One of the risks of doing a sequel, be it a movie, book or game, is that it won’t measure up well to its predecessor. It’s not just that a sequel has to be “bigger” than the original, but it has to both be better while simultaneously expanding on what came before and still being its own thing. It’s an extremely fine line to walk, which is perhaps why sequels (and also remakes) often see a lot more criticism. Yet, when makers do manage to pull it off, the result feels like absolute magic, and that’s exactly what Housemarque has achieved with Saros.

Now, having said that, Saros isn’t 100% perfect. I’ve got a couple of minor gripes with it, so I’ll get those out of the way first. One has to do with UI readability. Many of Saros’ weapons look similar to each other, so you can’t instantly tell them apart from one another like you could in Returnal. It’s also unclear what each of your meters are for at first.

You have to intuit that. There are also certain bits of information about your run that you cannot (yet) check while in the middle of it, which is just a touch annoying. Things are also necessarily less arcade-y in terms of structure than they were in Returnal, but that’s more a personal preference than anything else. And, yeah, that’s it. It’s really just a few small issues that can easily get patched.

Now, as for the good; there’s a whole heck of a lot of it. Carcosa (the alien world that Saros takes place on) is an utterly fascinating place. It’s got the same shifting, ethereal feeling that the world of Returnal did, but it feels much more real. It’s set up like a real environment, fantastical though it is, which for me makes it all the more compelling. Also unlike Returnal, your character is not alone. He’s part of a colonization effort which, unsurprisingly, has run into some serious problems here. Everyone is experiencing these phenomena together, and that makes it all feel all the more real as well. 

As much as I enjoyed the psychological aspects of Returnal’s story and setting, the sheer amount of metaphor was disappointing to a degree, so I think it’s a big improvement to have everything be more “real” in that sense. It’s been quite fascinating to see how all the different characters (past and present) react to Carcosa and the things encountered on it. This includes Arjun (your character), who is not impervious to what’s going on around him either. He’s very much like Selene (from Returnal) in that he pushes forward no matter what, but his reactions and motivations are much more clearly expressed and defined than hers were.

I also gotta give props to the environment, sound and enemy designers too, because Carcosa is absolutely beautiful and vibrant in all of those respects. Every environment does a fantastic job of evoking both a sense of wonder and a feeling of being just so very small. Carcosa is a planet filled with megastructures the function which you can only partially discern, and it’s all ruled by…something. Something old, something tied to the constant solar eclipses.

It’s all grand, unknowable and absolutely massive, and you’re just one man lost in the midst of it. So far, I just haven’t been able to not just take it all in and reflect whenever I stop to admire these places I’m fighting through. Same goes for the alien creatures and automatons. They all seem old and completely otherworldly, and that really adds to the combat experience, I think. So yeah, it’s all fantastic.

All that said, though, Saros’ crown jewel, just like Returnal before it, is its gameplay. In it, Housemarque maintained all the fundamentals that made Returnal feel so good to play. The controls are just as responsive, the timing on dashes, melees and grappling is the same, and the triggering of their associated i-frames (invincibility frames) along with them. So it’s already starting from a solid spot. But, Housemarque didn’t stop there. They also added a shield, power weapons, a parry, a rally mechanic and a whole bunch of run/difficulty customization options.

So, not only do you get to enjoy all the old good stuff, but you also get a bunch of new toys to play with and plenty of ways to customize the game to play exactly how you want it to from run to run. And it all works seamlessly! 

Once you get used to using the new additions and integrate them into your kit, it’s as if you had them all along! It all feels fantastic to use and it all comes together to make getting into that “flow” state very easy and natural. Seriously, I cannot understate how good this game feels to play! Even the feedback from your attacks feels good! It always has just the right of “punch” to it!

I was talking to a friend of mine as we both played our separate runs, and we were describing the things we were each pulling off. And he made an interesting comment. “Isn’t it crazy that we’re able to just do all this? Like, these extremely complex series of actions, reactions and responses, all within split-seconds of each other!” And, it just hit me that, yeah, I was doing everything practically automatically, as if by feel and intuition alone. That’s what I’m trying to get at here. Everything you do feels so natural that very quickly becomes almost second-nature.

I’ve also been enjoying the new weapons, as everything aside from maybe the starting pistol behaves entirely differently from what we had in Returnal. They’re all more or less viable to use too, where weapons like the pistol, pylon gun and the defacto shotgun all fell-off pretty hard towards the end of the game. I personally prefer to use the rifle equivalent guns if I can, but that’s just a preference.

Finally, there’s the progression system and run modifiers. In Saros, a large portion of character progression is permanent. There’s stuff that only lasts within a single run, of course, but thanks to the new skill tree you’re constantly getting stronger and doing so according largely to your preference. As for run modifiers, Saros uses a system wherein you can turn individual modifiers on or off to alter your run. You can do more damage, turn off the rally mechanic, retain less currency upon death, find rarer items, and so on. The catch here, though, is that you must maintain a certain balance between helpful and hurtful modifiers.

By default, for every decrease in difficulty, you need to increase it in another area. So, if I were to give myself a big damage buff, I’d then have to turn on enough debuffs to counter it, for example, reducing healing item effectiveness and retaining more corruption. The result is that Saros still retains its overall difficulty while still letting you adjust how that difficulty is expressed. So far, I’ve found it works rather well and allows you to have a much more varied experience.

Saros is also very technically sound; I have yet to run into a single bug or any issues with frame rate or other things like texture pop-in. I wasn’t expecting to find any such issues considering how thoroughly Housemarque crafts its games, but it’s still awesome to see in this age of massive Day 1 updates that don’t manage to actually fix much. Quality releases are still achievable after all, you just gotta be willing to put in the effort.

I also appreciate just how customizable everything is too. You can adjust button mapping, audio cues, visual effects processing, projectile colors and even more. You can even turn off the need to balance difficulty modifiers too, so no matter what your needs or skill level, Saros is open to you. Some purists might decry the existence of all these things, but I think it’s very much a positive to give players the tools they need to craft their best experience.

As of this moment, I have not yet finished Saros, but I can only surmise that it gets better from here on. Just like with Hades II, I’ll be sure to come back and give my full impressions once the game is done, but until then, well, try giving it a look if this has made you at all curious.

---

Have you tried Saros yet? If so, what do you think of it so far? What’s another recent sequel that really impressed you?

Image from the Housemarque website