PlatinumGames thread this needle very well, respecting the core of what made the previous 3 Team Ninja NG games classics in their own right, while injecting enough of their own special sauce to make this new game unmistakably theirs. The result is a fantastic 15-20 hours of frenetic ninja action.

But it's far from perfect. Long-standing protagonist, Ryu Hababusa, gets sidelined to an almost distressing degree, utilising rehashed levels and bosses and only the Dragon Sword to play with. The soft lock targeting system is shaky and lead to many ranged enemies staying alive far longer than they should have. And don't get me started on all the whiffed UTs...

Finally, the level design is...functional. The narrow focus of the story confines you to a cyberpunk-ish, rain-soaked Tokyo, some mountains, a sewer night club and a metallic enemy base. A very far cry from Ryu's globe-spanning adventures of yore. Traversal mini-games such as surfing, gliding and rail grinding act as combat palate cleansers but these segments are overused a bit much despite a couple absolutely thrilling set piece sequences in the mid-game.

It's one of the few soulslikes I was not only eager to finish but to also jump into NG+ and roll up a brand new character immediately after rolling credits. I never do that, so that's saying something. An unpolished gem for sure.

Amazing to see this mobile game on the big screen. Runs smoothly and controls very well with a gamepad. Seamless cross-progression using my original iOS account.

40k/10
Everything a sequel should be.

It's $8 now. What are you waiting for?

This is closest thing we have to a "cyberpunk Diablo". That being said, the gameplay skews heavily towards twin-stick arcade shooting and little more. The breadth and depth of gear and character customization is fairly limited.

There is no "end game" as we know it in other ARPGs: disappointing but understandable given the limited scope of the game. The story campaign is quite lengthy, however, and the replayability is there courtesy of higher difficulty settings, new game plus, co-op and a slew of reasonably priced DLC packs.

The real draw in The Ascent is how beautifully realized - and flat-out beautiful - its cyberpunk environments are. Veles is a sight to behold and your eyes are sure to literally ache with the sensory overload for the first few hours of play.

The sometimes charming, often terrible writing covers up an otherwise slick and entertaining action-platformer roguelite. The hilarity of the enemy barks alone may be worth the price of admission if you can snag this on sale.

I'm disappointed they didn't try to do something interesting with their boilerplate cyberpunk. If you want an action game in a better realized cyberpunk world then I'd still recommend The Ascent or Ruiner over this.

Still a very fun "6/10"!

These days I player fewer and fewer ARPGs on PC, mainly because I don't like being hunched over the mouse and keyboard for hours after spending more hours in the day hunched over the keyboard for work. So I've opted to play a lot of these games on console with all the sacrifices that come with the switch. Grim Dawn has always had a place in my short list of "top action-RPGs that aren't Diablo" but I've bounced off numerous times due to poor performance and the m/kb fatigue from hours of grinding.

When Crate first introduced controller support, it was half-baked and left me quite unsatisfied. So I shelved the game for a few years only to come back recently, very pleasantly surprised to see them advertise Full Controller Support on their store page. True to their word - and finally - I have my controller support in Grim Dawn and it is fantastic. Such a seemingly small change has breathed new life into the game for me.

Killsquad is an interesting blend of Victor Vran and Helldivers in how it plays moment-to-moment. Structure-wise it also borrows a bit from Warframe, Destiny and Diablo 3's Adventure Mode. There is even a splash of MOBA in there!

This game may not provide you that action-RPG fix if you are dead set on getting a traditional, Diablo-esque ARPG experience. It is a lot more focused on the action dimension. The controls are direct input, not click to move or attack. There's also an emphasis on co-op play. Without much in the way of a story campaign or lore, the narrative texture is rather flat at the moment. So the enjoyment comes from grouping up and hitting up series of contracts to grind resources.

IF you are down for this kind of gameplay loop, can be patient for more features to get fleshed out and can handle the usual Early Access glitches, then Killsquad can be a hell of a good time. It manages to accommodate both short hits of play and longer grind sessions. However RPG nuts who love to theory craft may not yet have enough meat on the bones. The gear system is paired down from its contemporaries, with not a whole lot to differentiate yourself from other players in terms of build customization.

So I only played this for an hour before going for that refund, so take what I say with a grain of salt. In that time I was reminded of how elegant and tight in design Hotline Miami and Neon Chrome are - two games which I feel mash together fairly well to form what COULD have been Ruiner.

Where Hotline and Neon are tense, deliberate action-stealth games, Ruiner is a frantic series of combat arenas linked together by moody corridors and a pretty neat hub world. Fans of Hard Games(tm) are going to eat this up because even the tutorial boss - yes, the tutorial - on Normal difficulty was giving me fits. I don't mnd hard games but they must control well...

Ruiner's controls don't feel good. The WASD movement feels awkward. The shooting mechanics and general user feedback is awful. I couldn't recall any of the early guns having any sense of impact or weight. Aiming is also finnicky and not helped at all by the auto-reload mechanic on the guns. For a game this frenzied I really wished to unload with some satisyfing-feeling weapons but my expectations were quickly destroyed. The wait the mouse aim both rotates your player and shifts the overhead camera is jarring as heck. Feels unnecessary.

I'll hang on to Satellite Reign as my cyberpunk game show piece. And replay Hotline Miami because that has both style and tight gameplay in spades. Ruiner turned out to be a big disapointment. Great cyberpunk atmosphere but rough gameplay and controls.

UPDATE: I bought Ruiner weeks later on another platform weeks after posting this review and my impression of it did a 180. I went on to finish the story campaign and double dip when it was released to consoles.