Kveeykvaa

Saros has truly become one of the best roguelikes I’ve played in a long time. The game has such a fluid and addictive structure that I finished it in just two days; I played almost breathlessly for about 20 hours in total. You start by saying "just one more run" and completely lose track of time. Housemarque has once again leveled up in terms of gameplay. The combat tempo, movement mechanics, and hit markers are incredibly successful. Every weapon feels powerful, and every encounter is a high adrenaline **** boss battles are one of the game's absolute peaks. I haven’t played such epic, high tempo, and memorable boss fights in a long time. The final boss fight, in particular, was unforgettable; even though it took me about 5 hours to beat, I didn't get bored for a single second. It was so satisfying to learn something new with each attempt and get a little bit closer every time. It’s challenging but never feels **** music and sound design are also top tier. They keep the atmosphere alive, pump you up during battles, and perfectly reflect the sense of mystery during exploration. The DualSense support is also magnificent I highly recommend playing it with the PS5 controller.

First of all, this game definitely has performance issues. If you play the PS5 version on Quality or Balanced mode, you're stuck between 30-40 FPS, which makes for a miserable gaming experience. If you switch to Performance mode, hitting 60 FPS is okay, but the visual quality looks like absolute mud. But that’s just the beginning. The biggest problem is that the game has absolutely no flow or pacing; it feels like it's grabbing you by the throat and refusing to let you breathe. You go in wanting an open-world experience, hoping for that sense of discovery where you can freely explore the map like in Elden Ring or Zelda. You want to seamlessly move from quest to quest, but the missions are so tedious and overwhelming that the game just drags. They’ve shoved ridiculous puzzles into every single quest. Sure, solving puzzles can be fun, but you solve one puzzle only to immediately face another one right behind it. You think, 'I just solved a puzzle, let me play the game!' but it doesn't let up. You solve a puzzle just to open a building's door, but to actually get inside, you have to solve another one. It completely ruins the pacing. Combat is a whole other problem. There is absolutely zero sense of impact. When you hit enemies, you don't get that satisfying weight to your attacks like you do in Elden Ring or Zelda. Worse, the game doesn't let you tap R1 to attack; it forces you to hold R1 down. If you try to tap R1, your character constantly goes into animation canceling and you can't even land a hit. You have to hold it, which makes the combat incredibly dull. It feels like the character is just fighting on autopilot and you never feel fully in control. Because of this, mob encounters and boss fights are extremely boring and way too easy. By just holding down R1, you can wipe out a whole mob of attackers in seconds. You rarely even need to use extra abilities or dodge. The boss fights suffer from the exact same issue they are totally joyless. Complex controls aren't an issue for me; pressing 3-4 buttons at once is fine. However, there's a huge design flaw: to talk to an NPC, you have to press R1 + Square. You can't just interact with a single button, which slows everything down. Since Square is also the dodge roll button, sometimes pressing R1 + Square just makes my character roll right next to the NPC. Mapping multiple conflicting functions to the same button is incredibly frustrating. Additionally, looting makes the game painfully slow. To pick something up, you have to hold down Square. If I want to pick up gold from the ground, it picks it up piece by piece, forcing me to hold down Square every single **** short, the biggest problem with the game is its terrible pacing and lack of flow, which ultimately makes the game incredibly boring.