Of Ash and Steel Review Summary

Charming Gothic-inspired fun with strong story moments, but muddied by vague objectives, clunky combat, and frequent crashes.

Strong Gothic influence praised: The game strongly evokes Gothic and Risen, with a Gothic feel and old-school RPG atmosphere that scratches the Gothic itch. Progression from weak to powerful is satisfying.

Game is charming and fun: Multiple reviewers find the game engaging and charming, describing it as excellent, interesting, or fun. The core loop is enjoyable and overall sentiment is positive.

Story has strong moments: The story has intriguing moments and some good story points in later chapters, though it is described as unoriginal by one reviewer. No story bugs encountered, and writing is considered not awful.

Early game is enjoyable: Many reviewers enjoyed the demo, the start of the game, or early content such as the prologue and exploration from the hut to the camp. Initially interesting and fun.

Atmosphere and music praised: The atmosphere is widely praised as fantastic, with special mention of music that includes Gothic references and evokes the desired mood.

Vague quest objectives: Quest descriptions are extremely vague and uninformative, forcing players to rely on external guides or excessive searching to progress.

Poor combat system: The combat is widely considered janky, slow, and poorly designed, with issues like stamina depletion, lack of interruption, and bad flow.

Excessive running required: Quests require excessive running across large distances, often with no fast travel or mounts, making gameplay feel tedious and repetitive.

Confusing city design: The main city is described as large, empty, and confusing to navigate, especially without a map, with many identical-looking buildings.

Terrible animations and graphics: Animations, particularly lip-syncing and facial expressions, are poorly executed, along with laughable graphics and visual bugs.

No map until late game: Players strongly criticize the lack of a map, especially early in the game. The map is only obtainable after a quest in chapter 2, and there is no minimap or quest markers, forcing heavy exploration.

Open world exploration focus: The game features a large open world with exploration, a big city, roads, caves, and plains. Players start weak and must earn equipment through effort, with a tough beginning and loot scarcity.

Stamina-based combat system: Combat is stamina-based with timing, spacing, parrying, and stunlock mechanics. It includes weapon stances similar to The Witcher and active skills with cooldowns, but lacks hyperarmor, allowing low-level enemies to interrupt high-level attacks.

Quest design issues: Quest progression is often broken with missing NPCs or items, and many quests are fetch-based. Quest descriptions may be inaccurate, and faction quest chains exist.

Multiple minigames included: The game includes various minigames like fishing, mining, brawling, lockpicking, smithing, and alchemy, adding depth to activities.

Frequent crashes and startup failures: The game frequently crashes or fails to start, with issues occurring at various points such as startup, after intro videos, on loading screens, and during specific actions like saving or selling items. This is a widespread problem affecting many players.

Poor optimization and high requirements: Players consistently describe the game as poorly optimized, with high hardware requirements and poor performance even on high-end systems. This is a major source of frustration.

Save-related crashes: Crashes are commonly reported during save operations, including autosaves, manual saves, and when reloading older saves. This suggests a critical bug in the save system that can lead to data loss.

Steam Deck compatibility issues: The game has significant issues on Steam Deck, including crashes at startup, low frame rates (around 20 FPS with FSR), and general compatibility problems. This makes the game nearly unplayable on the device.

Poor performance in cities and battles: Performance drops significantly in large battles and cities, with freezing during city transitions and stuttering that makes gameplay unplayable in these areas.

Overwhelmingly negative recommendations: The majority of reviews strongly advise against purchasing or playing the game, citing it as a waste of time and money. Many describe it as unplayable, trash, or a scam, with some giving it a 3/10 score.

Wait for patches and updates: A significant number of reviews recommend waiting for patches or future updates before considering the game. Many suggest it may be playable in a year or two, but not in its current state.

Only for hardcore Gothic fans: Several reviews indicate the game may be suitable only for hardcore fans of Gothic or similar franchises. Some recommend it only if found on sale or for a low price, while others warn that most players will quit within hours.

Refunds and purchase regret: Several reviewers mention requesting refunds or regretting their purchase, indicating the game did not meet expectations.

Better alternatives exist: A few reviews suggest playing other games instead, such as FromSoftware titles, the first Witcher, or waiting for the Gothic remake.

Community fair range: $20.00 - $30.00.

Game completion: 100.0h.

Story completion: 100.0h.

The game has an extremely punishing and slow start (30–60 hours) but becomes highly rewarding once players overcome the early difficulty, typically after reaching Chapter 3 or gaining enough levels to defeat previously lethal enemies.

Reported time to anchor: 30h.

Friction: extremely high early difficulty (enemies one-shot the player); no map at the start, causing disorientation; no respec option, punishing poor skill choices; bugs that block quest progression; tedious backtracking and slow travel; unresponsive combat (dodging, parrying) in early game.

Unlock drivers: patience and persistence through the early game; leveling up and acquiring better gear; reaching Chapter 3 in the main quest; learning enemy patterns and combat timing.

Gothic-Style Purist: Methodical, patient, explores without markers, relies on NPC directions and memory, enjoys slow progression and mastery. Motivation: Reliving the classic Gothic experience with challenging exploration and no handholding. Stance: buy.

Story-First Explorer: Focuses on dialogue, follows story, explores for lore, tolerates difficulty for narrative payoff. Motivation: Engaging story and character development, immersive world, narrative payoff. Stance: sale.

Patch-Waiting Enthusiast: Waits for patches, plays after fixes, may use guides or mods to mitigate issues. Motivation: Potential of the game, desire for a polished old-school experience. Stance: deep sale.

Performance varies by VRAM tier. Mid-range VRAM (12-15GB) and low VRAM (<8GB) show mixed results, while 8-11GB and 16GB+ VRAM report mostly positive experiences.

Windows 12-15GB VRAM: mixed. Players report mixed performance; some experience smooth gameplay while others face crashes, stuttering, and memory issues.

Windows 8-11GB VRAM: positive. Players report the game runs well and is beatable without crashes, though FSR is recommended for stability.

Windows <8GB VRAM: mixed. Players report mixed results; some find the game runs great, while others encounter stuttering, memory leaks, and crashes.

Steam Deck: The game is effectively broken on Steam Deck: it crashes at startup or during loading, lacks functional controller support, and suffers from poor performance. The demo worked, but the full game is unplayable, placing it in the 'Broken' category.

Linux and Proton: The game runs well on Linux/Proton with only minor tweaks (e.g., Proton Experimental). Most users report smooth gameplay, and the single negative mention is vague and isolated. The score reflects a 'Minor Tweaks' level of friction.

External guides: The primary user complaint is the extreme lack of handholding, particularly in quest navigation and system explanation, forcing heavy reliance on external guides. This matches Tier 3 'The Student' (Instructional Data) where users need data to learn systems and find content. While bugs and map issues exist, they are secondary.