The Ascent - isometric, co-op cyberpunk action RPG

[cyborgboy95]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/979690/view/3109166146169473140

FREE HALLOWEEN PACK AND FREE PHOTO MODE!
20% discount on the game, new free in-game content and a first look at the post-launch roadmap!
Dear indents,

We are so excited to add some new
free content
for all players in The Ascent! This content is available on Steam today, and will be available on Xbox family platforms shortly.

A BRAND NEW PHOTO MODE

We’ve seen your requests, and we’re very excited to announce that The Ascent now has a photo-mode, free for all players!

All you need to know about the Photo Mode:

• The Photo Mode needs to be enabled in the Gameplay settings.
  
• The Photo Mode button can be reconfigured on PC (settings > key mappings) and is on D-pad right on Gamepad.
  
• UI needs to be hidden to move the camera
  
• Press F10 on Keyboard and LB on Gamepad to grab a screenshot
  
• Feel free to share your best pics on twitter @AscentTheGame – And stay tuned, we have some exciting new contests coming up!

FREE HALLOWEEN PACK

To celebrate Halloween and the
Steam Halloween Sale
, we are releasing a Halloween Pack for free for all players. You can download this pack on Steam by visiting this page. For players on other platforms, this content will automatically unlock as you download Patch #4 update.

The
Halloween Pack
contains:

• The Jack o’Lantern headgear
  
• The Skeleton shirt
  
• A Skull Face Tattoo

HALLOWEEN STEAM SALE

This is also the perfect time to become an Indent (if you’re not one already) with a
20% discount
on the game during the Steam Halloween Sale, from October 28th to November 1st.

No tricks, just treats!



NEW POINT SHOP ITEMS

The
Steam point shop items
collection has also been extended to celebrate Halloween with:

• 2 new Halloween animated Avatars
  
• 2 new Halloween Stickers

Visit this page to view all The Ascent Steam Point Shop items.

WHAT’S NEXT???

This is only the beginning… We are also very excited to give you a first look at what is coming next on The Ascent. Check out our
post-launch content roadmap
!

While we are adding these great new features to the game, rest assured that we are still committed to provide additional on-going patches to improve the game for all players.

Once again, we'd like to thank you for supporting us, whether you were with us from the beginning or you've recently joined the community - we're excited to have you along for the ride!


Happy Halloween from The Ascent Team!

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Finished it on co-op. Gamepass version so no DLC.

+ Visuals look really good on high settings. The game does that thing where you see the city is gigantic but you can only explore in certain places. So you get some nice views. There's a transmog system.

+ Dialogue and lore. The setting is cliche cyberpunk (geisha ads) and the aliens are people in rubber suits, but I kept stopping to hear conversations in the street and quests were funny for the most part (the unfunny ones are just dry "thanks, here's the money" dialogue). The corporation warfare kept me interested, the titular corporation goes broke shortly after the tutorial and the others are trying to move in.

+ Combat feels chunky. You have to keep your weapons upgraded though. The guns are fairly mundane in function and appearance, at most there's a few with tracking rounds. Your "spells" get stronger as you level your skills (point buy). Invest in cybernetics and the summon deploy spiderbot tech will crate more spiders, stasis field will last longer, etc.


- Tons of bugs. Gun disappearing from my hands, shooting at the sky if I press the trigger too soom after pulling another gun, crashes, losing connection to other player, who at one point lost several items. Not sure how much of it has to do with the version (gamepass still didn't get the Steam version patch) and the co-op method (me on PC and other player on cloud, which is the xbox version being streamed to PC, because the game doesn't have local co-op). Wouldn't have finished if I wasn't interested in the plot.

- Ending is kind of rushed. You are told what happened and it makes sense, but several mysteries are solved almost together and the final boss comes out of nowhere. Maybe the DLC adds to it.

- Balance is kind of shit. Finished almost every sidequest and did a bit of grinding by not using the taxi system for a while, and the waves at the end were still sometimes one shotting us. No big spikes during the rest of the game, just had to pay more attention at some fights. Also I found one pair of highest quality leg armor, a few rooms before the end.

- Said taxi system is required because many quests want you to deliver an item to a guy on another map, and sometimes it's in another level of the city so you need to take a taxi to the elevator (1 loading screen), go up/down (2), then take another taxi (3).

- Plot only progressed for the host since you load their saved game. Meaning here's not much point to co-op unless you're planning to do it start to finish.

Protip: explore the casino area as soon as you have access to it, there's a good tactical gear (spell) there, but you aren't told to go until fairly late into the story.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Finished it on co-op. Gamepass version so no DLC.

... Maybe the DLC adds to it.

As far as I know, the only DLCs for this thing are the soundtrack and some items and cosmetics.

 

[SumDrunkGuy]

Oh wow this looks a million times cooler than Cyberpunk 2077. Why has nobody told me this game existed!? *bought*

'Twas on sale as well. This day is a warm victory.

 

[Lim-Dûl]

Glad to hear that the balance is shit. Looks good.

 

[luj1]

cant remember the last time i saw a distinct SF setting

its all neon and bladerunner shit with annoying music

 

[SumDrunkGuy]

As far as I know, the only DLCs for this thing are the soundtrack and some items and cosmetics.

Hopefully one of them is a feminine hairstyle pack because they forgot to put any in the game.

 

[Kalarion]

I bought it to play with my my wife a month or so ago. It fulfilled its purpose, but I can't say it was all that fun. TLDR you probably shouldn't bother with this. If you do, play with a friend and get it on sale. I can't imagine playing through this bug-riddled snoozefest without someone to bitch to.

Crispy basically got it right. Really pretty graphics, everything else is meh to shit. On console especially the aim guidance/lock-on mechanic is really terrible and actively fights against you. Stats are meaningless. I mean they do something but who cares? Weapons need to be upgraded to stay competitive but I never got the sense I was making a good investment or any kind of "fuck yeah!" moment after dropping 6 Advanced Components into anything. Money is absolutely meaningless. It's not used for weapon upgrades, and you will never, ever, ever, ever, ever buy anything from the vendors because their stock sucks.

Bounties were a huge missed opportunity. If they were some kind of Diablo-like Champion system where you had a chance at a great piece of equipment or something they'd have been fine. Instead you get 1 random Component (used for weapon upgrades), a chance at a basic-bitch weapon/armor drop, and a bounty scrip that you can turn in for a reward. Here again there was the glimmer of something fun; maybe turning in scrips from higher level bounties would give higher caliber rewards! No. You get 1K money. Every time. No matter the bounty difficulty. Enthusiam -9000. By the end of the game we had a couple dozen (yes, over 24) or so bounties just sitting in our inventory, because honestly why bother? Turning them in just takes time away from finishing the game as quickly as possible.

Bugs. Holy shit the bugs. Rewinds, crashes, interactable objects suddenly losing their interactivity, soft locks, main questline NPCs and objects inexplicably disappearing (restart fixed it at least), monsters glitching their lassoing and suddenly becoming invincible... the list goes on. And it's not like it's rare or anything, we were fighting bugs throughout the game, in all areas. Thankfully Sony allows you to send bug reports with a message (I suppose so you can give a short description of what you were doing or something?), so I was able to abuse the shit out of the devs in reports. Let me tell you, after around the dozenth "would you like to send a bug report?", you better believe I sent them. The devs were made to understand what I thought of their releasing an unfinished, buggy product to console while failing to provide post-release support.

One aspect of character development I thought was kind of cool/interesting was Mods and Augments. They theoretically allow for a lot of customization, and there's a large variety, from super-powered punching, to shooting out a chest laz0r ala Iron Man, to deploying robots of varying utility. In practice I always used the same half-dozen or so mods though. The healing field is super op and, due to aforementioned bugs, sometimes absolutely required to allow a painless play experience, and I always wanted to have extra max HP because I couldn't be bothered to like. Dodge and stuff. No motivation :D

On the plus side (aside from the graphics I mean), some of the guns are kind of cool when you first get them. Getting your first minigun is a blast. So is using automatic rocket launchers, and the lightning beam gun looks nifty. But the thrill is gone after an hour or so.

Just missed opportunities everywhere. It's especially a shame because I'd been looking forward to the game for months leading up to release, thinking it'd be nice to play a new diablo-like with guns in couch coop. I don't even feel like I had high standards or anything, I just wanted to have a relaxing experience blowing shit up and occasionally getting cool loot. Something like that Warhammer AoS couch coop game that came out last year, I can't remember the name rn. But no.

Oh well.

 

[SumDrunkGuy]

This game raped my good console to death and sent me spiraling into a drunken bender that nearly killed me. Now it's forcing me to play as a transvestite. It literally destroyed my life. Avoid this game at all cost. Don't even play it if it's free!

 

[Junmarko]

Still no performance / balancing / polishing patch for Game Pass version.

Fuckers.

Your first problem = using Game Pass.

 

[SumDrunkGuy]

 

[SumDrunkGuy]

 

[cyborgboy95]

New mission soon?

 

[cyborgboy95]

Get ready for Cyber Heist!
Indents!

Gear up for an all new contract in The Ascent’s upcoming DLC – Cyber Heist!
Cyber Heist Includes 6 main & side missions, 10 new locations, 5 new weapons including for the first time in The Ascent, Melee Weapons and more!

Get your squad ready, this ain’t gonna be easy. Cyber Heist releases on August 18th!

 

[Peachcurl]

Oh, they introduced melee? That's noice.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Oh, they introduced melee? That's noice.

Guess the game is playable now.

 

[Peachcurl]

Oh, they introduced melee? That's noice.

Guess the game is playable now.

It was playable before. Tho I had a hard time to keep up motivation at some point, didn't even come close to finishing.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

was playable before

Bullshit, there were no melee weapons

 

[Crane]

Get ready for Cyber Heist!
Indents!

Gear up for an all new contract in The Ascent’s upcoming DLC – Cyber Heist!
Cyber Heist Includes 6 main & side missions, 10 new locations, 5 new weapons including for the first time in The Ascent, Melee Weapons and more!

Get your squad ready, this ain’t gonna be easy. Cyber Heist releases on August 18th!

I'm playing through this at the moment. I must say, it's everything I hated about the endgame of the main campaign wrapped into one DLC.

 

[CanadianCorndog]

I put about three hours into this game. It looks great. Really nice lighting and environments. There's verticality in the visual design which is often missing from top-down camera games. The enemies look good but there's not many. Visual effects are missing from things like mini-boss deaths. Things will just disappear, no blood and guts or explosions. Gameplay is repetitive and has no surprises. I was bored very quickly but I might continue playing it another time.
If you can get it cheap, it's got some nice eye candy.

 

[Dadd]

Cringe video but how did they make this game look so good relative to other similar games? The wikipedia page says it was developed by 12 people.

 

[lukaszek]

im not liking it. I spend half of the time walking/backtracking and cant seem to find fast travel options

 

[orcinator]

Cringe video but how did they make this game look so good relative to other similar games? The wikipedia page says it was developed by 12 people.

Slavs make good graphics slaves, but that mindset doesn't carry into gameplay design.

 

[CanadianCorndog]

Cringe video but how did they make this game look so good relative to other similar games? The wikipedia page says it was developed by 12 people.

https://www.torfrick.com/
He's one of the best 3D artists in the industry and he's a co-founder of the studio. You can find videos of his talks on Youtube.

 

[lukaszek]

im not liking it. I spend half of the time walking/backtracking and cant seem to find fast travel options

looks like there is a taxi option that finally gets unlocked at one point. Its hard to use it, why cant I just click on the map