I’ll be honest: I am getting really tired of the Playstation Studios exclusive pattern. Given how Sony always aims for the most cinematic, featured-bloated, and as a result, expensive experiences, most of their games started to feel quite samey as a result. They need to feature a ton of (safe) mechanics and content to appease to the highest amount of people at once, whilst also featuring somewhat predictable audiovisual styles and writing patterns that instantly turn them into award darlings. In short, their games have started to become too safe, with the exception of the occasional breath of fresh air like Astro Bot, smaller titles like God of War: Sons of Sparta, or the excellent Returnal.

Released back in 2021, Returnal was the first big-budgeted game developed by Housemarque, a studio better known for their frantic shooters like Resogun and Nex Machina. With that masterpiece of a game, they were able to blend it great visuals, an engaging and thought-provoking plot, and a tough-as-nails bullet hell gameplay loop meshed with a roguelite format. Not a single element felt left behind in order for another to shine brighter. A really tough game, for a hardcore crowd, taking advantage of every nook and cranny the PS5 hardware can offer. And how to follow up with such a game? Well, make another one, following the same premise. And thus, Saros was born.

That’s… a lot of balls.

Saros has you playing as Arjun Devraj (masterfully voiced by actor Rahul Kohli), an enforcer to a Weyland-Yutani esque corporation called Soltari. In essence, a big, ultracapitalist industrial conglomerate attempting to colonize a mysterious planet called Sarcosa, as it might hold an energy source that can solve all of Earth’s problems in the far future. As the first expeditions sent to the planet have vanished, Arjun is sent on a fourth expedition to investigate the planet, and look for survivors.

That doesn’t result in an easy expedition. One of Arjun’s squadmates goes utterly insane, blows up the crew’s ship, leaving them stranded in Sarcosa. Furthermore, he realizes the planet is a lot more mysterious (and dangerous) than initially expected, featuring lots of ruins from a long-lost (and vastly technologicall advanced) civilization, a dangerous fauna, and an odd and constant solar eclipse, which completely shifts the planet’s layout once it starts. A lot more happens during each run, and upon completing new biomes, so I won’t spoil things further. The story itself is shockingly good and layered; I’ll admit that it doesn’t start off in the most exciting of ways, but once things get going, Saros becomes even more engaging.

Rahul Kohli nails his role. Other actors deliver good performances, sure, but nowhere near as good as him.

Of course, we are not here for the story. It’s good to have character building, world building, and a strong plot in a roguelite (you can thank Hades for that), but being a game by Housemarque, I really wanted to see how well Saros would look, run, and play. How well would it be when compared to its predecessor?

In essence, the core gameplay loop somewhat remains the same. Saros is a third-person shooter, with fast-paced (and loose) controls, hugely inspired by bullet hell shooters. Shooting down enemies shouldn’t be your only focus; you will have to constantly avoid a barrage of very visible projectiles coming at you. In a manner that reminded me of Ikaruga, you are able to absorb some kinds of projectiles if you engage your shield in time. That allows you to fill up a power meter, which is used as ammo for a really strong secondary attack you have access to.

You have one primary weapon with infinite ammo (but cooldown), a secondary weapon powered by your foes’ own projectiles, and an overdrive blast unlocked further down the line. This is more than enough. You can earn momentary powerups during each run, level up, and earn different kinds of currency to improve your stats permanently. Just like Returnal, Saros is a roguelite, so it might start off as a brutal, borderline impossible-to-beat shooter, but once you beef up your stats, and the more you get a hold of its twitch-like mechanics (parrying, absorbing shots, never standing still in a place), things become manageable.

Dying is fine. Earn some currency, die, spend on new upgrades, try again.

I’d say that Saros is an easier game than Returnal. Returnal was a much more unforgiving game, in my opinion. That’s not to say that Saros is a pushover, as it certainly isn’t, but between the fact you’re now used to how these Housemarque roguelites work, and some quality of life enhancements, you already start things off with a certain advantage. It’s somewhat easy to improve your stats at first (currency requirements are low), and after completing a few biomes, you earn access to a “Balance Meter” of sorts.

This Balance Meter allows you to either make the game easier or harder, depending on the perks or challenges you decide to activate. You can’t select them all at once, however: the game doesn’t allow you to veer too much to the easy or hard side, but you can add more of each if you literally balance things out: for each favorable perk, you add a challenge. For instance, you might want to remove the corruption conditions that occur to your momentary power-ups during an eclipse – that’s a perk. You might then want to, for instance, increase the damage a corrupted enemy deals towards you in order to balance things out. That effectively allows you to customize the experience to your liking.

Power Weapons are a godsend against bosses. They’re also great visual showcases.

It’s a bizarre way to add accessibility options to a game, but hey, I’m not complaining. At first, I thought that giving access to “easy mode” options after beating a really hard boss was pointless, but once I noticed that the game doesn’t let you unlock all accessibility perks right away, forcing you to challenge yourself with some hard mode options at the same time, things made a lot more sense. Furthermore, you will be powered up and experienced once you get access to this option. You might not even want to use an easy mode perk by then; Saros does a pretty good job at putting you through a trial by fire in order to teach you its mechanics.

Enemies become stronger and more dangerous during eclipse hours.

I was also quite impressed by how Saros managed to make its odd story fit in with its roguelite setting. It’s weird, it’s engrossing, and Rahul Kohli nails the role. Other characters don’t feel as engaging, but everyone does a half-decent job, at least. All in all, I have very few qualms regarding the game’s presentation. Sound is great, plot is excellent, framerate is as rock-solid as it can be (even though it’s Unreal 5), and the visuals are amazing. Granted, character facial expressions are a bit uncanny (they give off the occasional LA Noire-esque feel), but that’s a minute complaint.

In fact, as to be expected, there is not a lot to complain about Saros. The only thing I might say that makes it a bit less impressive than Returnal is the sole fact that Returnal came out first, so that game had the advantage of feeling novel. Saros is amazing, don’t get me wrong, but it IS more of the same, in a way. A high-budgeted roguelite shooter with a trippy story and cinematic production values… Housemarque broke the mold five years earlier with their first AAA game as well. And that’s not even a complaint, it’s just the unfortunate fact that someone else had already beaten it to the finish line.

Boss battles are all about memorizing patterns. Sure, you have to memorize like 10 different patterns at once, but the point stands.

Saros is the kind of game I really needed from Playstation at this point in time. Instead of being just like every other safe and overbudgeted action adventure by the company, this is a gameplay-first experience, just like how Returnal had done five years prior. It shows, once again, that Housemarque might actually be Sony’s most important internal development team, masterfully mixing arcade-like controls and an endlessly replayable gameplay loop with higher quality visuals and cinematic storytelling. Its only slight disadvantage is the fact that Returnal had already done the same thing a few years earlier, but that’s it. Without a shadow of a doubt, it’s a must-have for PS5 owners, and one of the best games of 2026 so far.

Saros is available now on PS5.

Reviewed on PS5.