The line between a good stealth game and a bad stealth game can be remarkably thin. It has been over a decade since the last Splinter Cell game was released, and Assassin’s Creed has only recently returned to its stealth roots after a long foray into the RPG genre. In the absence of more prolific, Triple A stealth titles, the Double A space has produced most contemporary games in the stealth genre outside of the excellent Hitman series. This Double A stealth “renaissance”, as it were, has brought us games like Styx: Master of Shadows and Shards of Darkness, Gollum, and A Quite Place: The Road Ahead. Obviously, those examples are cherry-picked (and there are certainly some counterexamples), but, in my estimation, Double A hasn’t quite managed to figure out how to do the stealth genre well yet. Enter Steel Seed, which developer Storm in a Teacup describes as a gripping action-adventure game. I find this to be a gross mischaracterization. It seems to me that Steel Seed – practically dripping in a veneer of familiar sci fi intrigue – is attempting to market itself to the Stellar Blade crowd; I can’t help but feel that is a mistake because Steel Seed is definitely not an action-adventure game, not a good or competent one anyway. It instead thrives on its surprisingly proficient stealth mechanics. Granted, there are stealth “sickos” like me out there that will enjoy the painstaking amount of time and mental calculus required in Steel Seed to clear an entire level of enemies with the perfect run after 7, 8, or 9 attempts on hard difficulty. However, even with my staunch appreciation for stealth adversity, Steel Seed tested my patience and frustration limits at every turn. Steel Seed’s combat is less than gratifying, instead feeling shallow, clumsy, and disjointed. What’s more, game design blunders such as bad checkpoint placement, monotonous and redundant gameplay, and lack of visual and performance polish threaten to undermine Steel Seed’s somewhat engaging stealth mechanics to the point that the game is dangerously close to being rendered nothing more than a frustrating mess.
Unfortunately, there’s a lot that Steel Seed gets wrong. For starters, Steel Seed purports to offer plenty of variance in potential gameplay styles, but the reality is much less enticing. While there are entirely separate and extensive skill trees dedicated to both combat and stealth, the combat in Steel Seed left me wholly unsatisfied. Enemy animations look janky, as do the flourishes of Zoe’s lightsaber-esque energy blade, and the overall feel of combat is clumsy and disjointed. Unfortunately, Steel Seed’s combat deficiencies even undermine a pretty cool and intense boss fight that punctuates the end of the game (the only one of its kind), albeit a surprisingly compelling and dynamic musical score offers some consolation. Generally, the combat lacks any type of noticeably deliberate or rhythmic quality to the point that achieving precise timing between strikes, enemy tells, and dodges seems utterly improbable. Furthermore, I don’t think that this inherent incoordination is a symptom of Steel Seed’s combat needing to be mastered before it becomes gratifying; rather, I think Steel Seed’s combat doesn’t encompass the depth and polish it would need for it to be worthy of mastering.
Steel Seed’s art direction and graphical fidelity aren’t stellar standouts either. Everything from the protagonist’s character model to the cyber industrial backdrops has a pervasively generic Double-A type aesthetic. There are areas farther into the game that do shine in terms of world building and art design, but those can be hampered by a lack of visual polish. Performance is not magnificent either. To my untrained eye Steel Seed never felt securely in the 60 frames per second range, instead fluctuating somewhere between 40 and 50 fps on the base PS5, which is pretty disappointing given that Steel Seed’s graphics are nothing to write home about (at least on that system). Enemy designs are fairly one-note, and the player is absolutely starved of any enemy variety for the first 5-8 hours. The English voice acting feels amateurish and contextually removed, with dialogue moments between Zoe and her AI companion Koby feeling far too similar to vocal exchanges in the much-maligned title Forespoken. Zoe, who is awkwardly plucky and overly energetic, seems completely removed from the desolate post-technological landscape she finds herself in – it’s as if she doesn’t even know what video game setting she’s in – and her inexplicably quippy vocal delivery falls flat at every turn. For me, the voice acting was so off-putting and immersion-breaking that I eventually resorted to insight I’d gleaned from playing Metro Exodus and Atomic Heart and switched the language to Russian (Storm in a Teacup’s native Italian is also an option), which had significantly better voice acting across the board to the point that it was no longer an issue (shoutout to the excellent Russian voice cast). Unfortunately, changing the vocal language didn’t salvage the often abysmal dialogue writing or some of Steel Seed’s more needlessly convoluted narrative beats.
In Steel Seed, the player is tasked with infiltrating and exploring four different biomes and retrieving a shard from each. Traversing these areas will take between 3 and 6 hours apiece on average, depending on the difficulty setting and a given player’s gameplay style. Interestingly, progression through the area is marked by souls-esque checkpoints along the intended path where Zoe can rest and acquire various skills, but that is where the soulslike similarities begin and end. Exploration and level progression in Steel Seed are largely based around platforming and traversal gameplay on curated obstacle course-type structures (think Uncharted, Assassin’s Creed 2, or Stellar Blade), and then either a decent helping of combat or stealth encounters with enemies. I will warrant that I found Steel Seed’s traversal courses with wall running and wall climbing to feature fairly engaging platforming mechanics. In fact, I think Steel Seed’s platforming might be a touch better than Stellar Blade’s. Some of the platforming sections have interesting mechanics involving the activation of switches that move platforms, ledges, or traversable walls into a temporary position, which felt inventive, if not intuitive. That being said, this game requires considerable patience. I spent literally over 20 minutes on one wall-running obstacle tower with terrible checkpointing that would return me to the base of the tower whenever I failed, no matter how far I had ascended. This became so lengthy and frustrating that it was hardly satisfying when I finally overcame the challenge. To that end, the checkpoints throughout the campaign were vexingly inconsistent sometimes I would be reverted to a spot mere moments before my preceding failure, but in other instances I could lose up to 5, 10, or even 15 minutes of progress. There is a balance that must be achieved in game design between frustration and satisfaction, and Steel Seed is not able to achieve that balance in any satisfying way. I had far too many titling experiences with this game to describe in this review, but I cannot overstate that Steel Seed’s inept design forced me to suffer extensively and often. If you are not an exceptionally patient person who enjoys a challenge of trial and error comparable to banging one’s head against a concrete wall until that wall finally gives way, Steel Seed is probably not the game for you.
That disclaimer about patience carries over to Steel Seed’s stealth gameplay as well. I find that Steel Seed is actually somewhat redeemed by setting the game’s difficulty to hard and approaching each level as a complex stealth puzzle challenge that needs to be meticulously deciphered; otherwise, there’s not much value to Steel Seed’s gameplay, which can feel like an uninspired facsimile of what has been executed better in other games like Uncharted and Stellar Blade. Put simply, I just don’t think that Steel Seed offers very much for the casual audience that is understandably looking for an enjoyable experience rather than a gruelling or monotonous one. The combat is not refined or deep enough to elicit any genuine gratification, and once the somewhat competent platforming starts to become redundant over the game’s many hours, the entire experience can start to feel hollow and trivial. However, Steel Seed does feature an extensive kit of tools and abilities that can be used by the player to navigate vast levels and takedown numerous enemies without ever being detected. These include the drone that allows for overhead surveillance of an entire area, with the ability to mark enemies and even see their preordained patrol paths. Likewise, the drone can shoot a distraction projectile to get the attention of enemies and move them to a specific spot, drop land mines, or (my personal favorite) lay down a stealth field that can be traversed by the player covertly at any place on the entire map. Combining those pieces of kit for some calculated and gutsy executions was admittedly very gratifying and undoubtedly the very best part of playing Steel Seed. Moreover, forcing myself to attempt to execute levels perfectly on hard mode against enemies that could one-shot me if I was spotted required me to utilize all of the tools at my disposal. The result is a hardcore stealth experience that might manage to redeem the entire game for some players, depending on their tolerance for Steel Seed’s frequently frustrating moments. Careful and deliberate scouting, planning, and execution of routes and takedowns culminating in clearing an entire area is where Steel Seed excels, but what little gratification can be gleaned there is undermined by the repetition and frustration that is so baked into Steel Seed’s core design that it makes the game hard to relish at any point. It doesn’t help that everything else is lacklustre, uninspired, or downright mundane. The interesting tools and upgrades that could be used for rather creative stealth takedowns and maneuvers are what kept me playing and why I would recommend Steel Seed to the most hardcore stealth gamers, but holy polaris does that recommendation come with some disclaimers! Outside of stealth, Steel Seed lacks substance, cohesion, and fun factor to the extent that it can hardly be enjoyed in some places. That being said, I can’t think of another recently released game that offers a comparable hardcore stealth gameplay loop. For that reason alone, along with the somewhat unique and creative tools Steel Seed furnishes players to traverse levels covertly, I do think it has a place in the genre and is worth playing, but only for a very specific and incredibly niche audience. Caveat emptor to the max on this one: Steel Seed will test your patience for frustrating and repetitive moments and it struggles to justify why someone should spend their time playing it outside of some rare flashes of stealth innovation and hijinks.
-Kirkland Gray