Other good twin-stick shooters with RPG mechanics like this one?

[Outsider]

I somehow can't find more games similar to Ascent that aren't Alien Shooter or Zombie Shooter.
Are there none? With different weapons and armors, skills, perks, all the good stuff.
Just no roguelites/likes please.

[TehJumpingJawa]

The golden oldie Syndicate Wars is free on GOG.

https://www.gog.com/game/syndicate_wars

Not strictly a twin stick shooter, but shares many other similarities to this game.

There's also a modern spiritual successor, Satellite Reign (named after the most cataclysmic weapon found in Syndicate Wars).
https://store.steampowered.com/app/268870/Satellite_Reign/


On the more RPG spectrum of distopian futures, there's the Shadowrun games.
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/532/Shadowrun_Trilogy/

Though again these are far from being twin stick shooters.

[Specific Beef]

I'd echo the above, especially about Shadowrun though they are turn-based games and not twin-stick shooters. Dragonfall is considered the best but I think Hong Kong is great too. It's worth playing Returns, the first of that trilogy, but don't dip on the whole series if you don't like that one. Dragonfall is a considerable leap in quality over Returns.

Perhaps the closest to The Ascent in aesthetics is Ruiner. If you keep an Epic Games Store account, you may already have this in your library of free games. It's got a commercial hub where you have minimal conversations and pick up jobs, and then you go out to the action. TBh I've never finished this because I always end up stopping and I'm not sure why, but what I saw is pretty nice. Check out video reviews.

Neon Chrome is fantastic, but might be too much on the Rogue-lite side for you. If you know The Raid movies, that's what this is: room after room of enemies as you ascend a massive tower building, raising your stats and fighting the occasional boss. Superb soundtrack. It's quite impersonal though since you don't have a character so much as a class, and the enemies are all guards and robots working for the corporation.

Jydge, from the same developer, feels a bit more involved. Rather than endless rooms, these are more individual venues where each one is a "level". Still the same stats building idea. Your enemies are mostly good old 80s movie punk gangs and gang lords, some ED-209 bosses, cybernetics etc. There's something of a story to it, barely, in that the scenarios take you to bigger and more dangerous places, and there is a story ending of sorts, but don't expect The Ascent's long exposition spiels or anything. It's more like the few sentences you'd get on 80s arcade machines, but at least there's a start and an end, and a feeling of development in between.

God's Trigger is a good single-player or co-op twin-stick shooter. Again, I think this was an Epic giveaway at one time (although, like Ruiner, I bought this one).

If you wait a little longer, I think your best bet might be Weird West which releases soon. It's from one of the Dishonored guys (plus I think he might have taken their illustrator with him?). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=No9su_Pxhm8

If you just want futuristic gunplay and don't mind losing the RPG elements, I'd recommend Housemarque's Nex Machina. It's their last top-down shooter before they got Sony money and made Returnal, and it's very much like Returnal in many ways but has no story and feels like an exceptionally good arcade machine. It's a horde-shooter but a very engaging and tactical one, so if you're into a challenge you might like this. On this score, Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions Evolved is one of the best twin-stick shooters ever made, perhaps the best. It's totally minimal and pared-down stylistically, but has a unique gameplay condition in that the fighting happens on the outer surfaces of 3d objects. It's hard to explain why that's a good thing so you just have to play it really.