperfections that deserve a resolution patch, such as theinstability of graphics while viewing the menu in game, for example when we access inventory items. Or we have observed moments of glitch in the rendering of the details of the characters, as well as some uncertainty in Aegis’s movements. All aspects that it would be good to be able to resolve as soon as possible after the official launch and which could also affect the gaming experience itself and overall perceptions.
The Steelrising review in a nutshell
Overall, our preview trial of Steelrising brings with it a lot of enthusiasm from a point of view of content and history, above all for fidelity to historical elements. Clearly in this title we have the variant of the presence of automata and machines, in addition to the conflict between Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI. However, these aspects are well suited to a new story. The convinces us menu packed with options, but up to a certain point in that risks becoming quite distracting, as too many details flow into it. To be reviewed instead i defects technical and artistic mentioned. There is in fact the risk of lowering the overall judgment of the playful experience offered to us, which certainly deserves to be sketched and made even more engaging. A game that has an iron soul as its protagonist, but that will warm your heart, especially that of history buffs. Unfortunately, one cannot expect to have a title on the same level as the aforementioned AAAs, but can give you satisfaction if you are looking for AA (and if you can manage the difficulty level).