For what’s on offer, sci-fi fuelled action-adventure Saros has no business being this good. Set on the shape-shifting planet of Carcosa, you’ll explore its many exotic vistas, gun down its varied flora and fauna, die and do it all over again. What sounds like a simple gameplay loop is elevated by how well each part of it is put together.
Exclusive to the PS5 and [PS5 Pro], Saros has you as Arjun Devraj (played by actor Rahul Kohli from The Fall of the House of Usher, Midnight Mass). He’s a part of the crew of the Echelon IV. It’s a ship that brought a group of colonists on Carcosa at the behest of megacorp Soltari to uncover the fate of its previous colony and to recover any alien tech they find.
While on the surface this may sound extremely trope-y, giving Weyland-Yutani vibes not too dissimilar to the Alien movie franchise, there’s a welcome twist to the proceedings. Carcosa is plagued by an eclipse that changes its landscape, warps its many beasts to hit you harder, and also impacts your crewmates who descend into madness as you go deeper into the planet’s biomes.
Kohli and the rest of the cast (that includes Jane Perry who voiced protagonist Selene from 2020 PS5 hit Returnal and the iconic Diane Burnwood from the Hitman games) don’t hold back with nuanced performances that NPCs into distinct memorable individuals as events snowball. There’s enough intrigue to keep the game’s story interesting until the credits roll.
And see the credits roll you shall, each time you die you gain more ways to explore even further. These include incremental stat boosts that grant more health to critical skills like Second Chance that revives from death in an instant, allowing you to continue from where you left off.
As you keep playing you’ll unlock modifiers too. These let you alter the state of Carcosa at the start of a new run such as dealing more damage or being to shield against specific enemy attacks. You can use these to make the game tougher too, such as amping up the ferocity of your foes or removing the impact of every stat boost you’ve earned.
Furthermore, as you explore Carcosa, you’ll come across powerful weapons like hand cannons that shoot rounds that ricochet off walls and rocket launchers that leave a trail of mines in their wake. There isn’t as much in terms of variety as your bog standard shooter game like say Doom The Dark Ages, but there’s more than enough to even the odds and make it entertaining to boot.
Though where Saros really shines is in its moment to moment gameplay. Controlling Arjun feels fast, precise, and whippy in a way that would give the Flash an inferiority complex. Gunning down the assortment of hostile creatures from flying automatons to rabid robot-like canines is a treat.
This is in part due to the use of the PS5’s DualSense’s adaptive triggers that make every weapon feel unique and haptics that make every surface Arjun dashes across feel real. Much like Death Stranding 2 and Ghost of Yotei, the implementation of the DualSense controller adds another dimension to the gameplay, making everything feel alive.
That said, it’s not perfect. Saros’ opening hours are a drag. Outside of the aforementioned gameplay, you’ll die easy and often, and from a narrative perspective you’ll find precious little in terms of motivation to keep going outside of the terse, sparse audio logs of your comrades. For me, it clicked the moment I discovered the first mini-boss area which introduced an enemy known as the Sunflayer. Its aggressive play style had me lock in and see the game through, opening up more of the story through cinematics and dialogue as well.
Along with this, its boss fights are tough. Without spoiling much they hit hard, fast, and surprisingly, fair. I made full use of every advantage the game had to offer to see them through. Even then, they weren’t a walk in the park, needing multiple tries to beat them down. The feeling of defeating a once though insurmountable challenge is priceless.
All in all, Saros is slick, polished experience with a haunting tale to back it up. It might not have the mass appeal of some of Sony’s bigger hits like God of War or Spider-Man but there’s more than enough to have the makings of a cult classic.
Saros is out on April 30 for PS5 for Rs. 5,199.