The Ascent

The Ascent delivers on every promise. The combat is fast-paced, challenging, and explosive. The environment is gorgeous, gritty, and dark. Everything about the cyberpunk theme screams out for attention. If you're a fan of twin-stick style shooters and the thematics of the cyberpunk universe, The Ascent offers an exciting and rewarding adventure that is worth every second.

The Ascent was originally released as a timed exclusive on Xbox Series X in July 2019 and we loved it then. Now, the timed exclusivity is over and The Ascent is making the trek over to PlayStation 5. While the game is essentially the same game as when it originally launched, there have been some significant updates, additions and patches to the Xbox version over the past year – and all of that content will be available to PlayStation gamers on day one. In some ways, it was probably worth the wait! If you’re looking for a fast and fun twin-stick shooter with gorgeous visuals and some RPG-like e...

A robustly entertaining cyberpunk dungeon crawler wrapped up in some of the most sublime audiovisual presentation and thoroughly satisfying combat to come along in a good while, though it isn't quite as ambitious as I would like it to be, the Ascent is nonetheless a fantastically entertaining offering that will appeal to genre fans of cyberpunk settings and dungeon crawlers alike.

A quality action RPG set in a mind-blowing cyberpunk city.

The Ascent looks and feels great to play. It could have better stability, but overall, runs like a charm!

A few balance issues and questionable combat encounters do not mar an otherwise solid and memorable cyberpunk action-RPG experience.

The Ascent looks and acts like a video game, but mostly feels like work.

It gets off to a slow start, but once you've found a few weapons and augmentations The Ascent offers fun top-down action and a stunning cyberpunk world to explore.

Jason took the latest action RPG, The Ascent, for a spin in our latest RPG Files review. How does the frenetic, fast-paced action hold up? Here is our full review.

Despite my complaints, though, I legitimately love the world Neon Giant has crafted here and would love to see even more of it. There’s loads of potential in this setting for straight-up better stories to be told, and I think The Ascent itself is kept from greatness from a lot of jank, technical issues, and weird design decisions. All that said, I think once I get my hands on a Steam Deck, I’m absolutely going to treat that as an excuse to go back for more. Hopefully, by then, they’ll have a lot of the technical issues addressed.

The Ascent is a tough game to recommend for solo players in its current state. Its buggy, tedious at its best and utterly frustrating at its worst. While I'm sure playing with friends will resolve some of my chief complaints, more fundamental issues like a rather boring overworld can't be fixed with a few laughs with friends.

Its skyline is happy to quote at length from Blade Runner, but the poetry is in short supply.