Info about Ashen:

Official game description:
**_Ashen_** is an open world co-op action RPG about a wanderer in search of a place to call home.  
**Passive Co-Op Multiplayer**  
As you adventure through _Ashen_, you'll occasionally encounter other players in a massive open world, akin to the passive multiplayer of Journey. It's up to you to decide how to deal with them - fight together against evil, invite them into your party or simply ignore them.  
**Souls with a Twist**  
_Ashen_ is faithful to the "souls" genre of stamina-based combat, introducing players to a punishing yet satisfyingly vast world. But here’s the twist - no two gameplay experiences are alike. Whether you’re exploring bogs, investigating a fjord or pillaging an old palace, where you are at any given moment will dramatically alter the course of your adventure. It's a brutal open world; you're just living in it.  
**Creatures + Combat**  
_Ashen_ has no shortage of dangerous encounters, from hostile enemies to indigenous creatures. You'll be rewarded for studying the environment and its inhabitants, planning your adventure rather than flying by the seat of your pants. The flora and fauna within the world aren't just fantastical; they're often fatal. Each confrontation, no matter how trivial, has potentially dire consequences.  
**Crafting is Key**  
As you discover survivors, you'll have the choice to invite them to your Town. But these aren't mere adventurers - they're potential collaborators, bringing a plethora of crafting skills, from blacksmithing to foraging expertise, in tow.  
**Story + Score**  
Famed fantasy author Mark Lawrence (_The Broken Empire_ trilogy) and renowned band Foreign Fields collaborated closely with the development team at A44 to craft a cohesive and unique narrative and sound.

Release date: 9 Dec, 2019

Categories: Open-World Exploration, Cooperative Multiplayer, Action RPG, Souls-like Combat, Crafting, Base Building, Character Progression, Real-time Combat


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Captivating World & Art Style (weight 0.99): Players consistently praise the game's unique and beautiful art style, atmospheric world design, and engaging narrative. The visuals are often described as stunning, minimalist yet rich, and contributing significantly to the overall immersive experience.
- Accessible Souls-like Experience (weight 0.53): The game is frequently highlighted as a 'souls-light' or 'comfy souls' experience, offering a more relaxed and less punishing introduction to the genre. It maintains core Souls-like mechanics but with a unique identity, often praised for its distinct art direction and narrative approach.
- Enhanced Co-op & Companion System (weight 0.26): The co-op feature is a major highlight, significantly enhancing the gameplay experience and making the journey more enjoyable and less lonely. The seamless multiplayer and effective AI companion system are well-received, providing strategic assistance and a sense of camaraderie.
- Engaging Combat & Bosses (weight 0.23): Combat is described as deliberate, tactical, and fun, striking a good balance between challenge and fairness. Boss fights are generally well-designed and provide a true test of patience and skill without being overly frustrating.
- Rewarding Exploration (weight 0.19): The game encourages and rewards exploration, with players finding joy in discovering new areas, hidden caves, and ruins. This aspect is often compared favorably to other Souls-like games, providing meaningful payoffs for curiosity.
- Satisfying Town Progression (weight 0.13): The unique mechanic of watching the hub village gradually build up and populate as quests are completed is highly satisfying. This feature provides a strong sense of progression and connection to the world, making players feel like their actions have a tangible impact.
- Balanced Difficulty & Length (weight 0.11): The game offers a good difficulty curve, providing challenge without being overwhelming, especially for newcomers to the genre. Its campaign length is considered appropriate, not overstaying its welcome while offering a substantial experience.

Common complaints:
- Clunky, Repetitive, and Unbalanced Combat (weight 0.71): Players consistently report that the combat system is clunky, slow, and lacks depth, leading to frustration and tedium. Many feel it's poorly balanced, with repetitive mechanics and limited weapon variety, making it less enjoyable than other games in the genre.
- Poorly Implemented Multiplayer/Co-op (weight 0.42): The multiplayer and co-op systems are widely criticized for being convoluted, buggy, and difficult to connect with friends. Players report frequent disconnections, confusing matchmaking, and a lack of traditional co-op features, often leading to frustration.
- Lack of Enemy and Boss Variety (weight 0.42): Players note a significant lack of diversity in enemy types and boss mechanics, leading to repetitive encounters. Many bosses are described as uninteresting, easy, or simply beefed-up versions of standard enemies, with poor movesets and uninspired design.
- Frustrating Final Boss and Runbacks (weight 0.33): The final boss is a major source of frustration due to its perceived imbalance, high damage, and often poorly telegraphed attacks. Compounding this, players frequently mention excessively long and tedious runbacks to boss arenas after dying, which significantly detracts from the experience.
- Frequent Game Crashes (weight 0.33): A significant number of players experience frequent game crashes, often occurring shortly after launch, during cutscenes, or even in menus. This issue renders the game unplayable for many, with some reporting corrupted save files as a result.
- Generic and Unpolished Souls-like Experience (weight 0.25): Many players feel the game is a generic, unpolished, and often inferior imitation of Dark Souls, lacking the depth, complexity, and rewarding aspects of the genre. It's perceived as a 'stripped-down' version that fails to capture the essence of what makes Souls-likes enjoyable.
- Tedious and Linear Dungeon Design (weight 0.24): Dungeons are frequently described as long, tedious slogs with sparse or poorly placed checkpoints, forcing players to re-traverse significant portions after dying. This linear design, combined with repetitive enemies, makes them feel like a chore rather than an engaging challenge.
- Lackluster Story, Graphics, and Polish (weight 0.24): The game's overall presentation, including its minimalist graphics, dull later locations, and sparse narrative, is often criticized for feeling unfinished or lacking depth. Players also mention uninspired dialogue and a general lack of polish, contributing to a sense of incompleteness.
- Unrewarding Exploration and Progression (weight 0.21): Exploration is often deemed unrewarding, with players finding little incentive to venture off the main path due to a lack of unique loot, interesting lore, or meaningful secrets. The progression system is also criticized for its linearity and limited character/armor upgrade options.
- Questionable Design Decisions and Balance (weight 0.19): The game is noted for several questionable design decisions, including an uneven difficulty curve, excessive enemy stacking, and mechanics that feel unfair or unrewarding. These choices often lead to frustration and a sense that the game was rushed or poorly thought out.
- Co-op Visuals Break Immersion (weight 0.12): A common complaint in co-op is that friends appear as generic quest NPCs rather than their customized characters. This visual inconsistency breaks immersion and negates the purpose of character customization, making the co-op experience feel less personal.
- Overpriced and Short Content (weight 0.12): Many players feel the game is overpriced for the amount of content it offers, especially given its perceived issues. The main game is considered short, and the DLC is often seen as a brief, uninspired cash grab that adds little value.
- Disappointing and Tedious DLC (weight 0.09): The DLC is largely viewed as disappointing, offering a short, grindy experience with long, punishing runbacks to bosses. It's criticized for feeling like content that should have been in the base game and for not adding significant value or interesting mechanics.

Gameplay feedback:
- Designed for cooperative play (weight 0.35): The game is fundamentally designed for two-player cooperative interaction, either with a friend or an AI companion. While it can be played solo, the mechanics and progression often encourage or require a companion, making it a core aspect of the experience.
- Souls-like with unique twists (weight 0.26): The game is heavily influenced by the Souls-like genre, featuring similar combat, stamina management, and exploration. However, it distinguishes itself by being generally less challenging, having a simpler lore, and incorporating improved platforming and a more agile player character compared to traditional Souls games.
- Limited character progression (weight 0.22): Unlike traditional RPGs, there is no character leveling system or stat allocation. Player improvement primarily comes from completing main and side quests to increase health and stamina, and upgrading weapons and flasks using 'souls'.
- Simplified combat mechanics (weight 0.21): Combat is stamina-based, focusing on dodging, blocking, and attacking, but notably lacks a parry mechanic, backstabbing, or magic. The movesets are limited, and weapon variety is somewhat restricted to axes, clubs, and spears.
- Lanterns crucial for dark areas (weight 0.14): Darkness is a significant gameplay element, especially in dungeons, requiring players to use a lantern. This often forces a choice between carrying a lantern (limiting to one-handed combat) or placing it on the ground (risking reduced visibility and awkward retrieval) to use two-handed weapons.
- Varied but limited boss encounters (weight 0.12): The game features a small number of bosses (around 5), which are generally considered challenging but manageable. While some players found them easy, others noted their difficulty, especially when playing solo. Bosses often have similar movesets, and some are preceded by challenging dungeons.
- Mixed enemy difficulty and design (weight 0.12): Enemies are generally challenging and varied, with new types introduced throughout the game. However, some players noted that many normal enemies share similar patterns, and difficulty is often increased by encountering multiple enemies simultaneously. Hitbox issues and erratic enemy movements were also mentioned.
- Weapon and flask upgrade system (weight 0.1): Players can upgrade their weapons and Estus Flasks (gourds) using 'souls' collected in the game. Armor and shields, however, cannot be upgraded, and upgrade resources become more abundant in the later stages of the game.
- Talismans and Relics for buffs (weight 0.08): The game includes a system for equipping talismans and relics, which provide various buffs to support different playstyles. Players can equip up to four talismans and one relic, though equipping and swapping them incurs a 'souls' cost.
- Linear story with exploration (weight 0.08): The narrative is linear but deep, delivered through exposition and item descriptions, similar to other Souls-likes. The world is divided into self-contained zones, offering a 'half-open world' feel with exploration and side quests that contribute to character growth.
- Distinct weapon archetypes (weight 0.05): Weapons are categorized into one-handed and two-handed axes and clubs, with spears serving as ranged options. Each type has distinct characteristics, such as two-handed weapons offering high damage but slow swings, and blunt weapons focusing on stun and higher base damage.

Performance notes:
- Game crashes on Intel CPUs (weight 0.11): Many players with 10th or 11th gen Intel CPUs experience immediate or frequent game crashes. This issue is linked to an old Intel bug related to OpenSSL 1.2, which the game's Unreal Engine version utilizes.
- Inconsistent game performance (weight 0.1): Player feedback on performance is mixed, with some reporting smooth gameplay on laptops and decent optimization, while others experience abysmal performance, intense FPS drops in specific areas, and overheating CPUs. The game also struggles significantly on Steam Deck, particularly in certain zones.
- Minor gameplay bugs (weight 0.03): Some minor bugs are present, such as enemies moving unexpectedly on objects while attacking or being able to attack without being hit depending on the player's weapon.

Recommendations:
- Mixed Reception & Price Sensitivity (weight 0.56): Player sentiment is highly divided, with many recommending the game only at a significant discount due to perceived lack of value at full price. Some players enjoyed it despite flaws, while others strongly advised against purchasing it.
- Refunds and Negative Experiences (weight 0.4): A notable portion of players requested or received refunds, indicating significant dissatisfaction with the game. This suggests fundamental issues that led some players to abandon the game entirely.
- Good for Souls-like Fans (weight 0.33): The game is often recommended for fans of the Souls-like genre, particularly those looking for a more relaxed, simpler, or narrative-driven experience. It's seen as a decent option for players who appreciate the genre's core elements but desire a less punishing challenge.
- Atmosphere and Art Style Praised (weight 0.16): The game receives positive remarks for its unique visual style, immersive world, and overall atmosphere. These aesthetic qualities are often cited as reasons to play, even when other aspects of the game fall short.
- Co-op Enhances Experience (weight 0.16): Playing with a friend in co-op is frequently highlighted as a way to significantly improve the game experience, mitigating some of its issues and making it more enjoyable. However, some warn that the co-op isn't traditional and may not meet expectations.
- Not a Dark Souls Replacement (weight 0.1): Players are advised not to expect a direct Dark Souls replacement, as the game has its own identity and does not aim to be a clone. Some even suggest playing Dark Souls instead for a superior experience.
- Children of Sissna Mode for Veterans (weight 0.03): The 'Children of Sissna' mode is noted as a more challenging option suitable for Souls veterans or those seeking higher difficulty. However, it's advised to approach this mode with extreme patience due to its demanding nature.
- Developer Criticism (weight 0.03): Some players expressed strong criticism towards the developers, suggesting they should not make action games or that Valve should intervene due to perceived poor support and quality. This indicates a high level of frustration with the game's state.
- Game Length and Replayability (weight 0.03): The game offers approximately 20 hours for 100% solo completion. While some found it worth a single playthrough, others did not see much replay value, especially when played alone.

Other player notes:
- Stunning Art and World Design (weight 0.23): Players consistently praise the game's breathtaking visual style, unique aesthetics, and memorable environment design. The art direction, lighting, and world-building create a captivating and atmospheric experience that encourages exploration.
- Engaging Lore and Side Stories (weight 0.14): The game features interesting lore and a story that, while sometimes forgettable, focuses on a compelling struggle and community building. Side quests and character stories are also found to be engaging.
- Unique 'Light Souls' Experience (weight 0.13): The game is often compared to Souls-likes but is noted for being generally easier, gentler, and having a more positive outlook. It successfully carves out its own identity while retaining some core elements of the genre.
- Good Sound and Music (weight 0.11): The sound design, voice-acting, and original soundtrack are generally well-received. The music blends effectively with the atmosphere, enhancing the overall experience.
- Multiplayer Connection Issues (weight 0.07): Players reported that online multiplayer cannot be accessed from the first bonfire point and requires reaching the second bonfire. There are also general mentions of online multiplayer being a 'mess'.
- Enjoyable Town Building Mechanic (weight 0.02): The aspect of rebuilding the main village and seeing people move in is a significant and attractive reason for players to continue playing. This 'town building' element is described as enjoyable and rewarding.
- Faceless but Unique Characters (weight 0.02): The game's characters, particularly the player character, are noted for being polygon-like and faceless, serving as a blank slate. This unique design choice is seen as consistent with the game's aesthetic.
- Initial Movement Confusion (weight 0.02): Some players experienced initial difficulty distinguishing climbable ledges and adjusting to the jump ability, which uses an extra key. This confusion typically resolves after a short period of play.

Emotions:
- Frustration (weight 0.28): Players frequently experienced frustration due to persistent technical issues like constant crashing, poor optimization, and non-functional multiplayer. Additionally, clunky combat, repetitive mechanics, unfair enemy design, long boss runbacks, and a problematic AI companion were significant sources of annoyance, often hindering progression and overall enjoyment.
- Disappointment (weight 0.22): Disappointment stemmed from the game failing to meet expectations, often due to unfulfilled potential despite an interesting world or concept. Key factors included shallow gameplay, lack of variety in combat and exploration, poor balancing, limited build options, and an overall unpolished or unfinished feel, especially regarding the late-game and multiplayer implementation.
- Satisfaction (weight 0.2): Satisfaction was primarily driven by the game's unique 'souls-light' identity, distinct art style, and engaging atmosphere. Players appreciated the challenging yet fair difficulty, rewarding exploration, and a generally positive co-op experience when it functioned correctly. The story, world-building, and the sense of progression also contributed to a fulfilling experience for many.
- Enjoyment (weight 0.06): Enjoyment was derived from the overall gameplay experience, particularly the co-op adventure and exploration. Players found pleasure in the game's unique graphical style, challenging combat, and immersive atmosphere. The sense of discovery and progression, often shared with a friend, contributed significantly to this positive emotion.
- Anger (weight 0.05): Anger was a strong reaction to severe game flaws, often expressed hyperbolically, such as calling the game a 'scam' or 'broken.' This emotion was fueled by unplayable states due to crashes, non-functional co-op, perceived developer incompetence, and design choices that felt malicious or unfair, particularly in combat and level design.
- Appreciation (weight 0.04): Players expressed appreciation for the game's unique artistic direction, charming aesthetics, and distinct approach within the souls-like genre. The rich world, engaging atmosphere, and well-executed core mechanics were frequently highlighted. The game's accessibility and less stressful nature compared to other souls-likes also garnered positive sentiment.
- Excitement (weight 0.03): Excitement was generated by the game's potential, particularly for shared journeys and discovery in co-op. Players were thrilled by the beautiful world, unique art style, and engaging town-building mechanics. The challenging gameplay, strategic companion system, and overall high quality of the game also contributed to this feeling.
- Boredom (weight 0.01): Boredom arose from repetitive gameplay, particularly in combat and exploration, coupled with a lack of variety in enemies and loot. Punishing deaths, uninspired quests, and simple progression systems also contributed to tedium, leading some players to give up on the game.
- Confusion (weight 0.01): Confusion stemmed from discrepancies between personal experience and other reviews, such as differing opinions on platforming or graphics. Players also expressed confusion regarding the causes of technical issues like crashes and the game's mixed reception, as well as specific in-game mechanics like weapon stats or item usage.
- Awe (weight 0.01): Awe was inspired by the game's stunning visual style, breathtaking landscapes, and immersive sound design. The beautiful art, music, and overall aesthetic created a powerful emotional response, enhancing the sense of wonder and immersion in the game's world.
- Love (weight 0.01): Love for the game was expressed due to its unique atmosphere and the exceptional co-op experience it offered. Players deeply connected with the game's distinct qualities, finding a profound enjoyment in its world and shared adventures.
- Disgust (weight 0): Disgust was a strong negative reaction to specific aspects of the game, including animations, gameplay mechanics, and the overall combination of art style. Players also expressed revulsion towards certain lore elements, the combat system, and the implementation of co-op, finding them deeply unappealing.
- Annoyance (weight 0): Annoyance was caused by specific game mechanics, such as co-op invitation processes and death mechanics, which were perceived as inconvenient or poorly designed. Misconceptions or differing opinions expressed in other reviews also contributed to this feeling.
- Joy (weight 0): Joy was experienced through the overall pleasant experience of playing the game and exploring its world. The game's ability to provide a fun and engaging journey contributed to this positive and lighthearted emotion.
- Curiosity (weight 0): Curiosity was driven by a desire to explore further within the game's world and uncover its lore. Players were intrigued by the potential for the game to surprise them and delve deeper into its mysteries.
- Challenge (weight 0): The emotion of challenge arose from the game's demanding nature, particularly concerning difficult bosses and progression mechanics. Players found certain sections of the game to be tough, requiring skill and persistence to overcome.
- Relief (weight 0): Relief was felt upon successfully solving persistent technical issues, particularly crashing problems. The availability of fixes and workarounds for bugs brought a sense of ease and satisfaction to players who had been struggling.
- Regret (weight 0): Regret was associated with the purchase of the game, indicating a feeling that the money spent was not worthwhile. Some players also felt bad about leaving a negative review, despite acknowledging some good aspects, suggesting a conflict between their overall experience and specific positive elements.
- Comfort (weight 0): Comfort was evoked by the game's pleasant gameplay and atmosphere, with one reviewer likening it to a 'country getaway house.' This suggests a sense of relaxation and ease while engaging with the game.
- Captivation (weight 0): Captivation was inspired by the game's unique style, beautiful world, and immersive atmosphere. The companionship element also contributed to this feeling of being deeply engrossed and charmed by the game.}