Every issue I encountered in this 60 dollar ripoff

[McFuzz]

I bought this game to play with a friend who insisted that it would be a good experience. Now that we've finished the game, I feel like I'm in a good position to complain at length about why I hate this terrible videogame and everything it stands for, and why you should too.

I need you to keep in mind that Ashen is the same price as the remaster of it's main competitor, Dark Souls, which in my country at least, is $60.

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Technical Issues
At the first time you meet Gefn, I could not progress the conversation with Amara. My friend could, though, so he was ahead of me in the story despite us playing through together.

The game crashed at 2 points for me, 1 point for my friend. Crashes spawn you at the nearest bonfire so we had to go back and clear the whole area again and a couple times, we were out of sync with the story. This is not counting the times it crashed in the loading screen, which is roughly 4 or 5.

The Multiplayer can be wonky as hell. Sometimes your partner will despawn and the NPC partner will replace them. Sometimes you have to be really close to spawn, sometimes you can be really far away. Certain areas disallow co-op player spawning, but they never tell you that so, that was 20-30 minutes of wasted time.

The first boss Ukkoto spawned for me, but it did not spawn for my friend, so I was left fighting a boss that my friend couldn't see or attack.

Occasionally, the enemies don't spawn properly for both multiplayer partners.

Occasionally, pickups including the permanent buff feathers, don't spawn properly for both partners.

One time, I got out of the water while drowning, walked 3 steps, then died on dry land. No enemies around. I didn't record it and can't rightly explain it, but it didn't seem fair at the time.

Here is just a friendly reminder that this game costs 60 dollars.

The game isn't optimized. It ran okay on my friend's computer, apparently, but on mine it was starting to have serious frame drops as the game went on; notable in the city areas, and against the Shadow of the Ashen.

Design flaws
There is inventory management, and it is grossly mishandled. But not only is 15 slots not enough to hold all the stuff you carry from looting an area, but the storage box doesn't have enough slots either. At late game, the storage box becomes full and you have to drop unique, one-time acquirable items to fit stuff in.

When the storage box is full, you cannot stack items. Pressing the store button on a stackable item does nothing, and manually moving the stacks does nothing. See more about stack nonsense below!

You can't stack split items in your inventory. Normally in say, a good videogame, you can put 4 mushrooms over 3 mushrooms and it will stack them. Not in this nightmare; it merely swaps their positions for some reason! You have to drop them, and pick them up again.

When your ally goes down, the down timer is infinite. This removes all tension in needing to revive them: This is a design flaw that is not present in almost every other co-op game in existence. Why you inventing design problems for yourself, Ashen?

There doesn't seem to be a 'compare' button or feature in the inventory? Checking whether an item is better means you gotta look between your currently equipped item and the item you're picking up. Hey Ashen; why you inventing design problems for youself?

The final boss has 2 forms. The second form is supposed to be this huge transformation and shock reveal, and then it is objectively significantly easier than the first form, and her one big hitter (the spider-mode scurry attack) can be shielded for a small stamina cost. In Spider mode, she walks a lot slower and has a far larger hitbox, and seems to prefer one target, so she was an absolute cakewalk compared to her more agile counterpart. You know that... The later forms are supposed to be harder, right Ashen?

You get 1 down before a flat out death, but there is no indicator that you have already been downed. A few times we just plum forgot, and we also had a harsh awakening when realizing that the Estus tank refiller doesn't refresh your single down. We never beat a boss when someone was down, but it's almost certain that this would lead to some janky Ashen ♥♥♥♥ery.

Sekiro uses gourds to heal because it makes sense in a Japanese context. Ashen uses gourds to heal because it makes sense in a Souls-like context now.

Enemies respawn when you rest at a bonfire, but they also respawn without resting at the bonfire. This makes the act of balancing Estus use between shrines totally pointless, because if you spend time exploring an area, dudes will just respawn for no reason.

Roughly 80% of the assisted climbs can be circumvented by a technique that came to be known as 'janking it', by jumping around on other terrain. Arguably, seeing how hard I could break the game's ♥♥♥♥♥♥ jumping was the most fun I could have with it.

Here is just a friendly reminder that this game costs 60 dollars.

Quitting the game returns you to the nearest shrine, so you can ragequit right before you die and be safe and have your life and estus restored.

Being unable to pause while playing singleplayer makes no sense in Ashen, as there are no invasions or anything to make it tense. Coupled with the enemies respawning over time, this is a feature that Ashen should definitely have. No pause is simply a feature in this game because it is a feature in Dark Souls with no thought for why it's a feature in Souls games. Even Sekiro figured this out and added a pause.

To upgrade your weapons you need Sapient Moss, then Sapient Roots, then Sapient Twin Roots. But by the time you have gathered enough Sapient Moss to get to the first Root upgrade, you already have more than enough roots to fully upgrade it.

There is only one save slot, and half way through the game you unlock hard mode. Might you be tempted to start again right there? Only if you want to lose your entire playthrough! Why the ♥♥♥♥ is there one save file this game was released in 2019 for christ sake.

I've written a whole post on the steam forum already, but the enemy placement is thoroughly uninteresting and usually non-threatening. Areas are way too open from both an exploration and combat perspective, and you really never feel threatened or pressured by the context in which the fight takes place.

All the weapons end up at a very similar damage potential, and there's not much need to use anything outside of the starting weapons. Makes looking for new weapons kinda pointless when the club you start with has almost the same potential as a late game axe.

The game doesn't rightly explain what 'stun' means. Also, hey jerks: that is called flinching, or knockback, or whatever you want to call it, it's not a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ STUN.

Other less important issues
The story is boring and the world is inconsistent. In the first cutscene you're told to find the bird, and in the last cutscene you find the bird. There's not a whole lot that happens in between but there is a pretty obvious betrayal right at the end. They also go on about the light being gone but most areas are pretty well lit.

I don't like the "out of stamina" noise. It's like this weird bassy chime. It doesn't really fit the setting but at least it's very noticable.

The description on the store page says "Ashen is an action RPG about a wanderer in search of a place to call home." But they literally find it in the first 30 minutes and then not much 'searching' for that place occurs anymore. They add buildings over time, yeah, but that's not searching for the place. Inaccurate description.

The NPC partner is pretty trash. They won't take much initiative and they have a real problem navigating terrain. For the few parts where I did use my NPC, they fell down cliffs and stood passively during combat and got stuck on objects. My friend lost 30,000 souls when he went down, but the NPC just stood next to him doing nothing for a full 20 minutes.

---

You had 12 months after the game released on the Epic game store to fix these and other issues before the game made it to Steam but you apparently did nothing, unless the game was more broken on that platform than it is on this.

Ashen is nothing more than a Dark Souls ripoff with none of the soul, stay as far away as you can.

[OlafDinklheim]

I have played this game on both Xbox and PC twice over and each console, never had a single one of the problems you're describing. Many of the things here are nitpicks and discredit your review entirely for the record.

[McFuzz]

Originally posted by AzuriteGamez:

I have played this game on both Xbox and PC twice over and each console, never had a single one of the problems you're describing. Many of the things here are nitpicks and discredit your review entirely for the record.

A few of these 'nitpicks' that you didn't have are FEATURES of the game. Some of these things are objectively bad game design, and I could write a whole article on each but you would obviously skim the first 2 lines then come to the defense of this nightmare again so what's the point.

I mean, let's address, you didn't have any of these issues okay, so you didn't have an infinite down timer: an actual feature of the game?

Talk about being discredited, honey.

Regardless of whether you had any multiplayer bugs or storage chest issues, I did, and the post here is about the issues -I- encountered, not the issues that you encountered.

In reference to the review, sure, discredit away, but the review is already made, and the negative recommendation is not going anywhere. Even if I changed it to recommended, it's not going to take the mixed score away from this dumpster fire.

[urabahn [NGC]]

Wow, very defensive reviewer. Probably best to ignore the rhetoric.

[McFuzz]

Originally posted by urabahn NGC:

Wow, very defensive reviewer. Probably best to ignore the rhetoric.

I'm just baffled that anyone could find anything worth defending in this trash heap, and with an argument so full of holes as the guy above who reckons he didn't encounter 'problems' like the weapons all having the same damage potential, there being inventory management or the final boss having an incrementally easier final form... Which are all objectively bad design choices, inherently how the game is designed and will be indentical for every player so, figure that one out. Maybe he was just playing Dark Souls lol.

But sure, if you choose to ignore me then go buy it for yourself, well, more fool you lol. It won't hurt me none; I tried to dissuade you from wasting your time and money.

[Kernist]

From what i saw on youtube and other reviews on Steam most of this review is confirmed to be truth. The rest - it probably happened, it's not like he can benefit from lying after he bought the game. I wouldn't be ignoring that on your place, rather i would treat it like a warning.

[Asmosis]

That's a pretty comprehensive list of little nitpicks that could be summed up as "this isn't exactly dark souls".

[McFuzz]

Originally posted by Asmosis:

That's a pretty comprehensive list of little nitpicks that could be summed up as "this isn't exactly dark souls".

I disagree. There are a lot of genuine design flaws that would be out of place in any videogame, let alone a $60 one. The problem with is Ashen is not that it isn't Dark Souls, it's that it has the audacity to charge the same amount as a full price competitor and still be a fundamentally broken and boring experience. It's not even trying to be different enough from Dark Souls to still be its own thing, like Star Wars Fallen Order; a Souls-like that's actually worth 60 dollars, but it's trying to copy Dark Souls so closely and yet fails so miserably at the very core concepts, like enemy placement and progression systems.

This is not a No Man's Sky situation, where they fix issues over time and add content to their overpriced sham to save face, but rather the first DLC is a 15 dollar single dungeon that takes 3 hours to finish and bugs like stackable items not stacking still exist in the base game 14 months after release.

The problem is not "Ashen isn't like Dark Souls because it only has a single save slot/respawning enemies and limited heal items/a confusing definition of the word 'stun'/no compare button/etc" but that "Good videogames don't have those problems anymore." So many of these design issues were fixed decades ago; the Ashen developers would've had to think up some of these problems to make for themselves or they just haven't played a videogame in 20 years.

Or they just don't care.

[Liveey]

there are 3 save slots. Just so you know. Also why do you have the companion enabled? You should disable it like every single guide on multiplayer says to do.

I killed the boss very easily when my partner went down, cant really say anything much else on that front.

Almost all of your weird glitches and bugs never happened to me, you're probably having network issues. It sounds like lag tbh.

All assisted climbs can be worked around, you can disable the partner AI. Finding an alternate route is 100% possible.

the stacking sucks I agree, I never had the issue with consumables though. The spears were my only issue.

The weapons you claim are so similar there is no point searching for new ones but then you say you're upset you cannot store all the unique items.... So whats the point then? Just drop one of the weapons, you are not going to use it nor miss it. I personally enjoyed the 25% crit two hander that max capped at 301 damage instead of the starter axe that maxed at 256 damage with a 21% crit but hey, I guess thats just me being nit picky about stats. I also ran the whole damage potion and runes that gave me ridiculous amounts of attack when my partner died.

I got 20+ moss before I saw a root.

I agree the no pause single player is an inconvieniance, since I had to go to a shrine or vagrants rest if I wanted to afk for 10+ minutes.

I cannot comment on your quitting the game to avoid losing souls, as I never tried that. I was not particularly struggling nor was I too afraid of picking them up. Honestly restarting the game alone feels like too much effort to really care about a measly 30k or so. I dont see the issue, considering that I dont think it really matters but ok, its still a valid point.

I skipped the story, because I dont care about it. "Something something, the three ages and the death of the light, something something vague magic. Please go do stuff monkey." Is all I got.

However for people who enjoy the story and lore, makes sense, Ill trust you on that. I am more of a control person. Ashen feels good to play the motions, attack, and gameplay in general is smooth and not jarring. It is natural and very familiar. So thats why I cannot refute the story qualm.

While I agree some if not most enemies are not very interesting, I've been ambushed and suprised by a few that have been hiding away or in unique areas I wouldnt have guessed of before that are actually really dangerous and threatening if you just ignore that or dont realize until its too late. So while I agree I also kinda disagree, there are some genuine good placements that are not as obvious as many others.

Lastly, and I dont mean to go all English teacher on you. Stun actually is used correctly in this game as a 'shock, or astonishment that makes a person temporarily unable to act. Whilst a 'flinch' which is a quick nervous movement that involves fear or anxiety. Which could be involuntary but does not prevent action from another. Again widely it is used in games incorrectly and I 100% agree its mostly used in the way that is played in Ashen, however shouldnt be a con. The word itself is technically used correctly.

If we take a step back and forget darksouls and all similar games didnt exist for a second with the exception of Ashen. Then you would be comparing the action of stun to the definition of stun, vs the definition of flinch. While I understand your grips for the game, I cannot say that the review isnt fully unbiased since a lot of it is comparison to your other experiences.

You do have some really valid points though, for example the stacking issues on some items are really rough. I 100% agree that is a pain and should have been fixed much much sooner in a game that was out a year ago.

I also agree that 60 dollars is steep considering the average playtime of Ashen including dlc (about 20ish first time), is heavily outweighed by my playtime of my first darksouls playthrough including dlc (a solid 70ish hours).

The difficulty is in fact much easier, and I enjoy the fact Ashen has no Katanas. (Thanks) however at the time, I do agree with OP ashen may not be worth its 60 dollar price tag, especially if we are comparing it to other games of the genre.

However as a game for players who cant play darksouls, it is a very pretty game with minimalistic graphics that can run quite well on all settings. It has smooth concise movement controls and a semi-decent difficulty with a subpar but better than average NPC. However I wouldnt recommend using he NPC as a crutch and would actually recommend disabling him entirely and playing with a friend instead.

TLDR: I dont agree with all of OPS points, but I can see where his frustration is coming from. Although I dont recommend the game as a 'dark souls' substitute. It may still be a good game for players interested in the dark souls - like control style and genre, but may not be as cognitive or reactionary as one may need to fully enjoy the difficulty of Dark Souls which if we were to compare is most definitely worth the money more so per hour than Ashen will ever.

Ashen is fun to play, but more fun with friends. It is easy and a fun time waste. However it is a 20-25 hour game for 60 dollars. It has no replay value and some very slight frustrations which I have agreed with OP on above.

[McFuzz]

Originally posted by Liveey:

Many words.

I don't actively disagree with enough to justify posting another 3 pages here. This is a valuable enough post from the other side of the argument, or, at least part way across.

Still. A very quick and minor rebuttal from points that stuck out:
If the hammers said 'X% chance of flinch' I would know exactly what it meant. Flinch is the correct term to describe the state inflicted in a videogame context, and stun is not.
Dark Souls DOES exist, and if it didn't, neither would Ashen.
20-25 hours is a stretch. Friend and I did every quest, sidequest, looked around extensively and afk'd a bit and we only clocked 18 hours.
Even though I didn't care for any of the items I'd collected, they are still UNIQUE items that can only be obtained once. I have a hard time picking through and abandoning rare or unique items, in videogames, especially when there's no way to compare any of them without moving over them one at a time.

[MundM]

That's a bit too much for me to take in. You might want to post this as your review instead.

"Sekiro uses gourds to heal because it makes sense in a Japanese context. Ashen uses gourds to heal because it makes sense in a Souls-like context now." I was wondering that, too. Weird. Couldn't they have used some magicly bottled light or something? Oh well, they gotta use something.

"Enemies respawn when you rest at a bonfire, but they also respawn without resting at the bonfire. This makes the act of balancing Estus use between shrines totally pointless, because if you spend time exploring an area, dudes will just respawn for no reason."

I might be wrong / not fully correct, but I observed that this happens when someone joins your game/ you join their game. The enemies synchronise, so if only one of you already killed an enemy but the other didn't, the enemy is alive, if both already killed it, it stays dead.


I personally think there are not enough flaws in the game to cause a major outrage, and I really like how smooth the game runs (4k 60 fps never a drop on a 2070 super). I also enjoy the silent multiplayer and that you can disable AI compantions. I really like that the other player is just some temporary companion because I want to discover the world on my terms anyway.

[McFuzz]

Originally posted by MundM:

I might be wrong / not fully correct, but I observed that this happens when someone joins your game/ you join their game. The enemies synchronise, so if only one of you already killed an enemy but the other didn't, the enemy is alive, if both already killed it, it stays dead.

You're correct; you are wrong. I was just playing by myself with the multiplayer off for a while, and if you wait long enough, enemies start respawning, seemingly on a progressive timer from when they were killed.

Additionally, the game picks a 'host' world; one person might have killed all the enemies and the other didn't. Sometimes you'll have dead enemies, sometimes you won't. As to how to effect this, no idea.

I was in real struggletown getting the game to run well at the best of times, so, lucky you. I turned all the graphics down, didn't make much of a difference. My computer runs fine on almost anything else. Runs the Witcher 3 perfectly fine but can't run Ashen at a perfect 60? Makes sense I guess! One particular fight, which I forget the name of so we'll call it, Ashen The Badgame, ran at about 12 frames for me. I couldn't even go near Ashen The Badgame without him dropping my frames to unplayable levels and just doing some DBZ teleportation attacks around me.

It's fine if you like it. But you're also objectively wrong, which can be quite easily proven with a critical analysis and market comparisons. I would go into it but this game is worth nothing more than blind rage.

I am sad that you necro'd my post to remind me I bought this disaster.

[MundM]

"It's fine if you like it. But you're also objectively wrong" I chuckled a little at that one.
Besides, the last comment is only a month old, I didn't know a conversation gets obsolete that fast.

[McFuzz]

I'd forgotten about Ashen entirely. And now like a vengeful spirit, I'm back and my hatred for Ashen is renewed. It has done the opposite of wine, and got worse with time. The more I think on this broken, janky mess I get madder and madder by the second.

The problem isn't that it exists... Well, that's a bit of an affront to nature but; no the REAL problem is people SOMEHOW don't see the flaws or valid comparisons to other, better games, and think it's fine. It's these people that helped us end up with Disney's sequel trilogy of Star Wars and just, like 14 different Xbox's all with a similar nightmare name designed only to confuse rich grandparents. I just don't see how anyone can say that Ashen meets any minimum standard of quality for games these days.

I may even blame the COVID-19 on Ashen, because that started appearing on TV the same day I bought this game, but I don't think that would correctly express how much I HATE this game.

[Legather]

Not @ anyone in particular but here's another perspective. EGS version so no Steam playtime.

Having had no one join my game I can also state that the enemies seem to be on a respawn timer.

The AI companion is A"I". If you go down, they can get caught on a pebble and you can do nothing but give up or stare spitefully at the screen wondering how this is happening. Same with waiting for an assisted climb should they happen to spot a wall they take a determined interest in. They can suffer extreme indecision whether to pick you up or continue to fight. They fall off ledges, a lot. Sometimes they love climbing ledges so much that they get 90% through a climb animation then give up and reset so they can do it over and over and over again.

The inventory isn't great. As others have pointed out while there are weapons whose stats differentiate them only slightly, there is enough variance in the overlap between stats/moveset/looks that if you have even the smallest collector urge in your brain the weapons will fill up your storage in no time.
If your urge is more for minmaxing, since there does not appear to be a fully updated list of weapons including DLC items (that I could find as of writing this) with stat tables, you might want to keep weapons for testing purposes.
Adding on to that the various armours (which again have an overlap of stats/looks which also divide into standard and xmog into npcs), shields (stats/looks) and stacks of spearheads, scoria pouches, sapient moss/roots/twin roots, consumables and ingredients for consumables.
Limited storage space doesn't seem to make much sense especially given that storage afaik is only available in a fixed location in your town. In a game where items can't be sold and the devs have gone to the bother of designing a variety of visually distinct equipment, a menu for storage by item type would be desirable but a second general tab should be minimum.

I got plenty of roots before I saw a moss, I thought they were going to be for better spears when I unlocked them.

Losing scoria happened to me in two flavours: combat death compounded by the aforementioned A"I" issues and platforming/exploration. While I'm always grateful that a game includes exploration, Ashen is somewhat inconsistent about what is and what is not reachable by jumping.

On navigation re the spear teleportation I had two issues. First if you had Ukkoto's Guile equipped and charged, your reticle and target area is obscured by the orbs. I don't know if it's the same for other relics. Second due to the above it becomes more efficient to carry 2 stacks of spears, a damage set and a navigation set. This is another drag on your inventory.

Regarding performance, I'm on my 3rd or 4th day of playing. For the most part it's been smooth enough however yesterday playing the whole day I did notice that the game seemed to suffer increasing stalls. I can't speak with authority as to why this might be, perhaps a result of loading several regions?

I think stagger is the usual term for the effect, with poise being the usual resistance to stagger.

I don't see why you should have to incur a talisman penalty for wanting to eschew the companions and play the game truly solo.

I do agree the story isn't necessarily too engaging. I found myself reading the lines hurriedly rather than letting the VA deliver them and skipping to the next (which I almost never do in a first playthrough).

I did note the lack of swords in the game and thought that a third weapon class would have helped give a middle road between crit and stagger 'builds' (if such a simple thing as choosing weapon a b or c can be called a build) but I can appreciate that the devs didn't see it that way.

The art style of the game was very attractive to me, I liked the enemy designs and the environments. The sound and music were good I thought.

The Seat of the Matriarch may well be, depending on taste, one of the best or worst dungeons I've played through. I'm usually pretty good with keeping a mental map of my route through a dungeon but I'll admit that the role of darkness in Ashen significantly confounded me and I ended up doing a loop back to the front door without realising where I was. The sound design in there amplified that anxiety of vulnerability in a way that frankly I've never experienced before. Whether that's good or bad again depends on your taste. To me it was a treat.

As much as the A"I" companions are a near persistent face palm, having one around to carry a lantern so you can two hand is useful. When they haven't jumped off a ledge.

It's not a bad game, there are areas for significant improvement but there are also gleaming strengths that stop Ashen from being a bad souls-clone write off.

[McFuzz]

Ashen is to Dark Souls as Dauntless is to Monster Hunter... except Dauntless is free, and unarguably better than Ashen, and Dauntless is a trainwreck!

Please no more necro ;-;