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SAROS (PS5)
Saros, roguelike ve bullet hell türlerini daha erişilebilir kılmaya çalışırken bağımlılık yaratan oynanışıyla öne çıkıyor; ancak dengesiz zorluk ve sınırlı özgürlük hissi potansiyelini tam yansıtamıyor.
The concept of “niche” has officially lost its meaning today due to the ever-increasing volume of game production. For genres that were once guilty pleasures for some and troublemakers in arcades for others are now re-entering circulation with far higher production budgets. This was perhaps the most natural outcome for developers searching for ways to distinguish themselves in an industry where everything is becoming increasingly homogeneous. As our collective memory calls upon the past, the gaming world was searching for a way to reach tomorrow.
In this process, the spirit of the ’80s and ’90s — with their flexible development opportunities and wide creative freedom — seemed to return. Gameplay loops that condemned you to fail again and again and difficulty levels that tested the player’s patience became a new standard, while innovative risk-reward systems imperceptibly replaced the feeling of suffering. This atmosphere, in which sub-genres were becoming mainstream, always found a way to surprise players looking for a fresh experience.
Setting aside the fact that indie developers were surprising players with brand-new mechanics, even billion-dollar companies sometimes managed to make bold decisions. Housemarque, a Sony studio, raised the bar while creating wonders in the bullet hell genre since the PS3 era, and blended the genre they knew best with roguelike to produce Returnal. Yet Returnal, one of the most technologically advanced games of the PS5 era, was completed by only a very small fraction of players due to its uneven sense of progression and luck-dependent build design.
However, Housemarque refused to abandon the chaotic action they had mastered, and this time came forward with an effective solution for reaching every single player. Saros, announced at Sony’s State of Play event in February 2025, aimed to bring its cosmic horror-themed world to a broad audience through permanent upgrades added after runs and player-friendly mechanics. Although hardcore players claimed this decision was pregnant with a “watered-down” bullet hell–roguelike hybrid, one had to wait for the game’s release date of April 30 to experience that supposedly finely tuned difficulty balance. I sat down at the console with the code provided to us by PlayStation and experienced this difficulty balance firsthand.
Try Again and Again
Saros follows Echelon IV, an intervention team that arrives on the planet Carcosa following the disappearance of three previous fleets. As you might expect, this is one of countless fictional planets colonized for the extraction of a valuable mineral. This substance, Lucenite, is not only an extraordinary fuel capable of skipping several stages of evolution, but also possesses a dangerous and mysterious power. Indeed, the sole source that enables us to return to life again and again as the protagonist Arjun — and to grow stronger with each return — is Lucenite itself.
First and foremost, one of Saros‘s most distinctive hallmarks is its world of incomparable beauty. Despite the inevitable pace created by the roguelike elements that have you doing statistical calculations and the bullet hell structure that suddenly plunges the action into visual chaos, the maps possess an aesthetic appeal that cannot be overlooked. The reason for this is not only the impressive colors, detailed architecture, or intricate sound design; it is also the sense of alienness that leaves you — like the colonists — in awe of a splendor you cannot comprehend. In this respect, it is fair to say that the maps are one of the elements that strengthen the game’s immersive side.
We can see the same attention to detail in the enemies as well. The creatures, which feel half-alien and half-familiar, carry a cosmic unknowability beyond their avian and canine animal forms. Therefore, you don’t just fear the enemies because of their attack patterns; their indescribable appearance and detailed movement animations also keep surprising you constantly. Considering the sense of urgency brought by the fast pace, the inhabitants of Carcosa allow you to feel the space through both their high variety and meticulous design.
Speaking of the content within the maps, it must be said that Saros, like most of its peers, prefers environmental storytelling. While Housemarque once again designates the atmospheric and fragmented “hallucination sequences” that stood out in Returnal as the main artery, this time — starting from the premise that we are part of a fleet — they have also scattered NPC dialogues and audio/text logs throughout the environment. Personally, aside from genres like souls that necessarily require exploration and where you understand the lore by spending time in the world, I think this is often a lazy narrative technique that fails to get much of a response from the player. In the specific case of Saros, it is not hard to see that this presentational deficiency makes the already scattered story even more impossible to follow.
The storytelling that leans on a handful of cutscenes and recurring images tries to compensate for the emotion it cannot create in the screenplay through the “constant retry addiction” that comes with the genre. Indeed, Arjun’s primary motivation is to find Nitya — a person with whom he has been trapped in a toxic cycle in his relationships due to various regrets and an alcoholism he cannot escape — who is one of the former fleet members lost on Carcosa. As he tries to find his wife by dying countless times, we too begin to become slaves to this meaningless obsession alongside Arjun. However, the game makes no attempt to convey this collapse through mechanics or map design; it again takes refuge in optional side content that only gains meaning through the player’s own effort. It is naturally disappointing to see that Housemarque — which observes the gameplay loop and the aestheticization of action from an outside perspective — has been unable to carry this critical tone into the gameplay.
Addictive Gameplay
Setting aside the already predictable aspects such as storytelling, art design, and AAA game standards, we need to talk about Saros‘s primary promise: its updated approach to the genre. In short, Housemarque has once again managed to construct an addictive action system. Taking place in wider and more layered areas compared to Returnal, the game offers a very fast and responsive gameplay. Moreover, this time you have many tools at your disposal to stay alive longer — and this is precisely where the studio’s effort to broaden its audience is most visible.
First of all, gameplay strategies targeting different bullet types continue exactly as before. You deal with three different bullet types — blue, yellow, and red — and discover alternative ways to avoid them. However, the biggest innovation in the action is probably the use of a shield, which offers an excellent risk-reward system. To use your high-damage power weapon, you need to — taking on certain risks — make contact with specific bullet types using your shield. For instance, you are asked to actively apply new strategies while accounting for factors like non-storable bullets and limited shield durations. This feature keeps the action perpetually fresh, forcing the player to decide between evasion and defensive maneuvers; thus, standing still becomes scarcely possible.
Furthermore, Saros boasts a DualSense implementation that would outshine almost any exclusive title. In addition to haptic feedback and the controller speaker, the use of the adaptive trigger as a physical indicator for secondary weapon modes is truly impressive. Housemarque reminds us of certain technological standards we had forgotten in these days when exclusive games are hard to come by. The secondary modes of weapons — which do not offer entirely different advantages but become functional according to different scenarios — thus transform into a meaningful addition.
As the paragraphs pile up, you may have begun to think that Saros has perhaps too many features. Frankly, I have to say I agree with that idea. For the game sometimes tinkers with certain balances while trying to offer alternative paths. In my opinion, the first of these is the parry system. This mechanic, which has started to be added to almost all AAA games in one form or another, is also introduced in Saros as a useful tool for deflecting red bullets — the most critical bullet type. However, due to their shapes and a lack of visual cues, it is not easy to understand when we can parry the bullets, and on top of that, deflected bullets do not return to the enemy. I must say that the parry — which only really works as a platforming element — is a feature that, rather than making the high tempo more exciting, instead ruins the experience when you take damage due to incorrect assumptions, also dragging down your adrenaline score.
We cannot not talk about the permanent upgrades, the most discussed aspect of Saros. Housemarque, following Returnal‘s progress-unfriendly structure, has designed a skill tree where players actively feel themselves growing stronger and can verify this growth. This opens up room for you to increase certain stats every time you return to base after a run. While it is hard to say that the skill tree carries creative touches or allows for different playstyles, it is true that it instills the desire to “keep trying.” However, despite everything, the fact that skills are presented with vague textual descriptions and that only more expensive versions of the same properties appear as you advance through the tree unfortunately undermines strategic freedom.
Getting Stuck in the Same Loop
The biggest shortcoming that squanders Saros‘s potential is that the player doesn’t feel free amidst all these mechanics and systems. For the game never expects you to make radical decisions; on the contrary, it actively tries to alleviate the existing difficulties to show you it’s always by your side. For instance, the Carcosan Modifiers system — introduced at nearly the quarter point of the game — allows you to use modifications with positive or negative stats as you please while playing with the game’s difficulty in a balanced way. While this screen might come in handy for an impatient player, it can never offer strategic depth. It settles in as a useless alternative that, once unlocked, you tinker with once and then probably never return to.
The uneven UX improvements in the game also draw attention in the roguelike approach. Checkpoints that open quickly and randomly generated corridors that grow stale despite their simple designs cause the player to become too aware rather than getting lost within the loop. For this reason, as a player you feel like you’re ahead of the game, creating comfort zones for yourself. For instance, locked boxes that you thought twice about opening in Returnal can now simply be broken open, and the freedom of choosing between items is left to you. In the solar eclipse sequences containing items that simultaneously offer both advantages and disadvantages, rather than gambling against stronger enemies, you simply wait to get the item you are most accustomed to, and yet the game cannot back you into a corner. Due to such small comfort zones, gameplay freedom gradually begins to become an indicator of uneven difficulty adjustment.
Housemarque makes its biggest mistake precisely here. Rather than giving the player innovative features or weapons, it searches for ways to make the existing structure sustainable. Due to the lack of incentive mechanisms that would push the player to try a new strategy, Saros loses a significant amount of momentum especially in the second half. While the regions and enemies still manage to remain a certain amount of fun and interesting, you have no reason to try a different build or change your range of movement. The game seems to get stuck at this point between the simple but fun gameplay loop of old-school arcade games and the long-haul pace management that AAA standards require.
Despite everything, Saros finds a way to keep the player alert through some surprises. In particular, the unpredictable phase designs and attack patterns in the boss fights practically accelerate your heartbeat. The optional yet rewarding structure of map exploration also encourages you to take sweet risks. Of course, all these positives are not enough to break the emotionless and overly calculated playing tendency that emerges in the second half. While Saros tries to show its character — who is trying to correct the past — “a new tomorrow,” it unfortunately condemns its player to the same loop. Although the player-friendly features added based on feedback from Returnal offer a far more fluid experience, the difficulty balance in question can go off the rails at times. For this reason, Saros, while correcting the shortcomings of the genres Housemarque knows best, has also become a game that dulls some of the studio’s talents.
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