Steel Seed Review
Storm in a Teacup and ESDigital’s Steel Seed is a visually polished, thrilling stealth action game set in a bleak sci-fi future.
Steel Seed. Storm in a Teacup / ESDigital
Players take on the role of Zoe, a woman who wakes up to discover thousands of years have passed and she’s now a cyborg. The last humans are cryogenically frozen in a massive facility driven by robots and AI, a facility that Zoe discovers was designed by her father to save the human race after they made the planet uninhabitable. It’s now up to her to figure out how to bring back humans when the facility’s AI doesn’t accept that it’s finally time.
The facility is broken up into four intricately designed biomes, each a linear level with platforming and stealth sections. The balance between the two feels right, and both types of challenges are fun. Platforming is in a light parkour style, with some wallrunning and slopes for sliding; you’ll do a lot of climbing around ledges, as the levels have a lot of verticality. As you progress, you’ll also need to solve some puzzles to reach your goals, hitting switches to move around or rotate platforms.
Steel Seed. Storm in a Teacup / ESDigital
A handful of parkour sections of the game serve as boss fights. The camera sometimes prevented me from seeing where I needed to land for my jumps, which was particularly bad because falling here would force me to start the encounter over again. If not for that frustration, I would have enjoyed these far more.
The stealth challenges are set in large areas that provide multiple paths you can use to reach your goals. Killing every enemy is unnecessary, but I usually did it anyway because Steel Seed makes the stealth takedowns feel rewarding. I always found it satisfying to clear a zone completely. Most enemies go down with a single attack in stealth; you can either sneak up on them or make noise and make them come to your hiding position. The game uses basic line of sight to determine if enemies spot you, and you usually have a second or two of a grace period before enemies go from being suspicious to full alert. Icons, sounds, and a hint of slow motion when you’re in danger of being spotted make it abundantly clear when you’re in danger. There’s nothing innovative about stealth in Steel Seed, but it was fun in its simplicity.
Steel Seed. Storm in a Teacup / ESDigital
Zoe is weak in combat. She uses a blade and can dodge and parry; upgrading skills gives you access to more tools. The game makes it clear that stealth is the preferable option, as fighting more than one enemy at a time is usually disastrous. This leads me to my biggest gripe with the game: despite this, Steel Seed throws you into scenarios where combat is your only option, especially late in the game. Considering that I spent most of my time avoiding battle, these scenarios were a large difficulty spike that created a lot of frustration for me. This peaked at the final boss encounter, which I struggled with even on easy mode, because just a few hits spell disaster for Zoe.
Zoe’s companion, Koby, is a floating robotic drone that provides support in stealth and combat. While I rarely took advantage of his combat functions, which I mainly found distracting, Koby is useful as a scout. You can remotely pilot him through the environment to mark enemies, place traps, or lay down stealth cover. He also makes an amusing decoy; your only penalty for his death is that he becomes unavailable for a very short time.
The game’s skill tree system is unusual in that it’s not linear. Before an upgrade becomes available for purchase, you must complete a prerequisite challenge, such as killing a certain number of enemies. Owning the previous upgrade isn’t required. I ended up missing a lot of upgrades because I didn’t pay much attention to the requirements; I just unlocked upgrades organically as I played, and I wonder if that hurt my experience.
Steel Seed punches above its weight in its graphics. The game looks beautiful on the PS5. Despite an often drab color palette, the lighting and particle effects add a lot of life to things. The exceptionally long draw distance highlighted just how massive the game’s levels are. The developers clearly spent a lot of time polishing the game’s presentation, which is far better than I would expect from most 3D AA games at this price point.
Steel Seed. Storm in a Teacup / ESDigital
I enjoyed the dozen or so hours I spent finishing the game. The game’s biggest flaw is its combat; Steel Seed would have been much better off if it hadn’t put so much emphasis on it in the latter parts of the game. The game shines when it’s focused on stealth or dynamic platforming sequences, and that’s what makes it memorable.
Steel Seed is available now on Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
Overall Score: 8/10
Played on: PS5
