Copied my post from XboxEra for anyone who may be interested in Steel Rising which releases in two weeks as I have barely seen anyone mention this game.
For anyone who is interested in Steel Rising, there’s a closed Beta available with the digital pre-order which as far as im aware can be cancelled prior to the game releasing on September 8th as it’s not considered a refund request due to the game not being released yet. Anyway, I pre-ordered the $50 standard version at GameStop last week but then pre-ordered the $60 Bastille Edition digitally for Xbox Series X and gotta say, went through the entire Beta in around 5 hours and wanted to keep playing. It’s really good.
Visuals won’t blow anyone away but are still in that 8-8.5 range. Environments look good along with the atmosphere. I’m also in the locale. Audio is solid. I would say that the voice acting and lip syncing is better than GreedFall and granted, it’s not an AAA blockbuster but no major issues with it. Story and characters seem interesting through the first two areas but obviously, too early to know for sure.
Combat and gameplay wise though, yeah, you can tell that it’s an AA budgeted game, however, the combat and control of Aegis feels more fluid and responsive especially when compared to GreedFall. You can also customize the controller configuration so for anyone like me who prefers to use the X/Y buttons for light/heavy attacks instead of RB/RT, you can do so.
The real difference for Steel Rising is that while combat is definitely a souls game, you can adjust “assist” options. There’s four options -
1. Adjust damage given by enemies. This is based on percentage. 0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%. 0% is normal and the default level. For example, my health was 200HP. If a single enemy attack was to take away 100HP and you have this set at 50%, their attack would only take away 50HP. For anyone who wants to be invincible, you can set this to 100% and no attack even by bosses will take off any health from you.
2. Retain Anima Essence Upon Death. This is basically your “souls” that when you die, you lose it and then have to get it back. However, this is an on/off option which allows you to retain your Anima Essence when dying. This is literally the number one reason why I decided not to pass on Steel Rising since im not a souls guy. I don’t mind respawning enemies or the tougher combat but losing what I spent potentially hours to gain when dying, fuck that shit. So obviously, I have this set to on. This option alone by itself made me enjoy Steel Rising Beta and look forward to the full game in two weeks.
3. Stamina Regeneration Speed. This is percentage based. 100% which is default. 200% and 300%. Basically this speeds up how fast your stamina bar refills after using it. I had this set to 200%. Pretty quick. I’m not waiting around 20+ seconds for my stamina to regenerate. I didn’t try the default level. I probably should have. Maybe tomorrow.
4. Rapid Cooling. This is an option that when your stamina is fully depleted, Aegis will begin to overheat due to being an Automaton. When this happens, your stamina bar will regenerate and if you press RT when the bar is filling up, you’ll gain back that amount of stamina instantly instead of having to wait for the entire bar to fill. Think of it like when reloading in Gears of War and you get a perfect reload which refills your clip completely. Turning this on will automatically refill your stamina regardless of when you press RT as the bar is filling up. This I messed around with but kept it off as me having the regeneration set to 200% is very generous.
Based on earlier and more messing around tomorrow, I will probably have the damage given set to 50%, Anima Essence retained when killed, Stamina regen will test at 100% default tomorrow. If I don’t like it, I will keep it at 200%. Rapid Cooling I will keep disabled as I don’t really need it. Below is a good preview of the game from June that has much more info on the game.
https://fextralife.com/steelrising-preview-gameplay-and-hands-on-impressions/
Anyway, Steel Rising will be the first souls game that im looking forward to playing due to the fact that they include “assist” options which allows me to play the game my way.
I know a few people here were interested in Steel Rising but turned off due to it being a souls like game so with that said, is anyone interested in the game or is it just me?
