After a first look at SAROS you’d be forgiven for thinking this is Returnal 2. In this follow-up, you enter a hostile, alien planet which becomes the proving ground for frantic, sci-fi gunplay. You’ll go up against a gauntlet of violent enemies that spray luminous bullets in mesmerising patterns. So far, so Returnal, but absorb these bullets as extra similarities: both share a six-biome world, with both showcasing remnants of ancient civilisation everywhere. And, finally, both adopt a roguelike structure (or, more specifically for SAROS, roguelite, which I’ll get to later).
Now, you likely already know that SAROS is coming from Housemarque, the studio behind Returnal. But, it’s worth pointing out again as SAROS is clearly aiming to be a spiritual homage to its predecessor – it’s Returnal 2 in all but name.
Peel back Returnal’s enigmatic layers, however, and its core is a compelling, thrilling, yet divisive third-person shooter. Indeed, my own experience of Returnal echoes many others. In short: I wanted to love it – its atmosphere, physics, weapons, and its mysterious, slowly unspooling narrative I did love – but I couldn’t get a handle on the mental fallout following an unsuccessful run. I was intoxicated, but lost.
Look – there are parts of Returnal’s progression design which I might have dismissed: biome shortcuts, permanently available skill upgrades, everlasting traversal abilities. But, flipping this around, the game deliberately obfuscated these elements too. Likewise, it didn’t provide widespread mechanical progression, instead demanding you learn gameplay at a fundamental level to advance. Now, this isn’t inherently bad game design at all, but it was a hard edge many players – including myself – bounced off.
What’s more, compounding this friction was the way Returnal handled momentum. A good run, to me, felt rhythmic, when finding a weapon that clicks began a flow state where dodges became instinctual and once-overwhelming arenas became readable. Then, to die; it felt like a part of me was being reset, not just my loadout. Rhythm was severed entirely, and starting again grew more mountainous with every trip back to Helios. Again, this isn’t because Returnal lacked progression. Indeed, if nothing else, knowledge gained honed skills and sharpened instincts, but the lack of accumulated upgrades, currencies, or stat boosts that are customary in other roguelikes meant progression didn’t feel tangible enough.
It’s this quiet erosion of momentum that SAROS, in response, seems intent on fixing. By softening these hard edges, but keeping the enigmatic atmosphere, dizzying bullet hell display, class-leading haptic feedback, and spatial audio, Housemarque is bringing a Returnal follow-up that’s more approachable yet just as compelling.
SAROS is still like the Returnal you remember, but to gain newfound approachability something intrinsic must be lost, right? Well, not quite. By not minimising the challenge, Housemarque, instead, appears to be redistributing difficulty to other systems. The need for mastery remains, but this time it’s player-driven.
The most immediate change comes in the form of meta progression, and it’s where SAROS gets its roguelite tag. This is an area where Returnal was notably restrained, but in SAROS growth exists on-screen, can be tracked, and therefore invested in. Core stats like health, shield, and power can be permanently upgraded through a skill tree, with each node feeding directly into your combat prowess. Crucially, these upgrades influence weapon proficiency too, meaning that your character progression grows in tandem with buildcrafting.
And it’s this connection that is key. While Returnal reset your sense of capability at the start of each run – save for your intricate knowledge of Atrophos and its roaming threat – SAROS instead seems intent on preserving it. For me, I won’t just be hoping for a good weapon to fall into my lap anymore as I’ll already be shaping my baseline performance between runs.
Runs themselves are being recontextualised too. Rather than forcing you to restart from the very beginning each time, SAROS allows you to begin from your furthest reached biome, immediately cutting down on repetition which dug in with every Returnal failure. The same caveat applies though: begin a run further down the line and you’re sacrificing the opportunity to increase max health, weapon proficiency, and currency gathering, just like in Returnal if you opted to hit the shortcuts. But, what this option does is cut down on the fatigue in repeatedly retracing familiar ground.
But perhaps the most interesting aspect in SAROS’ efforts toward approachability are found in modifiers which let you tailor each run’s difficulty. “Trials” increase the challenge, but these can be offset by “Protections”, with an easy-to-grasp rating that indicates the overall difficulty you’ll face once you loadout. The result is a game that doesn’t simply lower the barrier, but hands you the tools to define your own threshold. Difficulty in SAROS isn’t a static slider, but a suite of binary choices which support whatever experience you want.
It’s here that Housemarque has found a way to cater to a wider demographic of players. If you’re a glutton for punishment, you can still have it. If, like me, you want softer edges, well, that’s achievable too. And of course, as confidence grows these modifiers can be reshaped to match. If we’re talking about SAROS being one of the biggest games of the year – and we all know it needs to do well given Sony has stated outright that they want a larger audience for this follow-up – then modifying its difficulty in a way which balances the tension of its forbearer with approachability is how it’ll get there.
Now, if progression is where SAROS has broadened its appeal, the combat refinements are where it’s sharpening the overall experience. Going back to first impressions, the fundamentals of gunplay appear unchanged; it’s still fast, dodge-heavy, and with gunfeel channeled directly through the DualSense’s haptics. However, the introduction of the Soltari Shield subtly reframes the entire combat loop. See, when engaged, the shield can absorb incoming projectiles to fuel counterattacks, transforming defence into opportunity. In practice, it’ll alter your positioning, tempo, decision-making, and how you engage with the enemy, enforcing the idea that survival this time around isn’t just about pure avoidance.
Elsewhere, analysing narrative at this stage is SAROS’ grey area. Where Returnal thrived on ambiguity, SAROS appears to take a more direct approach to storytelling by outlining Arjun’s mission and his personal motivations early on. There’s still a mystery to unravel – the eclipse, the fate of earlier colonies – but the delivery has shifted from something interpretative to more spelled out, not least by the team of explorers who journey with Arjun, setting up camp to unfurl their thoughts and ideas between runs. And it’s in this story direction, reflective of SAROS’ wider design philosophy, where the follow-up risks losing some of its predecessor’s mystique; you know, a core element which made it so compelling.
That said, SAROS doesn’t appear poised to replace Returnal’s vision but refocus its more enigmatic elements into something measurable. By reframing progression in this way, Housemarque are undoubtedly opening the door to a wider pool of players but, crucially, without abandoning its bullet hell aesthetic. Whether something intrinsic is lost in the transition remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: SAROS isn’t an experience to be endured anymore. There are still complex systems and combat manoeuvres to master, only this time you can do it on your own terms.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization. Everything shared in this article is based on officially revealed information.