Persistence is key in this game, because you'll die a lot. It is a souls-like, after all, and my introduction to this sort of challenging games. Also, I always wanted a souls-like set in the future. Now we got one. If you can overlook the obvious fact that most enemies don't use ranged weapons (are there no pistols and/or rifles left anymore?) then the setting is quite solid, too. You get to traverse intricately designed levels that get you the feeling that you really travel through some sort of megacorporation headquarters. Production facility, waste disposal and security wing included, all the way up to the executive forum where the board members make their decisions. On the way you get to meet and chop up a lot of enemies with a set of diverse moves that you need to anticipate and dodge quickly or block. These enemies also fit into the corporate theme. Crazed workers, welding or maintenance bots, security personel and hazard disposal teams. No monsters or weird creatures. Instead, everything is in accordance with the setting. The human enemies can give you their armour, priovided you can cut off the body part that you need. Same goes for weapons. However, after harvesting said body part, you only get a schematic. To equip the body part, you need to construct it first. And for that, you require an ops station, sort of a safe haven for you. Most levels have one. Here you can return to heal, to construct gear as well as to upgrade your core level and equip new rigs. I'll explain the latter one first, because this is another idea that I really enjoyed. You see, there are no skills in this game. Instead, there are implants that you can equip your character with. Some give you more health, more energy (required for finishing/chopping moves) or more stamina (for sprinting, attacking and blocking), others are healing items or give your weapon elemental damage. These implants can be found all around the playable world, which animates you to explore each level to the fullest. How many and which ones you can equip, is determined by two factors. First, the number of available slots. You start with eight, and can go up to 16. That's dependant on the rig you use. The rig is kinda like the exoskeleton, where all body parts and all implants are mounted onto. And the second thing that it's dependant on is the so called core power. That's the equivalent of a level. Also it is the capacity of the rig. The implants you equip cannot consume more core power than is available to you. With few exceptions. So if you have a core power of 10, for example, you can only equip implants with a total capacity of 10. At core power 100...you get the idea. To increase your core power you need to collect scrap that you get from defeated enemies. However, if an enemy defeats you, you respawn at the nearest ops station and your scrap is gone...provided, you reach the place where you died in a specified amount of time. If you do, your scrap can be reclaimed. The sum of these rather innovative gameplay elements was what made this game so exciting for me, coupled with a difficulty curve that is steep but challenging and never feels unfair until you fight the black cerberus and his 5! robot companions in succession, each of them equalling the very first boss. So instead of one boss, you fight a total of six in this encounter. Oh, and while you fight the robots, black cerberus heals, so if you take too long, you'll encounter a fully invigorated enemy each time you dispose of a robot . You die, you learn, you try again, you die a bit later, you learn, you try again and at one point you manage to defeat the enemy and move on. This souls-like principle applies to The Surge as well. Buy it, if you like this sort of games, and don't be deterred by the setting. The game mechanics and the level design make up for it totally!

The few points of critique I'd have would be that you don't get to experience much of the story, except through audiologs that can be found through exploration. I'd have loved for the game to tell you more about what's going on around you and in more ways. Audiologs and sparse bits of conversation aren't enough for my taste. Also, the few sidequests feel a bit unnecessary. You don't really get an indication what to do for what person and what the reward would be. I, for my part, didn't bother to complete a single one. Beat the game anyway so the reward couldn't have been that important. And the last bit of critique is the ending, that left quite a sour taste in my mouth.

To sum it up, this is a rare case where the gameplay, game mechanics as well as the challenge more than make up for the shallow story, in as much as I didn't really need one to be motivated to beat this game. The challenge was a driving force by itself in this case.