Saros

Saros was provided by PlayStation for review. Thank you!

Roguelikes are one of the more enjoyable, newer genres that have taken up most of my time. I’ve always loved grinding in games, especially JRPGs, and with this genre designed to push you to go back over and over progressively, get better and more powerful, it spoke to me. There are a ton of great ones out there. However, Saros tricked me. Despite having gameplay mechanics similar to roguelikes, the game is structured closer to a third-person action adventure, and that change in perspective makes this bullet hell one worth braving through the accessible chaos.

Developer Housemarque has really created something special again. They captured it once with Returnal, and it feels like they have stepped it up again with Saros. Bullet hell games tend to confuse me with so much going on at one time on the screen, and being in the thick of it in third person in a 3D world makes it even harder for me to comprehend. Yet with Saros, I not only understood everything that was happening on screen, but I could also comprehend and react accordingly, which had me dodging, dashing, and shooting in ways I didn’t even think I could.

It amazed me every time I got into combat. The general gameplay loop has us going from area to area, killing scores of enemies, dodging the stream of colorful balls they shoot at us, and culminating in a big boss fight. As we go to each area, we will get new weapons and artifacts to enhance our skills, as well as get currency (Lucenite) that will be used for permanent passive upgrades that will give us an edge in our run. And when we die, we lose the artifacts and higher-powered weapons, and will need to restart the runs until we can complete and beat each boss.

If this loop sounds familiar…well, that’s because it is. It’s a tried and true gameplay loop that works well in other roguelikes and keeps the constant replaying of the same areas. Some randomization of the level layouts helps, but even without it, the actual bullet-hell shooting gave me more than enough motivation to dive back in.

The assortment of weapons we can find also greatly enhances replayability. There’s a good chunk of them, ranging from assault rifles and shotguns to guns that can shoot out sawblades. Each of them has its uses and strengths, and I found myself enjoying all of them. I usually have favorite weapons in every game I play, but that wasn’t really the case here because I enjoyed all of them. Ultimately, I would get nitpicky about their stats rather than about what kind of gun it was, and the decision to make some of them automatically lock onto enemies was a good choice. There are benefits for using guns that don’t lock onto enemies, since they usually deal more damage, but going for the guns that can automatically lock onto enemies gives us one less thing to worry about, so we can focus on dodging orbs and getting those perfect reloads.

Speaking of which, I want to praise Housemarque for making an extremely chaotic game that is still very easy to comprehend. These colorful orbs can come from anywhere, and not only will we need to dodge them, but some may need to be parried. With enemies all over the map, with some being able to shoot hundreds of orbs in every direction at any given time, it can feel like there’s so much going on. Yet, I never felt overwhelmed. Every action I took felt calculated, and in a game like this, it can be a major issue if we can’t understand what’s going on. No matter how many orbs were coming at me, there were enough indicators that were obvious, along with a mini map with enemy locations and visual cues to keep me informed and able to figure out what I needed to do. The fact that the chaos successfully translated into a comprehensible state to this degree is an achievement in itself.

However, Saros does stand out from others and makes some interesting choices that mostly enhance the experience further. To make our weapons more powerful, we will consistently gain one of three attributes as we play: Command, Drive, and Resilience. These attributes can enhance one of three stats on whatever weapon we have equipped. It’s a little slow and doesn’t have much of an impact in the early parts of the game, but they can make big differences as we give ourselves more permanent upgrades in between runs to collect more and more. This works hand in hand with the proficiency system. As we collect currency in the run, our proficiency goes up, which directly influences how much each of the weapon stats can go up.

The main way we will initially get attributes is through artifacts, which can provide passive benefits like collecting extra Lucenite and healing more from Aether pickups. There’s only a limited amount of artifacts we can hold, and we can’t get rid of them normally, so choosing the right ones with the attributes and abilities you need will be key. I wasn’t a huge fan of this, since there were a handful of times I found a great artifact and had to leave it behind because I couldn’t get rid of an older one, which was a bummer.

While the ideas are interesting, I found the corruption/negative effects a little too difficult or just downright ridiculous. For the second half of each area, we will trigger an eclipse, which makes enemies more aggressive and causes them to drop more Lucenite. This also makes artifacts more powerful, giving us more attributes, but they now come with negative effects. Most of these are fine, but some are just diabolical, like increasing the dash cooldown. With how key dashing is in combat, I hated seeing how frequently this popped up. Of course, we can always choose not to take it, and we could even get a special item to re-roll that artifact, but I didn’t find it worthwhile to take it on and save those re-rolls to get the weapon I wanted. There were runs where I ended up only having 3 artifacts because of this, and the decreased frequency they show up later on, instead of the older 12 or more I would find.

And then we have destabilizing attributes. Some of these artifacts will not only have negative effects, but also have a chance of destabilizing your attributes, giving even worse effects. Two of the three are okay and annoying, but not debilitating, while the third is just awful. It can make it so you don’t get any Lucenite if you die, which can make the whole run feel pointless. I understand this is supposed to be a difficult game, but this felt a little too harsh. Thankfully, most of these problems come later in the game, but they are still quite annoying to deal with.

Still, the combat was so fun that I ended up not caring about the negatives. Even after getting the destabilized attribute that takes away any Lucenite I earned, it never stopped me from wanting to dive back in. The energetic combat never lets up; even when it might seem overwhelming, it’s still understandable. I don’t know many games that can make the chaotic, bullet hell easily discernible in third person, but they did it in ways that captivated me.

As for the story, I was actually quite surprised by how much I enjoyed it at the end. For the first 75 to 80%, I was a little on the confused side. We play as Arjun Devraj, who has come with the emergency response team, Echelon IV, to investigate why the Soltati Corporation he works for has lost contact with the other three teams they have sent to this alien planet to set up a mining colony. He awakens with no memory and is kept in a loop, while it is slowly revealed that he has other motives for being there.

At first, it seems as though Arjun’s there to do his job, but he ends up just looking for his wife, Nitya. And as the game progresses, we learn more about how and why Nitya is here. I won’t spoil anything about the story in this review, but I will say the end was very satisfying. Saros initially made me believe the story would end abruptly without a conclusion I would consider pleasing, but it came back with a better ending that felt more realistic and satisfying than I thought it would.

However, even after the credits rolled, I found motivation to go back in just to keep playing through the fantastic gameplay loop. In a way, it feels unmatched. I don’t remember the last experience, other than possibly Returnal, that gave me the same adrenaline rush and satisfaction that comes from the combat.

Conclusion

Saros is a third-person shooter at its core, but the roguelike and bullet hell elements feel so refined that it offers an experience worth playing through. The combat is energetic, the progression is effective, and the story will be wrapped up in a nice blanket that feels satisfying to finish. It can be a little brutal at times, especially with destabilization, but that never stopped me from continually going in for more. Saros is an incredible game, and one that I’ll keep going back to for years just to get another hit of its accessible chaos.

Our review is based on the PS5 version of this game.

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