The Ascent feels a little like an AI-generated fever dream to play. The game is polished, beautiful, detailed and just so painfully, viscerally meh. The story is predictable in all but a few moments, told largely through dialogue with characters begging for any kind of personality and whose voice acting (which I imagine is largely voice synthesis using machine learning) is the kind that really makes you appreciate all the talented voice actors that aren't in this game. The game progresses at a snail's pace, introducing exactly zero new mechanics past the first few hours and relying on antiquated "+1% critical chance" upgrades that quickly become a necessity because of the difficulty spike in the latter half of the game. Weapons are varied and interesting to use but become elaborate pea shooters once the game starts expecting you to spend upgrade components to improve them. I found myself relying on a single gun throughout most of the game, switching maybe once or twice once I had enough upgrade components to bring another gun to a reasonable level.

Save yourself the 30 euros (or, if it's on sale, the 10-20 hours) and buy a game with characters whose voices don't feel like sandpaper to your eardrums.

4/10, and I'm being generous.

I rarely leave reviews but here's to hoping for a sequel!

The environment and world-building from my perspective is on par with triple AAA- though the story is a bit on the shorter side of things.

Not a bad game at all, you should try, Flesh!