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PC Gaming

Ascent

The game reminded me of Ruiner. Same cyberpunk settings and warm palette. Fixed isometric camera angle. The controls are twin stick. But unlike Ruiner or Clid the Snail, there’s proper inventory and equipment system. And one thing I never saw in twin stick shooters is that you need to take enemy height into an account. Shorter enemies can only be hit by hipfire of while crouching, from what I can tell.

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Leveling up gives you attribute points which you can distribute, but no abilities. Abilities are picked up as gadgets.
Loot is Mass Effect like, not Borderlands or Diablo like. There’s just one kind of assault rifle. But those have levels, which basically just boost its attributes, but doesn’t change the characteristics whatsoever.
What annoys me is that there’s no way to sort items in your inventory. Would be useful if I could sort items by their value. But nope.

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After years of Souls-like punishment, the game is surprisingly forgiving. If you die, you don’t need to recover your loot or credits, you don’t loose XP, nothing. There is no punishment for dying.
I started the game with gamepad, but quickly switched back to keyboard and mouse. In most of the encounters, enemies pop behind you, in a “climbing over the rails” animation. Being able to just point at them helps a lot.

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