2025 witnessed a rise of independent RPG games gaining serious notoriety amongst enthusiasts and newcomers. We saw the release of Tainted Grail and a discreet little game, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, blowing the industry and grabbing every award it could get its hands on. Releasing RPGs without a solid fanfare has been working for many indie developers. A sense of confidence, the game will speak for itself once it gets released.
The team behind “of Ash and Steel”, Fire & Frost studio, was set to craft an RPG that carried the bells and whistles of the old-school RPGs into the new era. A challenging task, even veterans in the industry will have a difficult time pushing that boulder up a hill. Like many, I was also prepared to get lost in the world of Ash and Steel, but in my first hour of gameplay, the frustration and annoyance became the name of the game rather than anything fun.
That’s not to say that everything that Of Ash and Steel tried to accomplish ended up broken or bad. The game is crammed with brimming visuals, playful tunes, and distinctive combat, unlike most RPG titles in the market. Combat takes a notable place; it was difficult and clunky at the beginning, but over time, the clunkiness grew on me, and I found myself enjoying it. I could feel the game was only built for a certain audience, a specific demographic that yearns for the older RPGs rather than the vacuous RPG titles on a mainstream conveyor belt.
When the mind recalls any memory of playing an old school role-playing game, it specifically focuses on the things that worked out and conceals the things that didn’t. Of Ash and Steel had its fair share of problems in its system, and some ideas that would’ve been better if they were left on the drawing board. Through all of its problems, Of Ash and Steel did try to do something new. Here’s my review of Ash and Steel.
Medieval Sincerity on Display
The success of RPGs hinges on their world creation, the land, town, and individuals; overall, the sincerity of a fictional world needs to be properly made so that anyone can lose themselves in it. During my time on this game, the visual pull of the medieval world became the highlight of the game. Every structure, a piece of dialogue, or a random village with wheat fields that opens up after trudging through the dark forest. The game had many moments that left me in awe, and I found myself waiting for the next location.
Something so beautiful about seeing a run-down house on the street with nothing but broken trees around it, to a marvellous church at a distance barely visible through the mist shrouding it. The graphics of Ash and Steel might not convey the theme of realism, but the team did an excellent job of putting a fantasy coating over the game.
This sense of authenticity in seeing the clothing of many NPCs scattered around the map, all of them had a purpose in the world. The NPCs are not for aesthetics; they talk about landmarks, areas of interest, and people, giving the world another layer of depth.
Time and time again, we have seen utter realism easily sabotaging the theme of fantasy out of a fantasy game. Fire & Stone studios have successfully found a perfect balance between realism and fiction with their visuals. Carving its own distinctive identity in the gaming landscape.
Faces Living in Uncanny Valley
Not even the painting of Salvador Dali can capture the surrealness of the faces in this game. Any glimpse of normalcy vanishes when a character begins to express any emotion. At times, it felt as if the faces were trapped inside a nightmarish world where every expression must be exaggerated to a ludicrous level to convey an emotion or a piece of dialogue.
Unfortunately, the first hour of the game had a string of cutscenes with very little gameplay between them. And for some reason, during cutscenes, the camera always focuses on characters’ faces and stays concentrated for minutes. While I was engrossed with the dialogue and storytelling, a simple glance at any random face broke all emotional buildup instantly.
If you look at a game like Oblivion, it also shares some of the clunkiest facial animations, but the peculiar dialogue delivery made every scene memorable. Of Ash and Steel tries to deliver an emotional conversation with a facial expression that could be torn from a ventriloquist act.
You Are On Your Own
Exploration is the first thing that comes to mind when you are stranded on any piece of land. Picture the first playthrough of Skyrim, getting lost in the forest, and soon you find an elderly woman in a hut tending to her plants with a secret necromancy room in her basement. These unusual findings are a common tale and sometimes the best part of any RPG adventure.
Of Ash and Steel offers a fun open world, but puts many guard rails on exploration until the player meets a certain level requirement. In a sense, the world was free to explore, but most routes led me to a cold death by the hands of a higher-level wolf pack. Any feeling of exploration vanished when I encountered a level 15 wolf salivating at a distance. The sight of seeing high-level monsters gradually became a common occurrence. The level gating twisted my experience of this game into a linear experience rather than anything RPG-like.
Sometimes I had no choice but to head through a high-level area to complete a low-level side quest. This bad game design damaged the integral part of Ash and Steel, which is exploration.
The game hacks off its own exploration by not offering a Map function. At times, I found myself stumbling back into the same piece of land after hours of exploration. Soon, all exploration routes led to nothing but the feeling of dread and misery. The level-gating of the game certainly didn’t help with the experience, running away from level 15 or 20 monsters, all to wind up in the same region but from a different side, looking at the same set of monsters.
Without any guidance from a map, the route finding becomes a game of trial and error. It wasn’t long before I threw the towel on exploration and stuck to a main path for a simpler adventure. While it was nice not being eaten by enemies at a higher level, it wasn’t the experience I had in mind for an RPG game. At times, I will receive quests pointing to different lands for exploration. Which meant getting lost, more death, and ultimately a quick load button for the escape, so I decided to stick to the main quest.
Reaching the Dead End
While side quests were interesting, completing them was the most tedious part of the game. I’ve had many side quests end up being broken due to some glitch or just stay active after completion. The frequently broken quests left me with no choice but to focus on the main questline. I hoped that at least the main quest would not share the issues of side quests. Oh, boy, how wrong was I.
The myriad of problems that plague the side quest also spill over to the main questline. Without any map for guidance, even completing the basic task became an unintentional challenge. Any information regarding the quest was brief and didn’t offer concrete details on the location, NPC, or the goal of the quest. When you mix all that with a missing map, completing a single main quest becomes an irritating adventure.
After many trials and errors, I managed to find my way to the city where I was told to look for a ship’s captain to get off the island. Naturally, I made my way to the city’s dockyard at night. The dockyard was a large place with three common guards. I tried talking to them so I could get some info about the NPC or quest, but none of them delivered any information about quests. Instead, they all said the same thing, on repeat.
I decided to head into the inn to catch some shut-eye and spend the night there. When I entered the dockyard in the morning, out of the two ships in the location, only one had a captain waiting outside the vessel. So I walked over to him to talk about how to get off the island, but the very first line he delivered upon interaction was, “I have nothing to say.” No matter how many times I tried to talk, he would deliver the same line over and over again.
When I checked the quest details, it only revealed the basic gist of the quest. Which means, I have to find a different person, in a sprawling town without a map or any indicator, or any details to progress the quest. This is where I gave up on the game.
Difficult and Clunky But Satisfying
A maritime cartographer will comprehend the tools to create maps and graphs that depict coastlines, water depths, and various travel-related activities. But when the cartographer gets thrust into the role of a swordsman, the chance of survival diminishes more quickly than a ship without a maritime cartographer. In Of Ash and Steel, you take on the role of a cartographer, leaving his official job behind to wield the sword to annihilate anything that gets in his way.
Nobody in the whole world can expect a maritime cartographer to fend off monsters with a sword, and the game carries the genuineness in the combat; facing two enemies at the same time will always result in death. Oftentimes, dealing with combat filled the same level of anxiety as fending off zombies in the classic Resident Evil. The combat ultimately boils down to surviving every encounter rather than to face enemies head-on, and I loved every second of it.
It didn’t take long for me to accept the combat as a survival mechanic rather than anything action-oriented; the flow of the combat suddenly made more sense. If a survival horror game allows you to wield a weapon with limited ammo, you are not completely defenseless, but you will not gun down every enemy you come across. The same rings true of Ash and Steel, while you can wield a weapon, but it’s as effective as a child with a plastic sword.
The combat follows the true nature of survival horror by picking enemies from a distance, luring them out of the group to eliminate them. While the unusual combat might not be the cup of tea for most, it will certainly garner the attention of people who are seeking a difficult ride in an RPG.
Undercooked RPG Experience
Time and time again, Of Ash and Steel became a bitter reminder of the jankiness of the past rather than recalling the glory days of old-school PC gaming. The game is a technical marvel and is gorgeous at times, but without any cohesive thread guiding the player to the endgame, it falls apart. Every time I caught myself getting hooked to the game, the half-finished features and glitches would ruin the experience.
But one thing I can’t deny is the sheer amount of passion the devs have poured into the project. While at many times it’s dysfunctional, when it works, the game becomes fun. But those moments of excitement and fun are far and few between. But the sheer amount of problems looms over the game like vultures over a rotten corpse.
Rating: 6/10
Of Ash and Steel had a lot of high moments, but every inch the game moved towards being unique or creative, it took too many steps back and ruined the overall experience. With proper patches and reworks, this game has the potential to earn the label of cult classic. I’m going to give the team credit for trying out and succeeding in many places, and fumbling on some. RPG of any scale is a grandiose task, but Of Ash and Steel made a lot of cogs behind the RPG machine work.
