Dispatched by the crown as part of a secret expedition to a remote island part of the realm, you're ready for a life of adventure. But in third-person RPG Of Ash and Steel you're not one of the highly-trained, well-armored holy knights trying to enforce the will of the king… you're the clever orphan-turned-cartographer along for the ride because the maps of the island, Grayshaft, are pretty bad. Perhaps they're bad because the island suffers periodic volcanic eruptions so devastating that it's blanketed in deadly ash that cakes inside your lungs and kills you, eruptions so awful that ships avoid the island for the entire year when one seems imminent.
Which is obviously why brave cartographer Tristan has agreed to go there. And so like many fantasy protagonists, Tristan will soon be in way over his head—all because he wanted a bit of adventure—when the holy knights are all dead and he's the only one left to deliver the urgent missive. At least, that's what a hands-on preview with a beta build tutorial and first few hours of Ash and Steel told me.
Of Ash and Steel looks like a pretty traditional RPG, reminiscent of classics from the 2000s. It's unapologetic about not giving you quest markers or anything but in-world directions, but at the same time it does highlight loot on the ground or chests you can interact with when you're near them. It's somewhere between Gothic and the first Witcher game, in its own way, with a nod toward the survival-centric games of the last decade or so. While it doesn't go all-in on survival and encumbrance, Ash and Steel still has something of the 2019 RPG Outward in it.
More than anything, Of Ash and Steel feels like a game in the legacy of dearly departed mid-tier RPG studio Piranha Bytes, creators of the Gothic, Risen, and Elex series. That includes the signature campy acting mixed in with some decent drama, as well as plenty of oddball and unexpected humor. (One early quest has you finding the soiled trousers of a man who, when drunk, just craps himself and leaves the pants right there to clean up later.)
Perhaps its most old-school feature is how it has no level scaling in its world—creatures are a fixed level in a fixed location, forever. You're warned early on that going off the path can be dangerous, and each new enemy encounter is often a question of getting close enough to see if it massively out-levels you before you decide to try and take it on or not—and hope for good loot when you do. Coupled with that lethal-but-rewarding exploration is the rudiments of a survival system, where staying fed and watered is a must to survive, and setting up shop at pre-determined campsites lets Tristan rest and cook to regain hit points and pick up buffs. It also passes time, which is useful in a world where the NPCs and monsters follow a schedule of their own as to when and where they appear, or even when they're taking a nap and won't talk to you about your very urgent quest.
Tristan has three skill trees, and perhaps the most pressing one is Combat. Investing in combat skills lets you pick up to three different stances to fight from, each of which looks to have different effects based on what kind of weapons you're wielding—there were axes, swords, clubs, daggers, and a crossbow. Sadly, poor starter Tristan wasn't strong or competent enough to wield most of them.
Which is a big part of what I think the story developer Fire Frost is telling with Of Ash and Steel. This isn't a fantasy hero game where your character starts as competent at any useful skills relevant to his current situation. It's going to be a zero-to-hero story, with other characters in the world reacting to Tristan as he grows stronger. "If at the beginning of the game you were treated like a ragamuffin," said Fire Frost, "by the end of the game the characters will literally bow to your feet."
There was a hint of that in action during the preview play, as characters who previously saw Tristan dressed only in threadbare clothing later had complimentary things to say about a suit of basic armor I'd purchased. Where before they'd just asked: "Are you really wearing that?" they later said, "Ah, I had a sturdy suit like that when I was younger."
And a sturdy suit of armor is much needed, because the fighting can get pretty brutal. Armor will help you survive a few hits, but the stamina-based combat was really based around perfectly timed dodges and parries. Tristan's attacks, at least at the start of the game, are slow and clumsy—he's literally never fought before. As he got combat skills, though, he moved more confidently and picked up the ability to parry in a way that opened up enemies for counterattacks. That blended well with a fast knife, which let him get in those hits before quickly going back on his guard. Still, there's some tweaking to do on the early stages of the fighting—some people will definitely bounce right off of how clumsy Tristan was, or just won't be familiar with the time-honored strategy of "train the difficult enemy into a nearby powerful NPC."
Speaking of trying to survive, that's the focus of Tristan's other two skill trees: Survival and Crafting. They're much more down-to-earth, practical skillsets simply due to their nature. Survival lets you keep yourself fed and alive, while Crafting lets you upgrade and upkeep your equipment. Crafting also does one very important job: Makes you money. Quests and other odd jobs are a great source of experience and cash, sure, but paying people to train Tristan in all these new skills ain't cheap.
What was cool is that investments of money and skill points into the Craft and Survival trees actually did pay off in combat. A good craftsman can better sharpen their weapon for bonus damage, or reinforce their armor for extra defense. Survivalists, meanwhile, could pick up nasty tricks like thrown daggers and the use of poisons on their weapons—though poor preview Tristan was a bit too intellectually dull and low-level to get to try those skills out.
Even with all the advantages of level and time, however, Of Ash and Steel is definitely going to be a game where you get your butt kicked. A lot. Quicksave, I expect, is Tristan's greatest friend in the world. Enemies hit hard, and enemies that are higher level than you hit extremely hard—or even so fast that poor low-level Tristan simply stood no chance of reacting in time, let alone getting a single attack in. As a result, he got splatted by a lot of things. He got mauled by a giant rat-thing. Trampled by a big bug. Eaten by a lizard-thing. Dismembered by all manner of bandits, both living and apparently undead.
And the only dang reason Tristan didn't get splatted by this giant troll is because when everything can splat you, well, you get pretty good pretty fast at running and climbing your way out of danger.
While some people might find that kind of thing frustrating, Of Ash and Steel was pretty nice on that count. The action-RPG combat was somehow clunkier than a FromSoftware game but settled into its own rhythm after a while, and hopefully gets more and more fluid with more skills and abilities in the full game.
Don't expect miracles from Of Ash and Steel, but the preview was evidence of a promising mid-tier RPG that'll likely enthuse ye olde genre purists while still being accessible and interesting enough to draw in lovers of more modern character-driven action.
