REVIEW: Ascendance: First Horizon

Peaceful and relaxing experience is what developer ONEVISION games are calling Ascendance: First Horizon. After reading this review you will immediately understand that this isn’t the words that I would use… the only calming feeling I felt while playing this game was pressing the home button and select “quit game” That might be harsh but ONEVISION had one thing to polish and failed to do that, making it very hard to write anything positive about Ascendance. I’ll explain why!

• Rarely happens but nothing: I’m sorry but I couldn’t find a single thing that I thought was decent enough to be placed at the positives.
  • Or maybe one thing: It is an experience that is made for speedrunners, so if you are that kind of gamer you might want to buy Ascendance… maybe.

• Visuals aren’t so bad: Visually it doesn’t really stand out but it has a nice style, each world looks entirely different and minimalistic. It misses some eyecatchers but in general, I liked what I saw. Standing high in the world allows for some impressive views, unfortunately with performance issues.
• Short “if” you manage to finish it: If the game manages to keep your interest you’ll quickly realize that it doesn’t have a lot of content. Speedrunners aside not much replay value is present besides collecting some hidden icons.

• Floaty controls: Ever wondered how it must have been like walking on the moon for Neil Armstrong in 1969? Wonder no more my friends, play Ascendance and you’ll know how floaty it must have been. Jokes aside for a game that solely involves around platforming the controls are honestly just terrible, multiple times you fail a jump because the character doesn’t do what you expected. While the game has an instant checkpoint function it still remains very frustrating.
• Annoying framerate issues: World 1 runs pretty smooth but the following two worlds nosedive deep in some performance issues. For a game that requires precise control, it is very troublesome for the gameplay. Nothing is more annoying to fall from a platform or mistime your jump because the game was having issues showing smooth visuals.
• Lacks fun: Main issue is not knowing where you have to go, searching how to travel gets old after a few minutes. This is a direct problem with the lighting effects, each checkpoint you have to touch emits light but while progressing this gets a lot more difficult because of the way the game shows lighting. As a result, you simply have no clue where you have to go. In all honesty, it was just really boring to play, it misses some gameplay mechanics, story and polish.

Conclusion

Score: 30%
Maybe Ascendance: First Horizon just wasn’t my thing but everyone immediately sees that the game lacks content, polish and fresh gameplay ideas. The slow and boring gameplay just isn’t something I can recommend, maybe speedrunners will find some fun but for me personally it was a very disappointing and boring waste of time.