Saros: pretty, linear, and familiar

Saros is a TPS. A real TPS, with an over-the-shoulder camera, enemies to take cover from, and environments you progress through by eliminating whatever stands in your way. That's a change from the FPS saturation, and on paper that's welcome.

The problem is what it puts inside that format.

It's beautiful, at least

Let's start there because it deserves to be said plainly: Saros is visually accomplished. The environments are crafted, the palette is coherent, and the game clearly benefited from serious art direction work. Some scenes are genuinely striking to look at.

The main gun has real presence too. The design is refined, the model is detailed, and it looks exactly as dangerous as it should. It's the kind of weapon that makes you want to play just from looking at it in the selection menu.

Too bad it forgot its recoil in the locker room.

The gunfeel: clean but hollow

The gun looks good but it doesn't bite. Little kick, little physical feedback, little of that sensation in your hands that says something just happened. You shoot, enemies react, damage numbers appear. Mechanically it's fine. Emotionally it's flat.

That's a central problem in a TPS, because gunfeel is the first thing you sense every second of play. A gun that doesn't punch gets tiring. Not immediately, but over time, quietly. You start playing mechanically rather than being invested, and the distance between player and screen gradually grows.

The bosses: 2015 WoW called

The boss mechanics are the biggest surprise, and not in a good way.

Hide behind a rock to avoid a coloured zone on the floor. Wait for the phase to end. Come out to deal damage. Take cover again. This is exactly the pattern that MMOs popularised a decade ago, that raid design polished over years, and that shows up here presented as if it were a fresh idea.

It's not that it doesn't work. It's that it surprises no one. Players who've put twenty hours into any World of Warcraft raid recognise the pattern before the first attack zone even appears on the floor. The absence of any reinvention in boss design turns what should be each chapter's highlight into a checklist exercise.

The corridor, barely dressed

Saros isn't an open world. That's a choice, and it's the right choice. Forced open worlds that serve as an excuse for padding have done enough damage to the genre. A game that knows it's linear and commits to that linearity is respectable.

The problem is that Saros commits to its linearity without doing anything to make it more palatable. The corridors are corridors. Not corridors dressed up as open spaces, not corridors wide enough to create an illusion of freedom. Corridors. Turn left, turn right, move forward. The geography is as predictable as the level design.

A bit of dressing costs nothing. Branches that reconnect. Slightly wider zones that give the impression of choosing your angle. Scenery that guides the eye without enclosing the body. None of that would have required rethinking the architecture, just wrapping it differently. That work wasn't done.

The story: fine

Saros's narrative does what it needs to do without distinguishing itself. Functional characters, a threat to neutralise, twists you see coming. It's not catastrophic. It's not memorable either. You play, you follow, you forget an hour after the credits.

The verdict

Saros is an honest game that doesn't hide its limitations, except for the corridor it presents without apology as a level. Visually accomplished, technically clean, but without a single mechanic capable of creating a moment worth remembering. The gun looks the part and has no recoil. The bosses have coloured floor zones and no ideas. The story is present and doesn't insist.

For someone who hasn't really touched the genre, it can be an accessible and pleasant entry point. For everyone else, it's familiar in good packaging.

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Review based on the final version.