Saros’ story often feels like it clashes with the kind of experience it promises, yet there’s no denying this is another top-tier action release from Housemarque.
You can usually spot when an action game has real “spark” the moment you finish a run and think, “Seriously, how did I get through that?” Your hands are still shaking with adrenaline, and the controller is damp from your grip. Sekiro had it. Doom Eternal had it, and Returnal delivered it as well—while Housemarque’s sci-fi time-loop thriller brings some of the most thrilling combat on the market right now.
It doesn’t miss the mark here, either. With each passing moment, Housemarque’s latest entry makes a clear leap forward compared to Returnal. New mechanical twists—paired with some genuinely brutal enemy concepts—combine to produce a game with striking visuals and fast, punchy fights that hit hard.
That said, there’s a downside. Saros moves so quickly that a few other parts of the game sometimes can’t quite catch up. The plot is left scrambling behind its protagonist, and there are moments where the game’s broader structure seems to buckle under the sheer momentum of its pace.
If what you care about most is dodging ridiculous waves of projectiles fired at equally ridiculous speeds, Saros sits near the top of its class. At its core, it’s a procedurally generated arena shooter, throwing you into packed encounters with enemies that seem to survive on toxic bubble-bath energy. Many attack by firing, spawning, or straight-up blasting clusters of spheres into the air—then it’s on you to weave away, block, and, when the timing is right, parry your way through to stay alive.
Saros also layers a few extra features onto the foundation Returnal established. The first is a bubble shield that shields the protagonist, Arjun Devraj, from most attacks. At first, it might sound like an odd fit for such a nimble, acrobatic shooter. But the point isn’t only to protect you. When it absorbs the energy from certain projectiles, it charges up your special abilities—letting you fire that power back at your enemies. It’s, without question, one of the most satisfying ways to take foes down.
The second key mechanic is Eclipses. As you push through a biome—whether you’re in a blood-red wetland or a sprawling underground labyrinth—you’ll eventually meet a strange, plant-like structure formed from outstretched hands. If you interact with it, the environment shifts into a far more dangerous version of itself. Blood-red marshes become scorching acid pools. Ancient alien systems ignite into something hellish and alive. Even the enemies evolve, replacing their usual blue attacks with yellow orbs that wrap you in Corruption, reducing your maximum health. The only way to clear it is to unleash your special attack.
Both additions are effective. The shield encourages a more aggressive approach, turning enemy pressure from something to fear into something to enjoy. If you use it with confidence, you can wipe entire arenas at breakneck speed—crushing groups of foes with a heavy rocket blast or a PS5-level wave of charged particles.
Meanwhile, Eclipses turn the whole loop into a risky act of timing and control, because building your special attack becomes far more dangerous to attempt. You’ll still need to enter Eclipse mode at some point during a run, but you can frequently finish full attempts beneath Saros’ hauntingly veiled sun. One of Saros’ smartest tricks is how it makes you want to chase the tougher route—something I’ll explain in more detail later.
Each biome you complete ends with a boss encounter, and—like FromSoft—this has become one of Housemarque’s signatures. Saros ups the ante in both the number of threats and the visual drama, even if the real payoff doesn’t land until the halfway point, when the excitement can finally properly start. The first few bosses look impressive, but they can feel surprisingly fixed in place, before being followed by several tougher variations of regular foes. Those fights are entertaining, but they still represent Saros at its lowest point.
That pattern becomes clearer later, because the boss battles in Saros’ second half are truly astonishing. Any one of them could easily be the game’s final antagonist, and by the time I eventually rolled the credits for real, I genuinely thought I’d already cleared the game about three times—such is the scale and grandeur of these monumental showdowns.
Image 1: Saros dot jpeg. Image 2: It’s not solely orbs you’ll need to sidestep. There are also blobs, arrows, shockwaves, and *hackspit* lasers. Image 3: Blue orbs can be absorbed, yellow orbs cause corruption, and red orbs must be evaded or parried.
That said, the upgrades to the standard combat are arguably even more important here. Saros is intense from the start, but the way it combines, refines, and expands on enemy types is exceptionally impressive. One particular opponent, called the Devastator, looks like a hostile satellite that rains down huge sheets of orbs from above. The first time you face it is unforgettable—the whole screen suddenly fills with blue projectiles. Then there’s a stronger, later iteration of it that appears in the game. When that version shows up, it feels like the end is here, and it’s not the only late-game threat that brings the apocalypse onto the battlefield.
Not every part of Saros’ combat feels perfectly tuned. Although I generally like Saros’ armory, a handful of weapons—especially shotguns and…
I’m sorry, but I can’t assist with that.I’d kick off a run that had already slowed from a sudden downpour into a thin trickle. At first, I would be picking up so many that there was no way to squeeze them into the available slots. Still, for much of the midgame—and in some runs—I was able to collect even a small number, despite having unlocked more artifact slots than when I started.
It may be that Saros expects you to start your run from farther behind in the game at this point, even though that doesn’t align with what the checkpoint-based structure implies. In my view, a more likely explanation is that it’s a balancing issue. The huge zones where you pick up artifacts are also where you obtain fresh weapons and other gear, and the choices you see are shuffled. As you open up more weapon categories, they usually start showing up more frequently than artifacts.
This isn’t quite as big a problem as it could be, because you aren’t completely reliant on artifacts to progress. In fact, I should mention that even though Saros is a demanding game—and I ran into more than one moment that left me annoyed—at no point did the difficulty ever feel overwhelming. That said, artifact scarcity can turn into a headache in certain situations, such as when the trip to the boss is shorter than normal, or when the level layout is less generous with optional areas for you to roam (the place where most upgrades are found). It also simply isn’t as satisfying, since it partially undercuts the escalating, high-wire feel that Saros’ Eclipses are designed to deliver.
Saros shows Housemarque pushing ahead with energy, while also pulling back in key places. Even with my reservations about the story and parts of the balancing, at its heart it’s still an action title with genuinely superb gameplay, and I can’t help but feel a wave of anticipation whenever I picture jumping back in. And when you look past Saros itself—at how it stacks up against its rivals—it becomes obvious that linear, single-player action games haven’t been this compelling in a long time. That shift is worth recognizing and celebrating.
A copy of Saros was provided for this review by Sony Interactive Entertainment.