This review is story spoiler free.

Every so often a game comes along which wears its inaccessibility proudly on its sleeve. Saros very much embodies this attitude during its opening hours, but thanks to some of the best and brightest gameplay and world design I’ve seen on PlayStation in a long time, manages to brute force its way into being one of the most special experiences I’ve had in years. Developed by Housemarque, the Finnish game developer best known for their previous title, the unabashedly challenging Returnal, Saros released in April 2026 as a PlayStation 5 exclusive; a rare example of a game with enough ambition to push the capability of the PlayStation 5 Pro to its limits.

You play as Arjun Devraj (portrayed by Rahul Kohli), a preposterously handsome enforcer for the Soltari corporation, a one man army adept at raining death upon any who oppose him. Arjun is part of a rescue operation dubbed Echelon 4, after the first three Echelon ships for Soltari lose contact while setting up a mining colony on the perpetually eclipsed distant world of Carcosa. He has the secondary objective of trying to discover what happened to his wife, as well as rescuing her if possible, as she was among the crew of Echelon 1.

Saros positively glows through its art style, contrasting the bright opulent oranges of its environments with the sharp blue and threatening red of the hundreds of bullet-hell projectiles you must contend with in any given moment. Arjun’s attacks thunk satisfyingly into targets reducing their insides to sparkling confetti, accentuated by excellent audio design, that makes Saros feel so incredibly immersive despite its extremely hostile nature. The musical score is also great when you notice it, as often I found myself so immersed in a fight that I hadn’t noticed the soundtrack swell.

The gameplay loop is formed for the first few hours by Arjun setting off into the opening biome, Shattered Rise, and battling through waves of enemies, eventually climaxing with a thrilling boss fight. Upon defeat enemies drop a resource called Lucenite, which fills your proficiency meter automatically, allowing Arjun to level up and access better gear as the run progresses. Proficiency is reset at the beginning of each new attempt.

This ties in to the story construction for Saros, as it’s a roguelite, a genre of game I typically shun as I find repetition seldom adds to the fun factor of a gameplay experience. This usually negative disposition, Saros uses to its advantage by being so meticulously designed that I was immediately sucked in and became addicted to the satisfying loop inside my first hour.

Upon completion of a biome’s boss fight, players are given the opportunity to begin new runs from immediately after where the last boss was defeated. This may appear like a great way to save time and avoid retreading old ground, but without proficiency attained from at least one completed biome under your belt, later game areas can feel borderline impossible to complete. Fortunately the layout of each biome changes slightly at the beginning of each run, as do the weapon drops. As you progress through the story, new enemy types introduced later in the game will start appearing in areas you have already visited.

Combat is broken up by frequent interludes of brief platforming sections, as well as optional areas for the keen treasure hunter. These segments are where the new traversal options you unlock as you progress on the critical path come in handy, such as a hugely appreciated grapple, as well as travelling rapidly along a pre-set laser beam; yes, really. The dash you begin the game with starts as good as it gets, but when combined with other ways to zip around a combat arena, firefights quickly become very cinematic. A split second dart across a room with the grapple followed by a volley of heavy special attacks would often turn the tide of any battle I felt wasn’t going my way.

The weapon variety is another aspect that shines in Saros with three variations each of hand cannons, crossbows, rifles, chakrams and shotguns. I found several weapon types to be useless, bordering on unusable with my play style, but upon a YouTube search discovered other players carry the same contempt for my guns of choice. It’s purely preference that will dictate which you gravitate towards. There are also four special weapons granting limited use attacks when your power meter is filled. Similarly to my preferred weapon choice, I found only after completion of the story that many Saros players shunned my favourite special weapon, so all tastes are very much catered for.

Upon your inevitable death, Arjun is mysteriously transported back to Echelon 4’s base camp where he can spend the amount of Lucenite he retains upon death to upgrade his stats and abilities. He may also purchase helpful items available at the start of all subsequent runs, such as keys that allow earlier access to more exotic gear. Unspent Lucenite not used on upgrades is banked for later use, and cannot be carried over into a fresh adventure to level up faster.

The challenge in the game can appear overwhelming at first, and at times it is, but baked into its difficulty Saros clearly communicates to players what they need to achieve but leaves how best to react up to their choice. It’s entirely up to player timing and reflexes to execute these second-by-second decisions. The amount of times in my first dozen hours where I would die or take a tonne of avoidable damage number in the hundreds, though rarely in a way that was to the detriment of my enjoyment. It’s all part of the learning curve.

I grew frustrated in mid-game biomes when I began consistently falling foul of RNG just as I felt I was starting to gain the upper hand. The amount of instances in which enemies would seemingly arbitrarily start disregarding my attacks while also suddenly spiking in their own damage output was way higher than it should have been. More than once I grew so quickly aggravated by the imbalance that I ended a play session early, as I felt the game was loudly communicating it would prefer I didn’t continue.

I have to give the boss design its flowers here, as all of them have magnificent visual and sound design in their respective battles. I was sceptical at first about each boss having three consecutive health bars to get through to defeat them. That was until I witnessed the creative ways they would use each one being vanquished to switch-up their fight, and I quickly grew to appreciate Saros letting me know the end of a phase was imminent so I wouldn’t waste more powerful attacks where a quick hail of bullets would suffice.

Boss attacks are generally well telegraphed, and aside from only a couple of examples strike a perfect balance between fun and difficult. It can become quite vexing to die more than a couple of times to the same boss, as there is no immediate retry option and the entire biome must be conquered again to rematch them.

At this stage in the review, I feel I have to disclose an important feature from my experience with the game. After dying a few times, Arjun gains access to new difficulty options called Carcosan Modifiers at the Echelon 4 base camp. These allow players to alter specific aspects of Saros by accepting new conditions for Arjun, such as increasing his damage output, and boosting or reducing damage dealt to him by incoming attacks. While the game insists a fair balance is struck, and appears to not allow players to crank the difficulty down drastically for themselves, the team at Housemarque did include an option to remove the modifier limit altogether. After getting stonewalled by Saros’ halfway boss multiple times, I decided enough was enough and set the difficulty for the rest of the game as low as I possibly could.

While this did not prevent me from dying from then on in the remainder of my time with Saros, it did carry me through to the end of the game on an ill-deserved triumphant high. I generally play games on easy mode anyway, but the manner in which Saros injects this level of available difficulty within the game world itself is something I truly appreciate. I’ve since ramped back up to an almost acceptable level of challenge since maxing out Arjun’s skill tree, meaning the back and forth I have with waves of enemies has now become even more fun with an element of danger reintroduced to the mix.

Upon completion of the story, as well as its secret ending, I confess myself quite disappointed by it. If the game hadn’t leaned so heavily into the mystery of the previous Echelon ships with its plot, allowing the narrative to take a back seat, I’d likely be more positively predisposed towards it. Unfortunately, as it fights tooth and nail to keep players up to date with every little story tidbit that drops, when it was time to tie a neat bow around the finale I was left simultaneously confused as to how we got there and bewildered at the narrative choices. As mentioned at the start of this review, I won’t spoil anything, but it’s only because I Googled the plot since finishing that I could describe it in any level of detail.

Thanks to its roguelite elements, Saros took me around 30 hours to roll credits after reaching the secret ending but, due to the game’s brief runtime when you’re fully levelled up and know what you’re doing, could easily be breezed through in a fraction of that were it a standard shooter. While I won’t condemn Saros for a decision found on the first page of its original design document, I do think the story would have been better received if I hadn’t played dozens of hours to reach the end.

Since finishing Saros’ story I have sunk a further dozen hours into the game, mostly revisiting old biomes and introducing the enemies there to my devastating endgame arsenal. The moment to moment frantic gameplay is completely addictive and among the most gratifying shooters I have ever played. All things considered, Saros may not be a perfect game but it’s damn close, and I cannot wait to see what Housemarque cooks up for their next release. I score Saros

9 / 10

Reviewed on PlayStation 5 Pro.

Written, edited and images captured by Alexx.

There’s No Safety in Silence.