Review: Of Ash & Steel

Developer – Fire & Frost

Publisher – tinyBuild

Platforms – Steam (Reviewed)

Review copy given by the Publisher

Where do I begin with Of Ash & Steel? There are so many things to say about it that I feel almost as lost as I was in the game itself. One of the key selling points was that Of Ash & Steel is a call back to the olden days of Gothic, Morrowind, and Risen. Washing up in an unknown world with very little guidance and no map or quest markers to assist you in your journey. OA&S on paper is the truest form of an adventure RPG, but is that really what gamer’s want? In some senses, yes absolutely! However, at its current version, there are some flaws that hold it back from achieving the greatness it has hidden in the horizon. If only it had a map to guide them there!

We are Tristan, a cartographer from Astartia. He is a simple man, with not many skills or great attributes that would make him stand out from any other average Tristan. He is a blank slate in terms of abilities and skills and it is up to you to make him into the man can become. Can you wield a dagger? Sure but not very effectively. How about a bow? Of course, but you aim recklessly. Can you run a long distance? You can sprint a short distance but you won’t be able to run a marathon. That’s Tristan.

Give him some time though and this jack of no trades will be able to master exactly what you want him to. Crafting armor? Check. Forging legendary weapons? Yep. Brewing Potions from harvested herbs? Mhm. What about picking pockets and locks? Absolutely. OA&S is a slow burn but the pay off of your exploration is unlocking new skills and finding hidden treasures across the land.

The main adventure starts with you boarding a ship as the cartographer of the crew. The captain has an important mission of delivering a critical document to the Order. What that document is we have no idea but we know that it is important. Upon washing ashore and briefly setting up a camp, Tristan and crew are savagely attacked and left for dead. These enemies steal the document and vanish. You then wake up in an old man’s shack.

During these events we learn some of the basics of the game, how you can interact with the environment, and the keys to survival. Upon completing a few simple quests in return for saving your life you are the free to begin your journey into the great unknown. With a general set of directions to the city, you can decide to follow them and continue the main quest or freely explore the entire island. That’s right, while there are definitely harder enemies in places you should avoid you theoretically could spend hours getting lost here however I would very strongly suggest you stick to the main path for now.

The world and enemies are absolutely ruthless at this point in the game. Enemies that are your level can easily take you out and even attempting to fight higher level mobs will surely lead straight to your death. While you can find valuable treasure at the start, there really isn’t that much that is usable with your current stats outside of gathering things to sell. By sticking to the objective you get at the start, you are going to have a much easier time slowly building Tristan’s abilities to tackle those more difficult zones.

There are plenty of things to do on the way to the city. Controlled exploration along the path leading there will lead you to a few quests and easily accessible treasures. Combat at the start is very simple. You have a stamina bar which allows you to perform a few attacks at a time in a short combination of attacks. You can also parry and dodge attacks at the right time to negate or deflect damage. If you use too much stamina at once and deplete the bar you will perform an ultra slow attack that will leave you completely vulnerable to enemies attacks for several seconds. Balancing this dance of combat is a must, you certainly can’t hack and slash your way through the game. At least at first. 

As you level up and find trainers throughout the world you can learn how to perform heavy attacks, deflecting parries, string longer combinations of attacks, and utilize powerful action abilities. Weapons are plentiful but repetitive at the start as well. You can find a few basic weapon types like daggers, rapiers, two handed weapons, swords, axes, bows, and crossbows. Each weapon has certain attribute requirements so as you decide to go further into a certain stat like Dexterity you begin to lock yourself into specific weapon types that you would assume require more finesse to wield while strength is required for more brute force type weapons. My favorite weapon types so far have been the rapiers. They perform quick thrusting attacks which helps keep enemies at bay and while my other skills have been focused on survival I could still hold my own with my limited combat skills.

When you do finally reach the city, you are greeted by a fairly large collection of shops and points of interest and a littering of NPCs that are mostly non-interactive like generically labeled Citizens. However, there are plenty of NPCs that are named and are apart of quests, sell wares, and provide services like bathing and hair cuts. At the start of the game, you cannot customize Tristan but once you find the barber you can change his facial hair and hair style in about 10 ways each. In the city you can also find your first of two major factions, The Order. These are your classic knights style faction that are decked out in fancy armor and had a once major presence on the island.

The other faction that you can choose to join are the Free Hunters. This faction lives on the outskirts of the island in a big wooden fortress and they kind of remind me of Robin Hood and his Merry Men. They are your typical leather jerkin and cloth armored militia. Like many games of this nature, you can choose one major faction to join for good. The faction you choose then becomes the continuation of your main quest line.

I will say this though, I have put about 40 hours into the game and just finished joining a faction due to the sheer nature of getting lost along the way, unable to find certain members of the Order to progress, and exploring the island. OA&S doesn’t hold your hand at all when it comes to progress. You will get maybe one or two clues to complete a quest but it’s completely on you to find your way.

Outside of the two major factions there are three minor ones that have a cut of the island. They are The Smugglers, The Graverobbers, and The Bounty Hunters. Each have their own unique style of quests and rewards and again you can only choose to join one fully. I ended up joining the Smugglers because of my Rapier and Bow build, but was able to take part in the first quest of each guild. 

The game is a massive adventure that has a lot of highlights. Of course, with such grand aspirations also comes some pretty big pitfalls. Technically, the game does alright at managing the scale of the world however there are a myriad of bugs that I experienced in playing and some that were potentially game breaking. The first and most noticeable issue was loading times, every time you load a save there is going to be a wait. During the review process load times were upwards of 3 minutes long and every second or third load crashed to desktop. Since the last few review patches this seems to have been mostly fixed and now each load takes about 1 minute. I don’t know if at full release this will be fixed any further. 

The second technical issue and absolutely the biggest bug is when you pick up items. As of the seemingly final press release review code on Steam which I believe was just a few days ago, there can be times that you pick up items and they do not appear in the inventory. I don’t know how many items I have missed this like during my time playing, but I first noticed it when I killed a very strong enemy and they dropped a weapon with a unique name. I was unable to find it in my inventory and didn’t really put two and two together.

The biggest noticeable instance of this happening was during the main quest. I was supposed to collect an item from an NPC and bring it back to another to complete the final step in his portion of the quest. Upon arriving back to him, he wasn’t triggering the next step of the quest. I reviewed my inventory and again noticed that it was missing. I had to reload a save to then re-attempt collecting the item and this time it did work. To combat this issue make sure you are saving often and in different save slots. Absolutely do not rely on a single or even two slots, maximize the entire list of slots to try and combat this because in this particular instance you could have been forever locked out of completing the main quest chain for a major faction.

The third and one of the slightly more just annoying things that can happen involves theft and crime. The first aspect is nothing has a highlight to let you know you are stealing or not. There isn’t a UI for visibility and often it would seem that if I was completely hidden out of view and took something the guards would still know I was a thief when I walked past them.

That overall isn’t so bad, but the interaction with the guards afterward is absolutely the worst. They will stop you if you walk near them and then either require you to pay some “gold” or start a fight. It doesn’t tell you how much you will pay at the dialogue selection and there will be times that you honestly didn’t even know you were stealing and then you walk past a guard 30 minutes later and you are caught.

One particular time in that scenario, I paid the gold to make it right and it was around 3,000 gold. To put that into perspective you could almost upgrade at least the first tier of your house and half the upgrades for that amount of gold. Unfortunately I also had to pay this fine because they are literally everywhere in the main region of the game.

I assume some people will love this as it has a weight to your actions, but adding jail time or some type of alternative punishment outside of gold would have been welcome. I am already in deep with the other faction for some undetermined amount above 3,000 gold and I don’t know if I will ever be able to pay it off to reset their aggression. Luckily you can avoid the guards and still interact with NPCs in the town but it’s just an overall annoyance.

Lastly, navigation is very annoying. There are no signs, people give vague directions to places, quest NPCs are sometimes asinine to find. I’m looking at you Chad. I get that this is supposed to be a highlight of the game and in some ways it certainly can be, but for a cartographer to not have a map from the start that can be filled out and notated on by your own hand seems to be an oversight. Imagine, you had access to a blank canvas that when you found a point of interest you could mark the canvas with a general notation or something to keep track of where you are.

I spent literally 30 minutes lost in the city at first trying to find my way out. Citizens and guards don’t provide you with an option for general directions. No street signs or anything along your path to say something like Fishing Village ->. I get the minimalistic approach but for there to be a huge city and surrounding villages but nobody thought to make a sign?

Overall, Of Ash & Steel is a really fun game held back by some technical and mechanical issues. There is a lot of content, I’ve got over 40 hours of playtime and finally just finished the first act of the main quest and have completed a massive amount of exploration and side quests. There are still some places I have yet to explore which is a testament to how much time you can invest into Of Ash & Steel.

The best part is that this is going to launch at $30, which in my mind is a great bargain, especially if they can fix some of the annoyances listed above. For fans of Gothic and Risen, you will definitely find a lot to enjoy with Of Ash & Steel. For those looking for a more modern action RPG with a lot of hand holding, you may want to set the game on easy and use walkthrough. Good luck out there and may the One guide you!