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While Solar Ash is overall an excellent sophomore outing for Heart Machine, boasting new gameplay mechanics, an excellent story, and jaw-dropping art direction, it still falters a bit in certain places. Whether it’s unrefined mechanics or frustrating exploration, here are some of the biggest fixes needed in Solar Ash.
8 Increase Grapple Range
Rei, a Voidrunner and the main character of Solar Ash, has in her arsenal a tool that allows her to grapple to specific points in the world, as well as close distances with enemies to deliver a swift ranged attack. This grapple shot is used numerous times throughout the game, featuring heavily in puzzles and boss encounters.
The problem is the grapple shot has an incredibly short range, making it feel unnecessary in some situations and underpowered in others. A special ability that slows time gives the grapple shot a little more range, but even that sometimes isn’t enough. Extending the base range of the grapple would make many of Solar Ash’s encounters much less frustrating.
7 More Responsive Jumping
Jumping is a key part of Solar Ash, as this game is as much a platformer as it is a breathtaking open-world, action-adventure game. Jumping lets Rei navigate pathways while skating at high speeds, and carefully spaced out jumps are required in every single boss encounter.
But Rei’s jump is paralyzingly slow, cutting any momentum she’s built up and often overshooting or undershooting a targeted platform. It often feels like it doesn’t line up with controller input, either, which can make boss battles twice as difficult. Rei could really use a more accurate, responsive jump.
6 Customization Options
As Rei explores the Ultravoid, a black hole that’s on a collision course with her home planet, she can find Voidrunner Caches left behind by the other members of her team. With each cache she discovers, she’ll unlock a piece of that Voidrunner’s suit.
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But these pieces can’t be used until the entire suit is assembled, and each suit only offers one, passive boost to a particular piece of Rei’s kit. It would be nice to have the option to mix and match pieces from other Voidrunner suits to create a version of Rei that suits any playstyle.
5 More Rewarding Combat
There’s a decent amount of combat in Solar Ash, from the small skirmishes with tiny Remnant enemies to the colossal boss battles that evoke Shadow of the Colossus with their scale. While defeating the bosses offers rewards in the way of story progression, there’s really nothing rewarding about any of the combat in the game.
There’s no experience bar gradually ticking up to an upgrade of some kind, and the smaller enemies don’t even drop resources for Rei to pick up. Giving combat some kind of intrinsic value would make engagements feel more meaningful than just clearing out the area.
4 Shorter Pulse Charge Time
Rei has access to special, pulse technology that highlights objectives on the screen. It can be used to find the active Cyd station in that particular area, as well as any Remnant boss weak points that Rei still hasn’t stabbed in the eye.
The pulse is very useful, especially if the player has gotten lost, but it takes an oddly long time to charge up before going off. Making the pulse quicker to trigger would make finding the next objective point a much easier task.
3 A “New Path” Icon On The World Map
The world map features a lot of information in Solar Ash, such as how far along certain side quests are and how close Rei is to finishing a Voidrunner suit. It also allows Rei to warp between each region she’s already visited.
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What it doesn’t have is an indicator of which region to go to next after defeating a boss. A brief cutscene after the boss dies shows a new doorway opening, but nothing on the map indicates where this door is. The pulse can show a waypoint on the heads-up display, but the game would benefit from an icon on the world map to make it easier for players to know where they need to go next.
2 Collectible Tracker
There are a few different collectibles to find throughout the Ultravoid, and some of them are more well-hidden than others. Some Voidrunner caches are tucked away inside buildings or in caves, negating the blue light they shine into the sky, and journal entries have no strong visual indicator at all.
Giving Rei some form of tracker would make hunting down those last few collectibles much more tolerable. This tracker could be added to Cyd’s functionality or work as an upgrade to Rei’s suit that she can buy with plasma or unlock after meeting certain criteria.
1 Photomode
Solar Ash is a stunning game with fantastic art direction and environmental design, and it’s a shame the game didn’t launch with a built-in photo mode. The vistas are often breathtaking, and the game knows when to pull the camera back and give players a full view of their surroundings to let the game’s scale sink in.
The characters all sport fun, intriguing designs, and each region of the Ultravoid is put to great use during the boss encounters as the bosses themselves fill the entire space. And because of Solar Ash’s fast-paced gameplay, it can be hard to get the best action shots without a dedicated photo mode.
Solar Ash is currently available on PC, Playstation 5, and Playstation 4.
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