Steelrising’s early moments felt surprisingly doable and fun for a genre of soul, a genre of game that often begins with difficult challenges and a “getting it figured out” vibe. But once I hit the second map, I ran into an enemy that made me go into the game’s “Assist Mode.” You might think that using “Easy Mode” lets me breeze through the rest of the game without thinking. But he didn’t. Far from it. The game remains challenging, but there was room to learn at a more patient pace. With this feature enabled, the game doesn’t keep sending me back to a play area, depleted of my experience points by wasting time on loading screens. The mode offers variable difficulty options so I can scale up to where the game wants me to go. Steelrising does not dethrone masters of this genre. But they sure show at least one way to improve, and with a pretty cool aesthetic. Steelrising is the latest title from French developer Spiders. It’s something of a soul where you play as Aegis, a twisted “automaton” who must fight other similar creations in a crazy alternate history of the French revolution. The studio is known for narrative-focused RPGs such as 2016’s The Technomancer and 2019’s Greedfall. Previous Spiders games, while perhaps broadly similar to something like Mass Effect, usually march to the beat of their own drum. With Steelrising, I wasn’t initially thrilled to see the studio chasing another game’s model so closely, only to be expected to shy away from the incredibly strong standard FromSoftware has set for the genre over the years. If you’re a die-hard Miayazaki fan with no time for imitators, Steelrising isn’t likely to hold your attention. Despite the imaginative premise and excellent character design with digestible RPG mechanics, something is missing here. It also struggled to maintain 60 frames per second on PC for me, which made the experience feel harsher than it should have been. All the boxes are checked though: the enemies are tough, you have to level up to replenish their health and attack, when you die you drop your XP and return to the last spawn point with all enemies refreshed, which is charged by reclaiming your souls that do not call you. You’ll continue to unlock new shortcuts and traversals on the twisty maps as you progress. You get the picture. But “Assist Mode” is where it’s worth noting and discussing. Gif: Spiders / Nacon / Kotaku G/O Media may receive a commission This mode is a set of options that allow you to change a variety of the game’s functions. You can modulate the damage you deal, scaling it to 0% if you wish (you’ll still take fall damage though). You can also choose to keep your XP when you die, adjust your stamina regeneration rate, and affect the “cooldown” timer you get when you perform too many actions in a row. If a soul-like person is thinking about adding difficulty options, Steelrising is a clear model of how to do that. Those who struggle to reduce the difficulty of a soul probably worry that the core experience is in danger of being diluted or lost, or simply losing the meaning of the genre. Many may worry that it is the virtual equivalent of disarming a sniper or jumping off a platform. But Steelrising’s assist mode doesn’t take you away from the core game. Instead, it allows you to have a different perspective on it, so you can really get better at the basic skills of attacking and dodging, and potentially learn how going up can change those dynamics. The option I found myself using the most was to reduce the damage to 0%. This meant that the first enemy that really gave me any trouble, an automaton that throws giant steel balls around on chains attached to its arms, could teach me its moves instead of hitting me and forcing me to restart every time . failed. He went from being a giant jerk to a sports fan. He still spanked my ass every time. But I could stand up and say “okay, when he’s moving like that, I’ve got to get out of the way.” I learned where the openings were, how fast to push my offense. I was able to build up a muscle memory in my response to this type of enemy and didn’t have to go back to the damn spawn point and face all the enemies again to learn. I’d love to have a “fake health bar” so I can tell how much damage they’re taking so I know “well, I’d be dead at this point”. Assist Mode has helped me understand the language of the game and has prepared me for when I’m ready to whip out those training wheels, take down those enemies, and feel accomplished in how I’ve gotten better. Screenshot: Spiders / Nacon / Kotaku The other difficulty options can also adjust the game genre. Keeping XP with you means death plays a different role in the game. Stamina regeneration can make the game feel a little faster. Granted, when you activate any of these features, there are some achievements you can’t unlock. But that’s fine! In fact, it actually maintains the crushing difficulty the developers were aiming for. It makes the game the way it was designed to be something you could aspire to, not be punished so often for not living up to its demands. I enjoy challenges and difficult experiences in video games and elsewhere. I like to see my own improvement in the things I find interesting. And as someone who struggles with my mental health and has to fight quite a few real demons when things are frustrating, psychopaths have remained something that feels very rude to me. I’m just less likely to engage with them. I want to experience the thrill of beating these games, the achievement of having mastered something. I just have to prioritize my personal relaxation timer for things in life that will never have a difficulty slider. Steelrising proves that a game can do this while still being challenging enough. “Assist Mode” didn’t just make the game easier. It was a helping hand that reframed the frantic action by saying, “Hey, you can really do this. And here’s how.” Games need more than that.
