Luckily, the game made the decision to stack health for me: stat upgrades are not chosen, you gain them by completing quests and finding secrets in the world. Ashen isn't a very hard game but enemies do hit like a truck and since the game often ambushes you with more than you can reasonably handle at once, you don't have much of a choice when it comes to prioritizing offense or defense. However as previously mentioned, you're hard-pressed not to roll heavy armor and powerful shields to avoid dying in 1-2 hits. Armor is a bit more complex as you juggle stun resist, damage resist, stamina cost penalty and recovery penalty. Shield selection is very simplistic, as there's only two stats on shields and it's just a matter of choosing your preferred trade-off between blocking power and stamina recovery penalty. There's a couple of upgrades you can buy that meaningfully effect combat, and a half-dozen more that just add stuff like +5% crit rate or more hitstun, but those were competing with essential upgrades to my durability and stamina management so I didn't bother with them. Weapon upgrading is very simple, just increasing damage. None of them were very fun to use until I found a few towards the 3/4ths mark that had decent aesthetics and slightly less painful move sets.

Most of these weapons are very similar to each other with only really the damage numbers being different, with a few notable exceptions. Weapon variety is pitifully small, with only four types of weapons each, two single-handed and two double-handed. Mechanically however it's pretty rough, which is a big deal when that's the main thing you do when you're not looking at pretty environments.

It's certainly a cut above most indie soulslikes, and it has certain style and air of mystery to the world that makes exploring it very fun. Edited to mention: supposedly this game has passive drop-in coop but as of June 2023 this game seems to be dead, and I did not encounter another player at any time during my playthrough.

Download ashen steam