I tried Returnal. Genuinely tried it, sat down with good intentions, gave it a fair go. It was not for me. Too punishing, too cryptic, too willing to just absolutely batter you without much sense of forward momentum. I put it down and felt no guilt about it whatsoever. I will probably go back eventually but that is a problem for future me.
Which meant coming into Saros I had a very specific concern. What if it is just Returnal again. What if I bounce off this one the same way and spend the whole time feeling like I am missing something that everyone else is getting. That was the worry.
That is not what happened.
Saros drops you into the boots of Arjun Devraj, voiced and modelled by Rahul Kohli, who you might know from Midnight Mass and The Fall of the House of Usher. Arjun is a Soltari Enforcer, basically the muscle for a massive ultracapitalist corporation trying to colonise a mysterious planet called Carcosa, which may hold an energy source capable of solving Earth’s resource problems. When he arrives, the colony is lost. The planet is covered in ruins from a long dead civilisation. The local fauna is actively trying to kill him. And there is a permanent solar eclipse hanging overhead that, when it shifts, completely changes the layout of the planet around you. Kohli gives Arjun a lived-in weariness that grounds the whole thing, and the story, while slow to start, eventually becomes genuinely compelling. It actually wants you to understand and engage with it, which already makes it a different proposition from Returnal’s deliberate inscrutability.
The thing that made Saros work for me where Returnal didn’t is the permanent progression. Every death feeds into a persistent upgrade system. Resources carry over. Abilities unlock and stay unlocked. You genuinely come back stronger each time rather than feeling like you are being reset back to nothing. The loop still stings, dying still matters, but there is always a sense of forward movement even in failure that kept me going when a less forgiving game would have lost me entirely. That one design decision changes the entire feeling of the experience and I suspect it is going to open the game up to a lot of people who similarly bounced off Returnal and assumed this genre just was not for them.
The combat is where Saros earns its reputation. Fast, demanding, with a bullet hell element that fills the screen with projectiles you have to weave through whilst targeting weak points and managing weapon cooldowns simultaneously. The first couple of hours it is genuinely overwhelming. Then it clicks. And once it clicks it is one of the most satisfying third person combat systems I have played in years. Every weapon feels distinct. Every enemy type requires a different approach. The moment to moment feel of it is just excellent throughout.
Carcosa itself is one of the best looking game worlds on PS5.
Every biome feels completely distinct. Underground mechanical labyrinths, shattered alien ruins, dank swamps, grand alien architecture. The scale is enormous and you feel appropriately small and agile within it. There were moments where I genuinely stopped and just looked at what was on screen. The eclipse mechanic ties it all together brilliantly too. When it shifts it physically reshapes the planet’s layout, changes enemy behaviour, unlocks story content that only exists during certain states. It keeps the world feeling dynamic across multiple runs, which is exactly what this kind of game needs.
The criticisms are real but minor. Facial animations occasionally let the side down during important conversations. The story takes too long to get going. A handful of late game bugs that need patching. None of it significantly dents what is otherwise a remarkable game.
Saros convinced me that I had written off this style of game too quickly. That is about the highest compliment I can give it.
9/10