Of Ash and Steel - Better than Witcher 4...maybe

[rusty_shackleford]

looks like it's mixed on steam, guessing the issue is it's buggy

The game seemed quite unfinished when I played the demo, so, hm…

not surprised

[Vaako]

looks like it's mixed on steam, guessing the issue is it's buggy

The game seemed quite unfinished when I played the demo, so, hm…

not surprised

it is but also badly balanced, the toughest wolf enemies give less than 100xp and they can give you wounds which hit you from 700hp to 1hp in a few seconds. Then they just need to land one hit and bandages didnt work for me and u dead. But worst part is the engine, I had 2 crashes during loading and 4+ while doing things in the menus and especially when you sell stuff. Seems the engine doesnt like it if you stuff one merchant too full or if you sell stuff too fast. But the no map thing and the vague directions to even continue the mainquest are probably also a reason why people dont like it. I gave up after a while not much gothic charm there.

[Fitz]

Of Ash & Steel seems to be incredibly buggy, even unfinishable. Will take a look at this one again in a few months. I'm getting tired of unfinished products getting pumped out for the consumer to test for "free". Only video games get shafted like this. Maybe because no other medium allows it.

Anyway, **** this game. Check again in 6 months.

[rusty_shackleford]

@Finarfin have you played this since they started patching it?

[Marcus]

@Finarfin have you played this since they started patching it?

Looks like the devs still need a few more months to fix the gazillion bugs in the game:

yep.PNG

[DecadeRiptide]

Open-world, 3rd person, action-RPG from Russssssia.

Looks very Witcher-like, this part however sounds great:

"Of Ash and Steel has no marker system, and quests won't lead you by the hand. Rediscover the joy of exploration and let curiosity be your guide; the world promises rich rewards for those who dare to uncover its secrets."

only a complete ****** would think it is worse than witcher 4 and that flop hasn't even released yet.

funny thing is that the assets in ash and steel look ripped straight out of the witcher 3, from the UI, the music, the foilage, the lighitng, and pretty much anything else. Most of this slop looks like fake ai generated garbage. the animations are completely ******** and the characters look dumb as ****. its nothing more than a witcher 3 wannabe preparing to ride off the flop that is the witcher 4, yet the witcher 3 will remain one of the greatest games ever made.

[Rand]

I got a ..."review"... copy from ...a source... and just getting through the beginning was a chore.
Cutscene after cutscene going on for over 10 minutes to set up the protagonist's backstory and gameworld base plot that could have instead been done in-game, in media res (as you play) on the ship doing a controls/gameplay tutorial.
And then there's the hideous human face graphics in them... yikes.

And everything feels clumsy AF in the actual tutorial.
The voice lines do not match the character mouth/head movements, and the English subtitles don't match the English spoken lines more often than they should.
And it has that translation problem where the words are mostly right but the sentence formation and general way of speaking is very subtly but noticebly off all the time.

Also, the protagonist talks too much after a single prompt choice, and the other characters have blabbermouth syndrome too often.


Lastly, another eurojank game with "acts"... ffs. Don't do that ********. It sucked in the Gothic games and it sucks here. Open your damned world.

[rusty_shackleford]

Unless you've already played it, just play Archolos. It's the best of any Gothic-likes

[Rand]

Unless you've already played it, just play Archolos. It's the best of any Gothic-likes

I'm playing it off-and-on now.
It is pretty good.

Archolos 2.0 is promised for 2026.
I still wouldn't hold my breath for it though.
If interested, find the Discord (https://discord.gg/FHDHweuCVB) and you can see the 2.0 devlog channel (entitled "motde-showroom").

[Rand]

I commend the developers for working hard on this game.
Every patch sees significant improvements.

Additionally, they are adding significant things to the game as they have ideas and time.

► Show Spoiler

Should you play it yet?
No.

At least, not seriously.
Going in and screwing around a bit is fine, but be prepared to abandon your progress for later patches.
It has a way to go still and the experience is improving with each patch.
But it is a worthy successor to the best Gothic-style games.

[Rand]

I got a ..."review"... copy from ...a source... and just getting through the beginning was a chore.
Cutscene after cutscene going on for over 10 minutes to set up the protagonist's backstory and gameworld base plot that could have instead been done in-game, in media res (as you play) on the ship doing a controls/gameplay tutorial.
And then there's the hideous human face graphics in them... yikes.

And everything feels clumsy AF in the actual tutorial.
The voice lines do not match the character mouth/head movements, and the English subtitles don't match the English spoken lines more often than they should.
And it has that translation problem where the words are mostly right but the sentence formation and general way of speaking is very subtly but noticebly off all the time.

Also, the protagonist talks too much after a single prompt choice, and the other characters have blabbermouth syndrome too often.

Lastly, another eurojank game with "acts"... ffs. Don't do that ********. It sucked in the Gothic games and it sucks here. Open your damned world.

Update: the prologue IS a huge pain in the ***, still.
More tolerable the second time around, but not a great experience.

The world is VERY open once you get past the prologue, though.
The "acts" structure is only slightly limiting and not terribly implemented.

The prologue was clearly one of the first parts of the game created and they have not expended any effort to improve it, which is reasonable since it mostly doesn't matter.
Don't let it put you off the rest of a good game.

[rusty_shackleford]

I commend the developers for working hard on this game.
Every patch sees significant improvements.

Additionally, they are adding significant things to the game as they have ideas and time.

► Show Spoiler

Should you play it yet?
No.

At least, not seriously.
It has a way to go still and the experience is improving with each patch.
But it is a worthy successor to the Gothic-style game

I'd wait until they announce the save system has been improved to play, quite a few negative reviews are about it but there were also a few saying the devs said it's being worked on

[Rand]

I'd wait until they announce the save system has been improved to play, quite a few negative reviews are about it but there were also a few saying the devs said it's being worked on

It is improved, but they DO say they are still figuring out ways to improve it.
They have mostly or completely fixed the issues with saves losing items or conditionals under certain circumstances. They were rare in any case, but it's good to see them being diligent on such things.

They have implemented a decent new in-game system for issues and it has paid off well. Many reports that would never be made due to laziness and the effort required to find the Discord or reporting site are now made easily in game, and have been.

Optimization so far has been well done and successful, but again, they are intent on improvements.

[rusty_shackleford]

They have implemented a decent new in-game system for issues and it has paid off well. Many reports that would never be made due to laziness and the effort required to find the discord or reporting site are now made easily in game, and have been.

I've stopped reporting bugs for most software because it's too difficult, at this point I should just be able to say "****'s broken" and give a screenshot then let AI figure it out

[Rand]

Latest patch/progress log, if interested:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app ... 5678823077

[Old One]

I like this game quite a lot, but there are many frustrating things about it. I'll be trying out the new patch soon, but I doubt it'll fix the biggest headaches.

One of the things it really needs (and I doubt it'll get, because implementing it would require a lot of dialogue editing) is the ability to ask various NPCs some basic "where can I find..." questions.

I'm all in favor of no quest markers and that sort of thing, but if you're going to go that route, there have to be more ways to track down people and places you're looking for. The quest about returning the borrowed book is probably the prime example of this.

[Rand]

I like this game quite a lot, but there are many frustrating things about it. I'll be trying out the new patch soon, but I doubt it'll fix the biggest headaches.

One of the things it really needs (and I doubt it'll get, because implementing it would require a lot of dialogue editing) is the ability to ask various NPCs some basic "where can I find..." questions.

I'm all in favor of no quest markers and that sort of thing, but if you're going to go that route, there have to be more ways to track down people and places you're looking for. The quest about returning the borrowed book is probably the prime example of this.

There's a new log system that should help.
If you have ideas for improvements, join the Discord and lobby the developers.
A lot of the new features in this update were lobbied for by players.

[Old One]

Also - just to complain here once more - the day/night cycle goes too fast, or, to put it another way, time passes too quickly.

I find this to be a common problem with games that have a day/night cycle. I would increase the length of the days and nights by 50% at least. My personal preference would be to double their lengths.

I judge this simply by how many things I am able to do during the course of a day.