Video Gamers Podcast - Steelrising Review - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

Gaming automatons Paul, Josh and Michael are storming the bastille as weird robot protectors in this incredible gaming deep dive of Steelrising. Chosen by legendary supporter Scrump, we dive into the souls-like gameplay, story and more of Steelrising and tell you whether we think it’s worth your gaming time in our latest episode. Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: Toro, Scrump, Gaius, Remi, MarbleMadness, Dr. Catatonic, Blackstar (DQ), Glapsuidir, Phelps, Michele B, Redletter, Nevo, Waynerman, TFolls, AceofShame, Jake, RangerMiller, and Ad Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/multiplayerpod/ Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/MultiplayerPod Subscribe to us on YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q  Visit us on the web: multiplayerpodcast.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit Superstore.ca to get started. Vive la revolution! Hello everyone, it's 1789 Paris and Queen Marie Antoinette has a special order for you. Unfortunately, Aegis is broken. Welcome to the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast.

We are three lifelong gamer dads, and today we have the very special privilege of doing a deep dive on the game steel rising i am your host paul and joining me he just wanted to visit the louvre in peace but for some reason these robots just won't leave him alone it's michael i was like when i went to the louvre the whole time i was like what where is the giant glass pyramid here that was underwater in edge of tomorrow and i'm like wait i'm like a century too early here but at least I'm here at the Louvre. I've always wanted to be here. I mean, I'm a mechanical robot, but I'm going to have a great time. I actually did look up the timeline and the Louvre was built after this game takes place, but I had to bring it up anyway. All right. And then joining Michael and me,

I can only imagine he was as happy as a pig in mud this week because he got to spend time with yet another female robot that dances it's josh oh i like the dancing female robots bet you weren't expecting that paul what is it about robot dancers that we're getting lately guys i feel like we keep seeing these tropes repeat talking gauntlets dancing robots i love this game already so yeah right it's right up josh's alley let's get right to the end oh boy all right well before we start our deep dive here josh you've got a review to read someone i do have yet another amazing review thank you so much to

everybody that's left us a review lately we've been reading a few of them on the show and uh tonight we've got one but man this one's a doozy i love this one so this one comes in from aiden mcmorris five star review and it's titled best podcast on apple and it says about six months ago i spent an hour or two looking for a good gaming podcast now here i am spending many hours a day listening to these guys on repeat these dads are what i strive to be oh that's such a nice tribute i'd love that it warmed my heart guys also the i mean i i i really just got really excited for the first sentence best on apple podcasts and then i heard

i heard the rest and my heart just kept getting happier and happier yeah there you go michael's heart grew three sizes three size i mean that's probably a bad thing though i should probably see cardiologist sounds right where you like you know when the heart starts growing yeah yeah yeah right oh man well thank you aiden we appreciate you, such a great review. So anyone out there who hasn't left us a review already, go leave one and we just might read it on the show. All right. And then Michael, do you want to take a second and tell our people a little bit about Patreon and why it is that we're covering Steel Rising? No. Next question, please. Never ask me a question. I'll answer it.

No. Yes, I do, actually um so cool thing is that if you go over you can support the show uh because we're independent podcast if you want to throw many of us money at us you go over to steal up that's a steel rising let's start this one over we got it out of the way earlier this time guys if you would like to support this independent podcast you can go to multiplayer squad wow josh say the website name michael's broken michael can you turn your brain off and turn it back on again you can go over to multiplayer squad.com and support the show support starts just five dollars a month now if you want to though you can go way over the top you can go into our legendary tier

where you get extra extra cool things like a gold name plate in our Discord channel, but also you get to pick any game that you want for us to play. And some people make it a joke. They're like, we hate this game. Let's put these guys through the gauntlet of this terrible game. Well, that hasn't happened yet. We've played a lot of good games.

But this week, Scrumpt, legendary supporter Scrumpt, has picked out Steel Rising for us to play. And we are super excited to give you the episode because we played a lot of this game. We sure did. So, yeah, we get to do our full deep dive here on Steel Rising. I think it's going to be a lot of fun to talk about. We famously don't really share a lot of our thoughts on the games until we record.

I think we all kind of feel like this one's a little bit of a wild card. I wouldn't be shocked. I know what Paul's gonna do. I feel like it could be like one marry, one make love, one murder at the end. I have no idea where this is gonna go. So it should be a good episode. Yes, for sure. It should be really interesting. Alright. Well, guys, the streets

are covered in blood. Automatons are ruling over every corner of the city. That means it's time to deep dive Steel Rising. Okay, here's the description of the game on Steam. It is Paris, 1789. The French Revolution has been suppressed with bloodshed by Louis XVI and his merciless mechanical army. Aegis, a mysterious automaton masterpiece, must confront the king's army alone to save history in this challenging action RPG. All right, so in this deep dive, I think we're going to be able to keep things pretty much spoiler free. We might share a

couple of spoilers toward the end of the episode, but we'll make sure to give you guys a warning if we do. All right, so let's start at the very beginning of Steel Rising as the game opens. I don't know about you guys. I knew nothing at all about Steel Rising. Scrump picked it. I did not read a single thing. I had not seen much. I just installed the game and loaded it up. And right off the bat, you're getting a cut scene with Marie Antoinette. I had no idea that this game had real life historical figures in it. But she calls you into her room. You're a robot named Aegis, and you're her bodyguard. Michael, you are our story expert and French historian. Do you want to set the stage a little bit about the plot of Steel Rising? French loosely loosely uh based term there yeah so i mean you

kicked it off really well essentially what happens is so your ages what you're supposed to be doing is essentially going out and find out where um her son is because louis le don't follow is her son isn't he michael this game has names i could not follow at all i i jotted down like three names and they're all pronounced as french as possible so it's like vacanson and abigregois and uh that guy's great isn't he and i'm like i don't know i don't know any of these people's names but yeah so maybe maybe that's her son's name the kind of overarching thing is that these robot automatons were created to kind of serve as guards and protectors for royalty and things like that. They start to go haywire. And when that starts to happen, obviously things fall into chaos. As the queen's bodyguard ages one of the robots you are tasked with going to find

the guy that knows or created the robots so that you can find out why they're going crazy and that's kind of how the game starts off to say hey look something bad is happening we need to figure this out go find the guy that should know about this and that's kind of what gives you the shove out the door from the queen's palace at that point. And, and basically as you go, you find out more and more about this world and you get more and more clues

into the craziness that's happening. And I think Josh, Josh pretty much finished off what I should have done correctly. So I think that's, I think that's the story. The only other little wrinkle is that you are the only automaton that has not gone haywire. So every time anyone sees you in this game,

they're like, oh, bring a swift death. Just kill me now. And then you always have to explain. Actually, no, I'm sent by the queen. I'm the only one that's not crazy. So it definitely leads to some interesting introductions in this one. Well, and the last thing is people are actually surprised because not only are you not going crazy,

you also seem to have a personality and can talk like a normal person which to them is taken off guard as well that's not really a spoiler it happens pretty early i would argue you don't have a personality at all but that's okay i i have a hot take on that later oh how dare you paul all right so after the initial cut scene that sets up the story you get to create your character and there's a lot of things in Steel Rising that I think work really well. There are some things that I think I struggled with a little bit. I will say the customization screen on this game is very limited. I almost laughed when I saw it because basically the game lets you choose between one of eight powdered wigs.

You get to choose one of seven different colors of your metal body, and there's seven faces to pick from. It's incredibly limited. I almost don't even know why it's even really in the game. But did you guys find the customization pretty underwhelming like I did? Paul, you actually got it wrong. There are eight powdered wigs, seven of which are terrible. So there is one powdered wig that you select. A lot of the powdered wigs did look the same as well, which I thought was kind of funny. I just picked the one with the ponytail and kept going. Yeah. I'll be honest. I know I'm a rarity in this case, but I could care less about character customization. Honestly, it might just be that when I grew up, you were the character in the

game and that's all you got. We walked uphill both ways to school kind of thing. And so I just don't care. I'm playing a game. I don't care what my character looks like. And I know that I'm the minority in that regard. And so when I'm tossed a character creator and it says, we have to choose from these eight wigs and these seven faces and stuff like that, I just of go like well i mean okay i guess i'll pick one and and then this one looks better than that one i guess and then i but then here's the problem with that is so i pick it and then i get an hour into the game and then i go oh my character's ugly man yeah one of those seven faces yeah yeah i mean let's see what There's eight wigs, eight faces, eight different color combinations. That's like 512 different options. I think I found the one that did not scare the heck out of me

because it was a creepy looking robot doll. Oh, dude. The lighter the facial skin color, the weirder you look because you almost have clown makeup on. But actually, the darker skin models look fantastic. So I thought that was actually kind of funny, where there's like two that are pretty dark, and I thought those looked by far the best. So after you customize your character, you get to pick a starting class. In Steel Rising, your choices are Bodyguard, Soldier, Dancer, and Alchemist. Each one of those classes has its own starting weapon, and you get a bonus to two different stats. I love seeing unique classes, especially when I see something like Dancer

or Alchemist. I always get a little excited. I always get a little bored when it's just straight up Soldier, Barbarian, Sorcerer. Not to pick on Diablo 4, but those are all very common classes. How did you guys feel about the class system in this? I was actually impressed initially that there was a class system. I went into this like you did. I think all three of us. None of us knew about this game before Scrum picked it, and we started diving into it. I had zero clue what to expect on this.

So when I got the character creator, I said, cool, I'm a robot. This is neat. Oh, I get to pick a class on top of that? Like, okay, well, that's kind of cool. And I'm with you, Paul. I like it when they just call them different things. It's really neat when it is actually a different class. But if all I am is a warrior, call me a juggernaut or something like that. It just makes me feel like, ooh, okay but i did yeah exactly i did like that there were different classes on this one um and i that was a good start to the game in my opinion because i went oh i'm gonna have some customization options um i know the only thing that i knew about the game is that it was a souls

like game so that told me oh i'm gonna get lots of different weapons. I've got this class that I can play. I kind of like it. I can play the way I want to. I went with the dancer myself because the description for it was neat. And I thought, I want to be this quick, agile kind of robot defender thing. I don't want to play this as some big tanky character i guess oh and talk about your weapon as the dancer well you get these cool looking fans which is neat like you're um i mean what do you call them like the oriental fans basically you know and but they're made out of like bladed metal but yeah so you start off with these little fans they're very short range but they're very quick you get to dual wield them so i thought that was really cool and and i will say that without getting too far ahead

i felt like a dancer like that was actually legit like how i felt like i was doing the combat in the game what about you michael what class did you pick uh so i found it interesting that the soldier was not what you'd think from a soldier because you actually start with a range weapon so i went soldier uh just because i knew nothing about this game i knew it was a melee game and i was like was not what you'd think from a soldier because you actually start with a ranged weapon. So I went soldier. Just because I knew nothing about this game, I knew it was a melee game, and I was like, how is this going to work? How's it going to work to have a gun starting out? Answer, terrible,

because ammo in this game is not easy to find. You have to use things called alchemical capsules or whatever. And essentially, you start with like 12 of them. And I just started shooting and was like, oh, I'm out of ammo. But you also have a sword. You have two weapons pretty early in this game. So I didn't really notice much with the stats, to be honest with you. But I thought it was really, really nice when I was in a really tough spot to quickly just use the the gun thing that i had to try and

do a little bit of range as i recouped a little bit of my stamina or just a little bit of my health while you're doing that kill over time potion that you can use in this game um but then i also my i switched to a different gun very quickly that actually had a freeze attack and so like every depending on what mob it was or what type of mob it was, if I shot it five or six times, it would freeze for like three seconds. And then I was able to skill into making that last longer, which I thought was really nice. So I had a lot of fun with the soldier. I thought it was a really cool class. A very different take in a melee game because it's not like you're shooting range like a

cod or anything like that. You're still going to be shooting from like 12 feet away, but it's effective. It was fun. Yeah. Funny enough, we all chose different classes. I went with the Alchemist because that character had what they called glass core batons. And I was like, I don't even know what that is, but that sounds pretty cool. And it looks different. And then the other classes had bonuses to pretty common stats like durability and vigor and agility. This one had a bonus to elemental alchemy. And anytime I can play a game that has anything related to magic or elemental powers,

I always go for that. So I jumped into The Alchemist, and I ended up thinking that it was very hard in the beginning. And then after I learned a couple of tricks, it really helped a lot with combat. But kind of the thing that sets The Alchemist apart is that you use different batons that can be imbued with a different element. And as you hit the enemy, it builds up a meter, and then you apply that to the enemy. So it was kind of neat to be able to use almost like magic along with a melee weapon. The only downside to the Alchemist is that it's by far the shortest range weapon. You really have to get up in the grill of whatever you're fighting yeah yeah one of the nice things too is that ultimately you unlock all the starting weapons and you're gonna put points into stats

your opening class almost doesn't really matter other than you're gonna lose a couple of initial points maybe in the wrong stat but otherwise you can start as anything and spec your way into whatever you want. Yeah, my build at the end of the game was nothing like how I started. I always kept the gun just in case, but I was definitely very different about halfway through this game than I was when I started. Yeah. As a quick PSA, we do want to ask everyone out there to make sure to hit the follow button on our podcast. We've been kicking around a couple ideas looking to maybe start up a new format, possibly with the show. Nothing's decided yet, but we want to make sure nothing slips past you guys. So just take a second, make sure to hit follow. And that way you'll make sure that

if anytime we put out new content, you'll always know about it. With that being said, we are going to take a quick break and we will be right back to break down combat. I'll miss you guys until we come back all right so let's transition into talking about combat a little bit josh you mentioned that this game is often called a souls like action rpg do you guys think that's a fair designation for this for sure it's actually it's pretty spot on the money yeah very early in the game you realize this is not a go and button mash at all you will die very very fast if you just go button mash it's definitely very souls like with taking your step back watching enemies attacks learning what they do and then taking your

moment to have a couple quick stabs that's exactly how you play it absolutely very souls like it's i mean the move sets the dodging the stamina meters the healing the they call them boulettes i think is the there's a french term for it uh it's it's not uh you know it's it's we're gonna lose all of our french followers on this one episode people um i thought they were called like healing barrettes but i might have that wrong. Barrettes? Oh, the briquettes? I don't know. Who knows? Briquettes? Yeah, that's for barbecue.

Anyway, yeah, so you've got your flask like you got in Dark Souls. They just call it something else. You've got your items that you can use. You can chuck a grenade, lots of things. So yes, this is very, very based on the Dark Souls combat format. I will say that it is a lot simpler in difficulty level. At least I found that it was. This is not a brutal over-the-top punish you type game. I have seen comparisons to Bloodborne in some of the combat for Steel Rising. I do feel like it is a little bit faster paced than your typical Souls game, as far as how fast weapons attack and swing. Maybe that's because I played the dancer.

So maybe that goes to my class. And I did play around with some of the heavy weapons, and they are very slow to wind up. But I just feel like the pacing of combat is a little bit more peppy than your standard Dark Souls game um but it is not nearly as hard so if you're a person that's like dude dark souls is too hard for me i don't want to play that i feel like steel rising is a very nice uh like entry into that genre without being too punishing that is the best way to describe this it's like souls like light it's like it's like a peek into if you if you think you if you haven't played a souls like game you're like, I don't know if I'd like it or not, start here and maybe

just get this combat and you're like, okay, this is not quite as bad. But you're forgetting the one thing that makes it really Souls-like is the world is remarkably grim, devoid of all color and life. That's my most Souls-like comparison probably aside from the combat, is just the grim nature of these games.

They don't make a Souls-like game where you're running around dressed like Hello Kitty. It just doesn't happen. Yeah, it's definitely pretty dark. And you're dealing with the mass execution of the French people. So it's definitely a little dark in subject matter. I saw Zero Beheadings. Yeah. The other biggest thing that I think you could compare it to in regards to Bloodborne,

at least in particular, is that the way this game is laid out, you basically start on a certain level and you kind of work your way through a wing. And then at the end of that wing, you'll unlock a gate, which then puts you back at the beginning of the level. But now you can walk through that for the next part. So a lot of this game is not so much beating a level as much as completing part of it and then unlocking a gate to where you now have that shortcut. That to me felt especially like Bloodborne. And then also as you kill enemies, instead of collecting souls like in Dark Souls, you're collecting anima essence. You use that as currency to buy things or to upgrade things. And if you die, it falls on the floor.

You got to run back and recollect it. But the combat, I would say, is probably half as difficult as a Souls game, maybe even a little less than 50% as hard. It's definitely Souls-lite. A lot of these bosses, you can maybe even one-shot. A couple of them are probably going to take six, seven, eight attempts. But a couple of them are probably going to take six, seven, eight attempts. But a couple of them you can actually beat pretty quick where you're not really seeing that in a normal Souls game. Yeah. If you've ever wanted to approach a Dark Souls game but without the difficulty curve, this is a fantastic entry to that because it is a much more chill experience, strictly speaking from the combat portion. And I know a lot of people are put off by what they hear about Dark Souls and the Souls

Light games and stuff like that. But I feel like this is the perfect entry point into not being frustrating. You're not going to bang your head against the wall. You're not going to fail against some boss 30 times in a row, but you will actually get the flavor for sure because it has that flavor to the combat, to the dodging, to the stamina, to the different weapons that you can get and how they change gameplay, to the different consumable items, to how you can upgrade the stats on your character and all that. All of that is the same. So if you've ever wanted an entry point, this would be a good entry point. You know,

one more thing. The bosses in this game are very souls like too, because they're really, really weird. Yeah, they are. They're real. I don't know why if someone's going to build a robot,

they build them to look this way intentionally because they look bananas. I liked, I liked the boss design actually i liked all the enemy design to be honest i did too i mean i fought a guillotine at one point like what else happens fighting a guillotine with just okay this i'm fighting a guillotine with legs it's a little bit like if willie wonka was just a little bit more deranged and insane and just built robots instead of chocolate land all right so how is the combat in steel rising unique or or did you find it to be unique what what sets combat apart in this as opposed to

any other game well one thing that i liked is that you could literally pick up any weapon and upgrade it and you didn't have to skill into it there was absolutely no skill system i mean there was a skill system but it didn't it wasn't really as dependent on your weapon. There's a weapon upgrade system and a skill system. But I thought that was really refreshing because as I got weapons, I was just like, oh, what's this one do? And like Josh was saying, if one was big and slow, I was like, yeah, this is not going to work for me because I did most of my combat based on that timing that I talked about earlier. You could definitely predict enemy movement. And that was one thing that, you know, it's not necessarily uncommon or common. I'm sorry, it's pretty common in games where, you know, an enemy has this tell, like quick swipe, quick stab. Okay, now I can go in and stab three times.

But learning how the different weapons fit into that window of attack was a lot of fun, actually, trying to figure that out and do it. And I ended up going through and at least giving probably a half an hour to an hour to every single weapon i picked up um but that's one thing that i really thought was different and unique is a lot of games penalize you if you want to switch weapons you know unless it's that mind-blowingly overrated uh tears of the kingdom game where you just pick up any weapon and go break it and then it comes back you mean breath of the wild since tears that's what i meant is coming out yeah that's um listen to my thoughts not my words in fact that would be a terrible podcast would i just sit here quietly humming and i'm like all right that's our show guys i hope you were listening to my thoughts

and not my words not signing up for patreon for that i'll tell you no probably not i don't i'll be honest i did there's not very much that i found unique. I have played a lot of Souls-like games. I really enjoy the genre. I like the combat. I think I've probably played more than you guys, but I really enjoy that. And Paul, I know you've played your fair share too. I will say the most unique mechanic in combat that I found was the fact that when you are out of stamina, you can do this tiny little mini game to try to instantly refill a portion of your stamina. You have to basically stop this little moving bar between these two lines. And if you do, you get an instant refill of your stamina that will overheat you. So basically, as you attack, you're a robot.

So the more you attack, the more you generate heat. And if you overheat, you basically kind of get stunned for a minute. And so as you're overheating, there's a neat little graphical thing that it does too, where you see this core on your back a la Iron Man kind of start glowing and getting really, really hot. And so if you stop the little bar in the little spot, it will cool you down instantly. And so you can attack longer, but you also get a portion of like a freeze debuff. And so if you do that like twice in a row, you'll actually freeze yourself. And then a boss or an enemy will wreck you at that point.

Like I thought that was a very neat mechanic because, you know, in a Dark Souls game game you just spam dodge roll until you until you're fatigued and then you just back up for a second or two and your stamina regens really fast and so i did like that you could try to risk timing that to get an instant kind of cool down effect if you whiffed it it gave you that frosty buff almost instantly. So it was like a very risk reward type thing. Everything else about this game is pulled from little bits and pieces of everything else. And I think that they did some of that in a good way. Michael touched on it, the weapons.

I think you can pick up any weapon you can, if you want to use a light weapon, fine. You want to, you found a heavy weapon and you want to switch to that. Great. You're not at a penalty. It's not like dark souls or Elden ring where you have to respect now you know so that you have the stats

to use it um so they give you some freedom there i really just point a just it's really just my 1989 ford crown victoria i had in college it overheated all the time you had the baby love on it put oil in it all kinds of stuff for a second there i thought you were actually talking about my car but i didn't know you back then so yeah i snapped out of it thank goodness yeah and so you know there's a lot the weapons one thing i did like and then i'll quit talking so much but the i like the fact that you get a basic weapon for the dancer i started off with just these metal fans well lo and behold as i play the game a little bit. Now I get the option for electric fans. Whoa, that's kind of cool. I really like games that give you incremental like, hey, here's your type of weapon. Oh, but now you

have a better version of it and it does a little bit something different. I thought that was cool. Yeah. And I experienced the same with the batons. So in the beginning, you start out with frost batons. And that's what I really enjoyed about the combat was not just the minigame to cool down, but also the fact that when you have your frost batons, you are very quickly hitting an enemy, and that meter will fill very quickly. And as you fill your frost meter, once it fills all the way, then the enemy will freeze in place place like michael mentioned and you can go to town on them well that also works on bosses and so a lot of times in games whether it's like atomic heart or whatever maybe those frost abilities are resistant by bosses in this game it takes a little longer to fill and that meter goes down very fast so if you're letting off on the boss you're gonna lose that entire meter pretty much immediately uh but i loved that and then pretty soon you find new batons that do fire damage and now you fill up your fire meter and now they're burning and then you get your phone

fulmination is what they call like the lightning power so that's kind of neat and i also loved the fact that it worked in synergy with grenades. So there's like several different kinds of grenades in this game. You can just throw a regular old grenade that's just going to explode. Well, guess what? You can also buy frost grenades. And so now I can go to town with my batons up close. Then maybe a boss is about to do a major attack so I can dodge backward. Well, now I might chuck a grenade and that way I keep my meter close to full and you can kind of swap between all of these different grenades along with resistance potions. All of that working together, I thought worked really, really well. I think the story in this

game was very hard to follow. I think the combat works far better. Yeah, I had to start to try to follow the story because I was so invested in it. But the combat, one thing I can say about the combat, I don't know if we're going to cover this later, but abilities that you get, no, we'll cover that in a little bit. But I thought there was things that was always throwing at you to keep it fresh. Like once it kind of got to where you're like, okay, I got this down. Okay, I'm using this ball and chain, right? And all of a sudden, I pick up a ball and chain that's a fire chain. So I've got the firepower on it. Like you guys said, it just adds a little bit more every... And it happened quickly. You were always getting something new, which I thought was nice.

Yeah, absolutely. All right. So I guess this might be semi-spoilery. It's not going to be about story. But I do want to talk about some of the equipment that you unlock over the course of this game. In the beginning, you just have your weapon and you start adding additional tools. So if you don't want to hear any of that, maybe just skip forward about five minutes or so. But I did want to say before I start getting into later equipment, I was not crazy about how the quick access belt worked. So basically in your inventory, you can have a million things, including stones that you can throw and get robots attention. You've got grenades and potions and then healing potions.

And, you know, you can only put a couple in your, in your belt, but one of them in the beginning is, is going to be your compass because there's no mini map in this game. And right off the bat, I hate when there's no mini map in this game. And right off the bat, I hate when there's no mini map.

And the only way you can use the compass is taking up one of your precious slots in your belt. And then you still don't get to see where the objective is unless you actively have the compass out. So I was constantly swapping to my compass. Okay. It's still forward and a little to the left. Now I got to put it away and now I'm fighting, pull out my compass. Okay. It's a little to the left now i gotta put it away and now i'm

fighting pull out my compass okay it's still further to the left put it away i found that to be a little tedious i i i did not like how you had to keep the compass equipped yeah that was mind-blowingly annoying for the most part i got used to it that being said there could have been some other way maybe you have a passive ability that you can have on one button on the directional pad and maybe you have like an active like bomb or something like that or healing potion because there was times i had to literally organize my belt in like a way that it would be like okay compass here two healing items here three damage items here because i would try to frantically scroll through and pick

up my healing item during a battle while I'm using a grenade and be like, no, not a compass. No, not a travel coin. No, not that. And then I finally find my heal. And by that point, I'm dead because I'm an idiot and I didn't organize my belt. But I thought that having to micromanage a belt with six abilities just wasn't the best way to do that. Yeah, it's just a quality of life thing. I get it. It's like, hey, oh, cool. I have a compass now. I can see where my objective is. Because a lot of the setting for Steel Rising takes place in cities. This is not your fantastical world. This is French villages and cities. And you're going to these famous places, these famous abbeys and the Louvre and all these places.

And it can be a little difficult sometimes because there's streets and alleyways and balconies and windows that you have to jump through to find your way across a street that's been blocked off or is on fire or something like that. And so the compass is definitely needed. It is just a weird thing where they went, hey, you have to have this equipped like you actually have to have this active to be able to use this and when you want to switch to a healing potion or something like that all of a sudden it's not active anymore just a weird it's just a weird touch like that doesn't add to the game in any sense of lore or it's just a quality of life thing man man. Like we're kind of past that point. Give me a compass. Right.

I'm a robot. I should know. I should know where North is. I am fine. If you want to make me find the compass, like, honestly, I'm okay with the sense that it's like, Hey, I need to go find this to get this quality of life thing. That doesn't actually bother me that much. But once I find it, just give it to me.

Yeah. Just just mark the objective i'm a robot who can easily absorb the powers and abilities of the bosses that i kill but i don't know i don't know where north is that tree that tree that i just passed i don't even know where it went i just it's oh it's behind me still good i'm glad i turned around that's it like i don't know where i am all right so after crapping all over the compass system, I do want to give this game some really big props. I absolutely loved the level design mixed with some of the abilities that you unlock later in the game. So what I did not expect is where in the very beginning, the levels are pretty flat. You're running over some hills, but you're fighting on the ground. Next thing you know, this game starts becoming much more vertical. It starts requiring you

pulling up onto platforms, jumping from platform to platform to roof. Now I'm on this ledge, which is where I can climb in a window to get into that workshop or whatever it might be. And the way that those things start to work together, where you unlock a grapple hook, you unlock a battering ram, which can now push through certain gates or holes that you can kind of see in a wall you get an air dash it almost works a little like a metroidvania where now you can go back and access additional areas and i thought that was so incredibly clever i loved the level design and those abilities i will say that one of the things that jumped out to me was the level design. I have always said I love fantasy settings. Give me these fantastic

forests and elven cities and waterfalls and stuff like that. But the level design and the way that they made that work in this game was really, really good. And it caught me off guard. There were many times where I just was running down a street looking for a way up to this balcony or this window. And it's like, oh, there's a scaffolding over there. I have to jump on this tipped over cart to jump to the scaffold so that I can climb up to this window so that I can cut across this apartment to get to the street that I need to get to. That was all very cool. And then the game adds the Metroidvania aspects, which I'm really glad you brought up, Paul, because I think it is one of the things that sets the game itself apart is you defeat a boss. Guess what? When you defeat this

boss and they call them Titans, right? Like, hey, a titan or a great titan i think i can't remember the exact name but they say titan defeated you get an ability from that boss that now allows you to do something cool and they're almost all traversal related you know you like you said you get a double dash you get a grapple hook you get the ability to smash through these walls that are kind of indicated by cracks in them and stuff like that and the game gives you one within the first like 20 minutes so in the first like almost tutorial area there's a gate where it's got this weird lock on it it's kind of cracked through it and i'm like what is this and it says and you're like your character says i don't have the ability to do this yet yep and then i'm like oh for real like oh i'm gonna come back here later on with an ability

that's gonna let me do that and then you start to see more and more of those as the game progresses like hey there's a treasure up there across this gap but i can't make that jump like am i gonna get a double jump am i gonna get wings am i gonna get a jet pack like how am i gonna wind up being able to get over there later on but then you do and i thought that was really really neat i'm not a huge backtracker in games i'm kind of like oh i've already seen this part and i've got good gear so why do i need to go way back there and get that treasure chest but the game does it in a way that actually makes it pretty enjoyable in my opinion yeah and it was interesting too because like a lot of things in this game i think i hated that at first because um what would happen is i didn't know the game doesn't tell you you're gonna go back to these different parts of the city multiple times

like you go back to one of them like four times four different times and you'll look through this gate and see that there's a like a little fireball thing that you want to pick up like there's an item on the ground across this gate and nowhere in this level do you get over there and you don't know that later on you're going to come back and use a grappling hook to hop over there and so i was frustrated because i'm like i want to get over there there's something over there how do i like literally spent like three hours in like the second level this game trying to figure out a way over there until i realized i had exhausted everything i gave up and then no joke like three hours later in gameplay you get a grappling hook and you walk right into this level again and right where the carriage is because you

take a carriage as fast travel kind of back and forth between the five different areas you go to of of paris and i go stand there and like no joke like on the corner of my screen is like uh the right bumper button and triangle and i look up and i just go and i'm up on there and i'm like three hours trying to get over here can do it yet um and so it was pretty funny but what i liked about that was those abilities also were used in combat which i thought was fantastic and these abilities when i got them like you get this dash right it's great so you jump and you do a double jump you do like this dash to make you jump a little bit farther in the air well you can also use it as

a semi-stun slash was it a frost attack or was it um uh not a fulmination but the freeze attack not frost but like yeah like stun attack and you can stack it up on the enemies i found that as i was going through i immediately immediately put every one of these abilities as I got them into my regular rotation in every single fight because they were all useful. It wasn't like when a game just throws so much at you and you're like, I'm not going to, I don't, I don't know. I'm not going to use that. No, it's too much.

I used every single ability they gave me in every fight almost. Yeah. They added a lot of flavor to the combat. You didn't have to use them, but if you wanted to throw them into your rotation, they definitely added a neat little aspect to what you could do once you got these abilities. Yeah. To kind of swing back to what you had mentioned before, Joshua, you kind of said overall this game kind of just takes little parts of other games.

But I think when you put them all together, it does really synergize into something that I found far more fun to play than a typical Souls game. This game does not play like a hardcore accomplishment when you finally beat that boss. But at the same time, I think there's so much more fun to have along the way, even just adding those little platformer elements. I got so excited. One time, I didn't even get mad. I was trying to jump between platforms, and I got shot in the air, and my character flew into the sea. And I just had to stop and laugh because it was like, I'm not even mad.

That's hilarious. And because you have all these shortcuts along the way, you never have to run very far to get back to where you were. And that's another big thing I love because enemies all respawn when you save and so you don't want to have to waste too much time well and if you had to take forever to go around something you could literally unlock a gate when you got there so you don't ever have to go that big part of the level again like josh said i hate fast tracking or backtracking as well and it gave you a quality of life to not have to backtrack yeah all right is there anything else we want to hit before we do our regular segments? I mean, there's side missions. There's two different endings depending on choices you make.

Anything we want to say that's spoiler-free in regards to that? Just got a non-spoiler thing on the side missions. There was a lot of history, real history buried in the side missions, which I really liked. There's a side mission where you basically have to expose the Marquis de Lafayette for essentially being a traitor to the king and also a traitor to his own people. Well, at one point towards the end, you find out why he did what he did. And he mentions, I don't want the people to do this fight against the king. I want the soldiers to do it. So I sent word to the Americans. Well, in real life, this actually happened. The Marquis de Lafayette, after he stormed the Bastille, he sent the key to the Bastille

to George Washington, who was president of the US at the time. And the reason he did that is because Washington was kind of a hero, because a few years earlier, the Americans had basically overthrown the British rule in the United States. And so Marquis de Lafayette kind of saw himself as a George Washington overthrowing the king. I just thought it was really interesting to see something like that buried into a game about killing robots with children's souls running their bodies and stuff like that. It was really interesting. I did not do a single side mission in this game. I ignored every single one. So much side mission. I did a few of them, but I'll be honest, the difficulty in following the story and the characters kind of put me off to the side missions. The only reason I did a few of them, but I'll be honest, the difficulty in following the story and the characters kind of put me off to the side missions.

The only reason I did side missions was because I wanted either new loot, new gear, the ability to upgrade the gear that I had, and I needed components to do that. Or I just wanted to fight more. And so there was a little bit of a disconnect there between, like, I have no idea who these people are. I don't remember the names. This is kind of like Atomic Heart, where everybody's name sounds weird to me, and I don't remember who these people are. I don't remember the names. This is kind of like Atomic Heart where everybody's name sounds weird to me and I don't remember who's who. So why am I going to find this guy? And I don't want to go do that, man. That guy annoys me. And that's kind of how the side missions tie in. If you want more game content, that's what they're for, for sure. I just found that I didn't really care about the characters a whole lot.

And so doing a lot of side missions just wasn't my jam in this one yeah i picked up every letter i had so many quests in this game i just didn't complete any of the side ones i would just see on my compass that's the actual main mission that's where i'm going i loved the combat and the boss fights that's just what i prioritized all right well we're going to take one last break and then we're going to do our regular segments to close out the show okay guys let's do it time for some hot takes all right who wants the honors who wants to go first i went first last time and i'm gonna make my i'm gonna make my hot take up based on whatever you guys say i'm totally kidding i can go first no i won't go first you guys i'll go last i'll go first i i struggle with hot takes man because it's hard for me to be like so you know like just

over the top time yeah i got you know what i mean like honestly i okay so my hot take is that steel rising is one of the most fun, chill Souls-like games that I have played. Chill Souls-like sounds like it's an oxymoron, but it really is true. That's why it's my hot take, because it is... I know that exactly. It's like saying jumbo shrimp. Like, how do we have a chill Souls-like game?

But it is. And so that's my hot take is that it is that it's just that it is a chill, thoroughly fun combat with very, very little frustration or difficulty curve, but it's still a souls like, and that's an odd mix. And I, I dug it. That's my hot take. I really should have gone first. mine's very similar um i had written mine down but mine actually is and this is this is taking years and actually putting it on steroids a little bit i think steel rising is the most underrated game of 2022 oh wow there you go that's a hot that's a good hot take see michael teach me teach me teach you the ways of putting it out

there and getting ready to have people just shame you in discord or just paul on this podcast probably in a few minutes when they club mary murder so for me i put down as my hot take that playing as a robot in a video game is a terrible decision it never works i i'll tell you i love having robot side characters. And I love playing Mass Effect. You have Edie as a side character. I'm all about it. I think that is great. But when you play as a robot who can get smashed to bits

and immediately is just rebuilt at the nearest Vestal and Aegis talks almost monotone this entire game. This boat will take me to Parisis that luckily there's not very much talking because you're fighting and running around most of the time which is like i said that's where the game excels i love the combat and the level design but anytime ages started talking and it doesn't help when you've got a giant goofy french hat that covers her whole face where you can't even see her in half the cut scenes but i just hated playing as a robot to me it like takes a lot of the stakes out of the game because she just gets rebuilt and she's just a machine and she's just doing what she

was programmed to do and i know how some of the stuff plays out in the story but it uh to me i just found that to be so lacking. Make robot characters, side characters. Don't make me play as a monotone robot. That's fair. Yeah. That's about as hot as my take, so I'm with you, Paul. All right. Well, we've shared a few of our thoughts here on Steel Rising.

Josh, you've got a couple community reviews for us. I always have community reviews, you guys. So what we do is you know now that we've broken down the game for you we always want to give you some various opinions on what people that played the game think so we always go to the steam reviews we pull a couple good ones a couple bad ones just to give you some different perspectives this first one comes in as recommended 27 hours on record and it says the game is I had fun playing it, but for every positive aspect, there is a negative. The enemies are fantastically well-animated and ingenious designs, but there are too few

varieties of enemies. The story is a fascinating reenactment of the French Revolution, but if you're not interested in the French Revolution, it might not be as interesting. The game is a very easy Souls-like, making it approachable for people new to the genre. However, if you're a genre veteran, you're going to beat this fast. There are also a few bugs and optimization issues. This is a diamond in the rough. There is certainly a diamond there, but it'll never be as bright as other games in the genre. On a final note, the art style is just fantastic. The whole Rococo French Revolution ultra-opulent vibe this had going on was just jaw-dropping. This game is worth playing just for the art alone.

I think that's an incredibly fair review. I do too. Yeah, very. Yeah, they touched on some of the good, some of the bad for sure. Okay, this next one is... None of the ugly. None of the ugly some of the bad for sure okay this next one none of the ugly none of the ugly there's no ugly in this game you're a dancing robot i mean except for the robot's face which is terrifying all right this next one is not recommended 23 hours on record personally i found it to be lacking maybe i'm just jaded having played all the from software games

but this just didn't do it for me combat Combat is clunky, period. I'm not a fan, but you may like it. They do what other Souls likes, try and do and add in a new mechanic, and it's just terrible to me. Weapons and enemies weren't interesting. The game wants you to backtrack and pretend it's a Metroidvania, and that just falls flat to me. I don't want to go back through these boring and confusing levels. The story is fine, I guess. It does a poor job of keeping my attention. The graphics are fine. But then again, all graphics are fine nowadays. I feel like I'm just trying to get to the end of the game to justify the money I spent on it. All graphics are fine these days. It might be the best thing I've ever heard,

or the most true thing in a review. All graphics are fine these days. That's very funny. It should be said that this game full price is $50. No, it's not. And your mileage might vary, but it is $50. That is the retail price, yeah. If you go to Steam right now and buy it directly from Steam, it's $49.99. I feel like this is a game, though, like an Instapot at Kohl's, where it's literally always on sale.

It's always 50% off. We paid, I think, $20 for the game to play. And I played it on PS5, and I think they had it on special for $30. There you go. All right. So this next one is not recommended. 14 hours on record.

It was a good game. I had fun for some time, but after a certain point, it became repetitive. Lazy side quests to get from point A to point B or to deliver something between the two and a lot of repetitive enemies. Boss and mini bosses are just the same enemies, but bigger with a few exceptions. There is no way to travel between bonfires, making walking through the environments and side quests a headache. I just gave up to fight with the enemies and ran through to the ending from halfway through my playthrough.

This would be more enjoyable if it was like five to six hours instead of 14. You absolutely could run by half the levels. You could. Yeah, you can run by more than half. If you can run by, you can just straight,

you can just straight book it the whole game pretty much. So here's the thing. The automatons give up very easily. If you run around a corner and pull yourself up on a ledge, there's about a 90% chance that they just walk away and leave you alone. So there were times when I was just trying to get back to my body and I would just run past enemies.

The downside is you're not going to get those alchemical capsules that your class very much relies on. So there is a little bit of a balance of, okay, I don't't want to waste my time but i do need to farm some of these but when you needed to you actually could kind of just run circles around enemies and they couldn't hit you and your stamina refills so fast that you could almost constantly sprint through the whole game so you could definitely choose your way through some areas if you had to yeah i literally one time was mind-blowingly dumb and i died with like 32 000 anima on me anima anima i feel like i'm saying a swear word i feel like that should be bleeped yeah you don't want to say the wrong thing here michael yeah what are you doing running around with 32 000 in your

pocket michael you gotta add some stats bud no no because i wanted to upgrade my weapon and i needed an oak bar whatever it was called so i think i said that right one of those Oh, no, because I wanted to upgrade my weapon, and I needed an Okachabatababab, I'm touching nothing because if you die again, then your anima points disappear and they're gone forever. All right. That's what happened. I just don't want Michael to say the wrong word here. All right. So this next one is recommended 28 hours

on record and it says for the price point, I can definitely recommend seeing Louis XVI's head on a spider automaton alone i can't say that word man was worth the money some whatever some really great and innovative art direction particularly the enemies and weapons in a very cool setting though in its entirety the game lacks polish still though it was pretty fun for a short 20 to 25 hour souls like palette cleanser yeah i i can i can understand why all

these reviews are written i think they all highlight a different perspective on the game and they're all fair yep all right so that's what the community thinks we always play a little game where we try to guess the overall steam review score for the game that we're doing the deep dive on so for steel rising what do you guys think the overall rating is i believe michael won last time so michael you're going first i never want to win again because it was the first time in this show's history where someone else gave the intro to make love marry murder after i had won because i wasn't good enough so i'm gonna say it's a two i'm totally kidding uh i i think this is say it's a two. I'm totally kidding. I think this is because it's an entry-level Souls-like game-ish type thing. I think

that Souls-like hardcore Souls-like fans will probably be a little bit disappointed. I think most of them would probably approve of it. But also because it's a Souls-like game, I think a lot of people are also not going to like this game. And because the story is hard to follow, I'm going to say let's go with high 70s and Rock 78.

Might be too low, but I just think this is not a game for everyone. Yeah, I think that's probably a little low. I'm going to say 84%. Okay, 84% from Paul, 78% from Michael. I guessed 88%. I thought that this game had a lot going for it. I do get that if somebody was looking for a hardcore souls, like that,

they would have got this and then been like, what the heck is this kind of thing? But I did think the setting was good. I thought the combat was good. Like there was just a lot that kind of worked for it. So I thought, you know, this might resonate with people,

I guess, 88%. Um, the winner is Michael. I really hope you're ready this time because you won so please tell me you prepared some great pickup line uh what was the score uh the score is 75 oh that's that's kind of low was there like review bombing i will okay so to explain i scrolled through so many negative reviews% of the negative reviews for this game

were talking about the optimization. I don't know if they fixed it. I had zero issues running this game. I don't have any... Maybe they fixed it, but I'll tell you what, as far back as a few months ago, people were still saying, I have this supercomputer and this game runs like doo-doo.

And legitimately... I mean, 9 out of 10 of the negative reviews were just this game is terribly optimized like nobody complained about the gameplay nobody complained about the combat the setting or any of that stuff i mean the reviews that i read were the only ones i could find that didn't just say optimization doo-doo bad review um and so i think that's why the score is so low. That makes more sense because 75 is too low for this kind of game. Yeah, for sure. I agree.

All right. Michael is furiously looking up pickup lines now. I can see the glare of his monitor. I can see the glare of his monitor in Google in his face right now. So, Michael, take us into the next segment, buddy. Hey, Aegis. right now so michael take us into the next segment buddy hey hs uh i think i just froze there for a minute uh my mother told me not to talk to strangers during the french revolution but whatever your name is i i don't know how to say love in french i'm never doing this again

i just tried to say like four things at once oh boy oh how'd you land your wife michael i was smart i say big words sometimes from now on i'm just gonna say that either you or i won i'm gonna make up the actual review scores and then just oh that's so great i love it i want michael to win it every time no i do not i do not i do not. So here's the thing is I literally used to prepare something clever every single time, but I literally didn't win for like, it must have been at least like 20 deep dives in a row. And I just started forgetting. And I won last week and I was like, oh, I have a good one for this. And this week I'm like, there's no way I'm winning again. I won once this year already. So it's not going to happen again.

I love that midway through your pickup line, you literally said, I'm freezing. Well, also, he said, hey, Aegis, whatever your name is. Not a strong start. What was the little girl's name in that game that Aegis' soul was? You're asking me story stuff, which again, the story didn't. That was mostly side that was mostly side quest stuff too so anyways let's keep going this show's going off the rails all right well michael you got to tell us what you think of the game now i'm getting yeah what's the segment uh so this segment is called make love marry murder it is where we decide how we rate this game so uh make love is like hey go check it out once take it on a date it's a pretty good game try it maybe don't play the whole thing.

Murder is obviously what it is. This game sucks. Don't buy it. We do not recommend. And Make Love is like, hey, this is a game that we think everyone should try. Maybe buy it full price. And we love it absolutely beyond just dating it. And so essentially, we all give our rating.

That's what we're going to do right now. And I'll start off with it. Oh, my goodness. I can see josh and paul on camera by the way i wish you guys could see him on camera because i'm about to see some faces this is an easy mary for me i really liked this game i loved this game i had so much fun in this game after hating it for the first two hours like hating it but i also have only played two souls like games which was elden ring my first one ever which is hard yeah and then this one and so the combat i found very refreshing i don't know if other people who really like souls like games are gonna see enough of a challenge in this but

they might um the thing is is that being an absolute avid history buff like easily the biggest person in this room uh i was enamored by the story in this game because it was so intriguing to see this alternate history with real things still taking place it's almost like the writers were like what would happen like what would really happen if we just put robots in the french revolution this is how it would have actually happened you know and so i just loved it the side side quest, the story, the combat was great. There was nothing frustrating about this game after I figured out that there's a couple things

that are meant to be the way they are. And I marry this game. It's not the highest marry. I'm not going to put it up in my top 10. I'm not cracking my top 20, but I think everyone should try this game out. I liked it. Really good.

So it's not a perfect marriage, but you're going to make it to the finish line. It's one of those marriages that after the first five years, you start clicking. Maybe you got married too early, and there's a lot of fighting and stuff like that. There you go. And you're like, hey, I just want to take my van to Missouri and go live in a van down by the river or something like that. But then you stay with it, and you're like, you know what?

Really, really like this. Stay married. How about you, Josh? This is an easy make love for me. I won't say I'm going to marry this game because it's not Elden Ring. For me, it's not marriage material, but that is not to put a negative on this game at all. I found that I enjoyed the heck out of playing this game. I started playing it because it was Scrum's legendary pick, and I kept playing it because I legitimately just had fun playing it at that point. There is something to be said for having souls like combat, which I love be a little bit easier, man. You know what I mean? Not banging my head against the keyboard because I died 20 times over and over again, but still having the combat mechanics.

And if you get lazy and you don't dodge that attack, you're going to get punished for it. But it's not so punishing that I'm just dying nonstop. There's just something there that really grabbed me as far as the perfect difficulty level for a game where I could have fun, but I didn't have to get frustrated, but it was still interesting enough that I was having fun with the different combat, the different weapons, the elemental abilities, you know, the playing the stupid little overheat minigames so that I could keep dodging and stuff like that. I thought the level design was really neat. It's beautiful. They do a really good job of these city streets and villages and stuff like that i thought the level design was really neat it's beautiful they do a really good job of these city streets and villages and stuff like that even to the dumb little things where occasionally i think it's like five times in the game you see a door that you can interact with and there's some scared person on the other side of the door that you mentioned paul they're like

please don't kill us and it's like why is this in the game you know there's actually an achievement for that too i would sit there and talk to them and be like hey i'm not bad guy like i don't know why but it was just these little things like that that kind of all came together i really enjoyed my time with this game it's an easy make love for me that sounded like a mary review to me with a make love tag because you were not you were scared to give it a m. It's I'll be honest with you. It's not a Mary for me because I won't go back to this game. You know what I mean? But I can,

I can easily say, I think this game on a sale price point is an, is an easy decision. Yeah. See, for me it was real quick. It was what we had to peel off and play Hogwarts. I was like,

I'm really excited to play Hogwarts, but I really want to play steel rising, which is ridiculous. And that's what I was like, that's the Mary i'm really excited to play hogwarts but i really want to play steel rising which is ridiculous and that's what i was like that's the mary because i want to play this game really bad yeah for me it's a make love but barely it's like a low make love for me i just found the story to be incomprehensible i did did not like Aegis as a main character. I loved running through the levels and I liked some of the boss fights quite a bit. So it's not that I hated the game or anything like that. I just found after a while, it started feeling very repetitive, despite the fact that you could play around with different weapons. It just got a little repetitive to me where I just felt

very done with it. this is not a game that i would ever go back to if there were if there was dlc i'd have zero interest um i don't know i just felt like it wasn't really anything all that special but it wasn't bad i felt i felt kind of conflicted if it's i almost feel like there are merry pieces and a lot of murder pieces and so in the middle i just kind of have to say, make love, I guess out to the love. Yeah,

I get that. I get that for sure. Like the scales of justice. You're just in the middle of it. You know, it's, it's a little like forespoken in so far as there are elements I love, but other elements I hate.

So it's just, it kind of felt all over to me. It felt just a little uneven in that regard. If I gave it a score from like zero to 10, it's kind of like a 6.5 for me where it's not bad, not great, just a little bit in the middle. All right. Well, we have one segment left, guys. Let's go to the leaderboard and see where this game stacks up do we have a drop for that we do i feel like you should know michael all right josh tell the people about our leaderboard so every game that we do a deep dive on we force ourselves to rank this game against every other game that we've done a deep dive on. It is nonsensical because we put we mix genres.

We mix multiplayer with single player. And that's kind of the point. So it's a fun little thing to say, hey, where does this game rank against games like, you know, some of the best of the best Red Dead Redemption, God of War. You know, how do we compare to those games to, you know, multiplayer games that are pretty famous, like Deep Rock Galactic, you know, and games like that as well, all the way down to the bottom, where we have just absolute garbage games like Forspoken and Battlefield 2042. But yeah, so this is the part where we're going to say, hey, this is where we think this game ranks against all the other ones. So look at number 33 on our leaderboard.

That's what I was looking at. Near Automata. I feel like that's kind of a good jumping place. Would you put it in that range or higher or lower? I would say lower than near. This is uncanny because i'll be honest i have the spot where i thought that this game belongs and i was looking at a game that in some ways is somewhat similar but i enjoyed this one more and that's evil west which is sitting at 36

so that's so funny you said that because i thought that i was going to be way too high and i'm looking at the forgotten city okay that's a one and done kind of, but it was an incredible game. Followed New Vegas. And then I see Nier Automata and I'm like, I would like to play both of these games about the same. And then Evil West down below, I'm like, this belongs at 33 or 34. This is exactly where it belongs to me, for me, but I married it. I'd have a hard time putting it above Nier, to be honest, because right below 30 yeah i mean i'm right there i i said 36 you guys are talking about paul said below 33 so where are you thinking paul oh i'd have it around 50 but just based on what you guys were saying and the fact

that near you're playing as robots running around i kind of felt like it was a good initial starting point to figure out above or below. I would say below near. I would say below near. I'll be honest. I'm personally in the late 30s area. I could go early 40s and still be satisfied with that. How do you feel about 41, putting it above V Rising and Lost Ark? I'm fine with that, to be honest. I love that spot. I put it one below Ibn Ark. I'm fine with that to be honest. I put it one below Ibn Ab. I'm down with that. I love that spot. I'm good with that. Okay. Yeah, I'd way rather play Ibn Ab

again at the price point and the shortness compared to Steel Rising. All right, so lock it in at 41. Yeah, I think that's a good landing spot. Good compromise for the three of us how we rated it too. We're getting better at compromise. We are.

I think we're good. All right. Well, I knew when I was putting it as the only person who married it in the high 30s, I'm like, it's going to come down. And where it came down to, I'm actually happy with it because it also puts it behind Broforce, which I married and freaking loved my experience playing that game. It's a great spot. Good compromise, guys.

Go, Broforce. I love Broforce. Love that game. All right. So if anyone wants to check out our leaderboard, it's a great spot good guys i love bro force love that game all right so if anyone wants to check out our leaderboard it's at multiplayer podcast.com just scroll down a little bit it's right there on the front page and then that wraps everything up in regards to steel rising we want to give a huge thank you once again to scrump for going legendary thank you so much our our next deep dive is another legendary pick funny enough i don't even know if we've talked about it on the show but our next deep dive will be pillars of eternity two deadfire which was chosen by a year and a half or play it for the next year and a half

yeah and and we're finally going to be caught up on legendary games so toro has had to wait a while we're finally going to knock this one out and then we'll be all caught up on Legendaries. And then in the meantime, because we're going to deep dive that two weeks from today, in the meantime, we hope that you'll join us for all our episodes. They come out on Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, along with those bonus episodes if you sign up

for Patreon at MultiplayerSquad.com. Thanks to everyone for all the love and support. We appreciate you all. Until next time, happy gaming. Oh, just a word of advice. Don't ever Google family-friendly pickup lines and try to get anything that makes any sense out of that. Cheers, all. Adieu, everybody.