Over the last few years, I’ve had a complicated relationship with my PlayStation 5. On the one hand, there have been plenty of fantastic games exclusive to the platform that have kept my attention for weeks if not months, with more on the way in the coming years. On the other hand, it hasn’t come close to reaching the same heights as its predecessor, the PlayStation 4. This is mainly due to the PlayStation Studios’ emphasis on sequels to existing IP, rather than creating something entirely new. However, there have certainly been exceptions, with Housemarque in particular standing apart as a developer constantly willing to experiment.
Housemarque blew away all expectations with Returnal in 2021, creating a thrilling roguelike and an intriguing sci-fi story all in one. Yet, something about its style and characters never quite pulled me in, and even now, it sits untouched on my backlog. However, when the developers announced their new title, SAROS, which evolves the gameplay mechanics of its predecessor with a new cosmic horror narrative, I found myself far more eager to see what the game had to offer upon its release. After playing it for myself, I can confidently say that SAROS is an incredible work of art that all PlayStation 5 owners should play for themselves.
Behold the Yellow
SAROS takes place on the distant world of Carcosa, one that the Soltari corporation has taken a major interest in. Initially, they sent the Echelon I expedition to research the planet, catalog their findings, and return home. However, all contact with the group was lost soon after their arrival. Each Echelon group that Soltari subsequently sent suffered the same fate, leading to the present and latest arrival: Echelon IV. You play as Arjun Devraj, an enforcer part of the Echelon IV expedition. He has been sent to Carcosa, alongside several Soltari employees, to find out what happened to the previous Echelon groups, recover any items of financial importance to the corporation, and maybe, just maybe, return home safely.
However, all is not as it seems on Carcosa. After a traumatic loss to Echelon IV’s ranks, Arjun slowly learns more about the horrifying experiences that each previous Echelon expedition went through. He must figure out how to navigate the eldritch entities constantly threatening his safety and the mind games employed by the planet itself in equal measure. The latter won’t just affect the people around him, but also Arjun himself. You, the player, have to unravel whether or not the protagonist is as truthful as he seems, or if he instead has darker ulterior motives that explain his arrival on Carcosa.
I absolutely adored SAROS‘ narrative, as it combined all of my favorite aspects of stories into one cohesive package. For starters, there are the cosmic horror elements. If you’re at all familiar with the genre, the name “Carcosa” and the constant yellow motifs will immediately remind you of The King in Yellow, a novel by Robert W. Chambers in 1895. Many consider the novel to be the earliest iteration of the genre, and while many recent shows, movies, and games have pulled elements from The King in Yellow, SAROS is a full-fledged adaptation of it.
From beginning to end, characters are driven mad and obsessed by the sight of the sun and the color yellow. Characters will rant about a glorious kingdom, a Yellow Shore, and at the center of it all, a glorious King. As someone who has always been fascinated by the genre and by extension, The King in Yellow itself, I loved the way SAROS portrayed cosmic horror. The dialogue especially helps this element to shine, as audio logs and in-person encounters with certain characters directly explore the consequences of Carcosa’s influence on the human mind.
There’s an eerie fascination in the way that characters talk about Carcosa and all of its “wonders.” One of my favorites was in an audio log in the early game, where a woman named Carly from Echelon III is speaking about needing to manage resources in case they need to provide for both Echelon I and II as well. In the very next entry, she’s describing how they turned off the Soltari computer, declaring how they had found “enlightenment” and “wonder” from the Yellow Shore and that it wanted them to stay. I also loved how even the computers start to experience the infection of Carcosa. For example, Arjun’s suit AI initially says that its power levels are insufficient when he tries to break a wall in the early game. When trying to break the same wall in the late game, the suit instead states, “You are too weak.”
Part of the reason the fate of each NPC is so tragic is because of just how compelling each character is. All of the NPCs, even the ones who are only seen through audio logs, are voiced beautifully. Then there’s the main characters themselves: the members of the Echelon IV expedition. Tarn, Sheridan, Kayla, Jerome, Stack, Alab, and of course, Arjun himself, are all realized perfectly by Housemarque. Seeing how each of them is changed by Carcosa is genuinely depressing, even if certain characters are highlighted more than others. Tarn’s role, for instance, is very limited, yet you still get a sense of who he was before the expedition through the aforementioned collectibles.
Then there’s Arjun, played by actor Rahul Kohli. Kohli has frequently worked within the horror genre with previous roles in shows such as Midnight Mass and The Haunting of Bly Manor. With Arjun, he plays a character that is far more multifaceted than what you may expect. At first, he seems like the typical action hero protagonist, as we learn that the reason he’s come to Carcosa is to find his wife, Nitya, who was part of the Echelon I expedition. He’s a character that’s easy to root for, considering how easy it is to sympathize with his goal, and how charming Kohli is. As time goes on, though, you realize that he is just as prone to the maddening influence of Carcosa as anyone else is, and that he has major skeletons in his closet that he refuses to acknowledge.
The number one thing I love about SAROS is how it directly examines the nature of power and desire. Carcosa is a world that directly plays on the desires of those who dare walk upon it. It’s the ultimate monkey’s paw: every character will get exactly what they always “wanted” or “needed,” but at the cost of their sanity and self-growth. The way Arjun, in particular, is explored is genuinely heartwrenching, as he’s a character who has been warped by a troubled upbringing due to his father and the expectations of Hindu culture, which Carcosa takes advantage of. We rarely get a character that is from South Asia represented in a video game at all, so to get one as a protagonist portrayed with an incredible level of complexity genuinely made me emotional by the time the credits rolled.
I don’t think I’d say that SAROS‘s story is perfect, though. The main issue comes down to the aforementioned cosmic horror. While it’s done really well, a lot of the darker subject matter is kneecapped by the fact that it’s rated T. This means that some of the body horror elements of the genre aren’t portrayed at all, which limits a lot of the tension and horror from certain scenes. Plus, while I liked the story quite a bit, I think the true ending (which you can only get in the post-game) was a bit too vague and open-ended for my liking. It leaves a lot of unanswered questions about the fate of certain characters and feels rather anti-climactic considering the effort it took to get there. Only time will tell whether the story is continued through DLC or content updates.
That said, SAROS‘s story is still fantastic overall. It does a great job of portraying cosmic horror alongside an emotionally complex story, with very few compromises. Yet, the narrative is a bonus when it comes to most roguelikes. In order to justify constant replays, it needs to have a great gameplay loop as well as a story worth continuing. Thankfully, the former is just as well done as the latter.
Hail to the King
I didn’t quite know what to expect from SAROS‘ gameplay when I first booted it up. I knew that it was a third-person shooter, but I didn’t know how it would make each encounter feel challenging and thrilling. So, imagine my surprise when I soon realized that SAROS was just as much of a bullet hell as it was a roguelike. In each combat encounter, the game will test your reaction times, strategy, and skills to their absolute limits, and it never stops feeling fun from beginning to end.
The basic outline of each run in SAROS is pretty simple. You enter a specific biome, and your immediate goal is to get to the boss battle at the end of the route and defeat it, all without dying. Along the way, you’ll find different weapons and artifacts that will make you stronger. Each weapon has a different utility that can make it really useful depending on your playstyle or build. In my case, a lot of my build prioritized dodging and maneuvering around projectiles, so I often used weapons that had an auto-target for the projectiles. Some weapons have explosive rounds, the ability to target weaknesses, or an alt-fire that can mean the difference between victory and defeat.
As for the artifacts, these can also be found throughout each biome and enhance your abilities in some way. Some of the additions are subtle, such as ones that raise your health or attack power. Others, though, give you major upgrades like increased power at lower health. I do wish the artifacts had a bit more strategy to them, because a lot of times, I never really employed that much strategy with each pick. I felt like I was mindlessly picking up every artifact without really thinking about how it would affect my build. When it comes to the weapons, certain ones feel really lackluster compared to others. The shotgun, for example, is extremely situational as most boss battles attack you from a distance, so a short-range attack doesn’t really serve any purpose.
What does require a lot of strategy is the way in which you navigate projectiles. There are three color variants of projectiles in SAROS: blue, yellow, and red. Blue can be absorbed by your shield and converted into power. Power is used for your power weapons, which can unleash a devastating attack in the midst of battle. Yellow projectiles serve the same purpose, but corrupt your life bar and limit the maximum amount of health you have. The only way to remove the effect is to fire a power weapon or to simply avoid the effect entirely by dashing through it. Finally, red projectiles can’t be dodged or absorbed, meaning you need to either outright maneuver around them or parry them.
Having to figure out the best way to deal with each projectile is one of the most thrilling parts of each route. Constantly, I had to question whether or not I should dodge the yellow projectiles or absorb them, at the cost of lower health. Even blue shots have a cost: if you absorb too much, the shield breaks, and you lose all of the power you’ve accumulated thus far. The sheer amount of projectiles in combat is absolutely nightmarish in the best possible way. Some of the boss battles have waves of bullets that are so vast, it made me wonder if I had somehow started playing Touhou instead.
Speaking of nightmares, the difficulty tends to go from 0 to 100 very quickly. Whether it’s the eclipse, which allows you to progress at the cost of higher enemy difficulty and artifacts that have a negative effect as much as a positive effect, or the demanding boss fights, you’ll need to adapt on the fly constantly to figure out the best way to overcome each challenge. Yet, the game never felt like it was too hard. While there were plenty of times where I died right before the end of the boss, it always felt like an error in my playstyle that I needed to work around, rather than a case of SAROS being too unfair or cheap in its difficulty.
Still, if the difficulty is a bit too overwhelming for your liking, or you just want to focus on the story, there are plenty of accessibility options for you to toggle. Early on, you’ll unlock modifiers that adjust your gameplay experience by making things both easier and harder in equal measure. You need to strike a right balance between negative modifiers and positive modifiers in order to embark on a run with both in effect, which is a great way of adding even more strategy to a run. Although you can also toggle an option in the settings so that you don’t need negative modifiers at all and can choose five positive ones without any cost, which can make the challenge a little bit more manageable if you need it.
Lastly, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention how stunning the visuals are. Each biome looks absolutely gorgeous and delivers architecture and scenery unlike any I’ve ever seen in a game before. The Cathedral, especially, which is one of the late-game locations, is designed like an elaborate church in honor of the most powerful members of Carcosa, which is both haunting and awe-inspiring in equal measure. Then there’s the Yellow Shore, which is constantly built up to throughout the game, and once you see it for your own eyes, you can understand why so many characters were driven mad by its brilliance. I definitely recommend playing SAROS on the best possible TV, cause otherwise you’re doing yourself and the game a disservice.
Overall, SAROS isn’t just a narrative treat, it’s a gameplay marvel as well. Despite the game’s few flaws, I can undoubtedly say that this is one of the best first-party titles on the PlayStation 5 in quite a while, and a must-play for any owners of the platform.
An Early Game of the Year Contender
Since the 2020s started, my taste in media has changed drastically. My love for action movies and stealth games quickly gave way to a love of horror in all its forms. Cosmic horror in particular always fascinated me, for how it portrayed both beauty and terror with abstract monsters. Beyond genres, though, I became more attuned and hopeful for some proper representation of South Asian culture in media, as someone raised in that upbringing without a role model in pop culture. When SAROS was first announced, I never thought it would fit into all of my favorite genres and concepts, and then some.
Housemarque knocked it out of the park by creating a cosmic horror story that is extremely unnerving, yet is still able to properly portray deeper subjects of power, desire, and the consequences of an upbringing under a flawed culture. Each topic is handled with all the respect it deserves, and is made even better thanks to a fantastic cast of voice talent that only adds to the narrative’s richness. Further, the gameplay is constantly thrilling and frequently had me on the edge of my seat as I fought through every battle, yet it never once felt impossible to overcome. The beautiful visuals and abundance of accessibility options certainly helped to make the experience even better.
Sure, SAROS isn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination. The post-game and subsequent ending feel very anti-climactic due to a lack of a payoff for certain characters’ arcs. The cosmic horror elements, while great, are sometimes restricted because of the adherence to a T rating, which makes some cutscenes less scary than they should be. Additionally, the lackluster artifacts and certain limited weapons can occasionally make each run feel more mindless than it should be. As a whole, though, these issues are minor in the grand scheme of things.
As someone who never played Returnal, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that SAROS is an incredible work of art, let alone a fantastic roguelike. Even if you’ve never played an entry in the genre or any of Housemarque’s previous works, you absolutely should give this game a try. I really hope we see DLC or content that further progresses the world of Carcosa in the coming months and years. But for now, I can’t wait to jump into another run and try to platinum this clear early game of the year contender.
