Of Ash and Steel Review – Stumbling Through an Open World

Of Ash and Steel Review

Back in the day, RPGs like the original Gothic (2001) were both praised for their ambition and derided for a lack of technical polish. Sometimes, the bugs and mishaps were endearing and exploitable. Often, the games were just bad. “Euro-jank” became shorthand for games very much like Of Ash and Steel. It’s a game whose good — or at least interesting — ideas are overshadowed by serious technical issues and misguided mechanics.

No Hand-Holding

Of Ash and Steel puts the player in the worn shoes of Tristan, a cartographer who finds himself unexpectedly on the island of Grayshaft. With few clues to follow, he eventually finds his way to the bustling main city, where the narrative picks up speed. Eventually, Tristan aligns with one of three factions after completing their quests. But that doesn’t happen until several hours into the game.

Of Ash and Steel is purpose-built on a very specific design philosophy. There’s no hand-holding, no quest markers or highlighted NPCs. No breadcrumb trail, and no map for quite some time. Directions given by NPCs are most often vague, with the goal of encouraging the player to wander into discovery, a new quest, or a hidden area. Early on, the main quest is simply “go to the docks and make a deal.” Which docks? Where? A deal with whom? And why? Progressing even the most minor side quest almost always carries with it moments or more of being lost, confused, or having to listen to endless lines of NPC dialogue. You never know where the next clue or quest is coming from.

Games with this kind of narrative and quest design are potentially incredibly refreshing. We’re all weary of over-explicated RPGs that leave nothing to the imagination. However, a lack of direction has to be balanced against the joy of being in the spaces. Even if Red Dead Redemption 2 had no narrative, spending time in the world would always feel good. This is where Of Ash and Steel takes an inglorious and painful faceplant. Even when the goals are relatively clear, there’s always a glitch or frustrating mechanic getting in the way, not just of progressing, but of having a good time.

First, the News Isn’t All Bad, Just Mostly

For a decidedly AA game, Of Ash and Steel’s environments can look attractive, with particularly effective lighting through its day and night cycle. The low-fantasy, medieval-ish art direction doesn’t suggest any particular cultural origin except maybe other RPGs. Exploring through the fields of flowers and shadowy forests is often interesting. While the game’s music gets annoyingly repetitive, the environmental audio is well done.

When it comes to character design, be it human, animal, or monster, Of Ash and Steel shambles back several generations in quality. There are some truly horrendous faces in the game, with many reused with only minor changes. The game’s lip syncing is, on the whole, awful. On the positive side of the ledger, there is an immense amount of voice acting in Of Ash and Steel, and it’s surprisingly well delivered. However, there are some problems. First, the game weirdly substitutes different voices during action sequences or combat than the character’s regular voice. Second, lines often repeat and overlap. Last, the game is obviously going for dialogue choices that impact the story, but this system is often exploitable or broken.

But delivery and writing are two entirely separate disciplines. Most of the time, the game doesn’t take itself too seriously and leans into humor.  The result is that nearly every character has a similar style. Conversations go on forever and meander so much that it’s easy to forget what the point is or what the direction might be. And of course, the game never adjusts for interactions that happen out of the intended sequence, leading to broken or confusing quests.

Not a Fighter

If you were a lowly cartographer and not a trained combatant, you’d struggle with the basics of hoisting a sword or aiming a bow. There’s definitely a logical element to Of Ash and Steel’s combat feeling awful until Tristan trains and levels up. He has to learn many things: stamina management, blocks, parries, and effective timing. Two problems: logical doesn’t mean necessarily fun, and leveling up takes hours, lots of gold, and many failures and deaths. Meanwhile, getting there feels like a chore.

As with most NPCs, there are many systems and currencies connected to leveling up skills, weapons, and crafting. Most systems have multiple components. XP earns skill points, but using them to level up costs gold. Of course, you need to find trainers, and they usually have quests to complete. You need to locate crafting stations in the world. Of Ash and Steel’s economy definitely needs a tune-up. Nearly every enemy, from rats to humans, drops loot, but the vast majority of it is useless junk.

Even when Tristan ranks up in competence, it isn’t like combat feels rewarding, finely tuned, or impactful. At best, it feels less bad than when the player started. There’s a good selection of melee and ranged weapons, though, which at least lends variety. Magic is not absent, but it doesn’t open up until fairly late and demands following a specific skill line, which takes forever.

As Always, the Bugs

Of Ash and Steel is one of those games where you immediately know you’re in for a rough ride, technically. In this regard, it doesn’t disappoint. From choppy animations to mistakes in subtitles, from characters clipping through objects to broken quests, the game is a poster child for jank. Sometimes this can be amusing, but often the bugs and lack of polish just add up to frustration. Of Ash and Steel is ambitious. It wants to be a big, impressive, and multi-faceted RPG that has one foot in the mechanics of the past and another in the present.

If you can temper your expectations and have an impressive tolerance for jank and lack of polish, Of Ash and Steel might have something to offer. The world is sort of interesting, even if the stuff you need to do in it is rarely as fun as it should be. The main character goes through the game sort of annoyed and bewildered. So did I.

***PC code provided by the publisher for review***