Solar Ash Review

This game was a strange one. I held it off for years and it was one of the first games I bought on PS5 but I held it off for this long. As a whole, I found the game to be decent but that is in large due to the short length and the frequent checkpoints.

Best way of describing this entire game is what if the 3D Sonic games, Mario Galaxy and Shadow of the Colossus had a baby? You'd get this. At first, I was confused why a platformer would have difficulty options but it's to mainly increase or decrease the amount of time Rei can stay on corrupted surfaces before they "rot" and a game over happens.

Solar Ash by essence is an open world game where you find various corrupted areas scattered all over a certain zone, the player does a platforming challenge and then Rei stabs an eye. The way points weird work like the Sly sequels where you are told where to go but *how* you get there, you have to figure it out. It is cool to see waypoints get implemented like this.

However the issues can really get in the way of moment to moment gameplay. For one, Solar Ash let's you down the right bumper, the game slows down and if the R1 prompt pops up than Rei can dash in and hit the enemy. It's hard to tell what distance is good enough to know when the player can dash into an enemy. I would just prefer something like Sonic's homing attack in the 3D games since there is less busywork and steps involve in quickly dispatching enemies.

You can't run past enemies no matter how fast you move either so you will have to use this slow down dash move and eventually fight enemies which isn't ideal since combat isn't great and the game is about speed which just makes me want a homing attack that much more.

The health system is weird in that you need to collect shards all over the level to increase your health bar but at the end of every boss it will go down and you need to have to build back up again.

There's other issues like how Rei magnetizing to grind rails feels like a 50-50 guessing game if it will happen. No matter if you set it to automatic or hold the dash button, it never feels like I was getting good or I was reliable with this system. It just felt like a game of luck.

Solar Ash also does a poor job at communicating what the player is supposed to get to certain parts of its levels. For example you are supposed to hit certain colored spots to activate new grind rails to unlock certain paths through the level but the game will never make it clear what exactly you are supposed to do. There's another section where you need to activate and deactive generators to solve a puzzle but since nothing is ever communicated, I banged my head against a wall having no clue what to do. A cutscene with close ups and zoom in shots and dare I say it, Rei giving a hint during gameplay could help. You already have waypoint markers.

When you add to that fact that certain climbable surfaces can rot and you need to quickly turn the camera fast enough to quickly jump to the next platform can feel very cumbersome.

Final issue is that, Mirrorsea is quite the terrible level. Half your time will be spent trying to figure out what is or isn't the right path to get traverse the levels. It's basically a puzzle that can feel tedious and punishing upon dying due to acid hazards. This part of the game did heavily test my patience mainly due to how far apart checkpoints can feel and how easy it is to quickly die and respawn hoping you get lucky the next time.

Which now gets me to the good. Despite all the issues I had with the game, the two main saving graces is the brisk pacing and the colossi styled bosses. The various levels in Solar Ash never drag on for too long due to the waypoint markers and fast travel can also cut down on dull down time.

The collosi battles can be enjoyable and intense, I did play this on easy since I don't the controls were reliable enough for me to quickly dash fast enough from weak point to weak point. Like I said before, I always felt like I was often lucky to get past many of the game's challenges. The bosses on normal difficulty felt like I really needed to be good with how refined the platforming can be.

Overall, Solar Ash was just "okay". I shouldn't have taken this long to play it but it also wasn't a repulsive waste of time either. If 3D Sonic, Mario Galaxy and Shadow of the Colossus sounds intriguing check this out, if you get frustrated by the lack of polish and refined mechanics, see if lowering to easy could help.