Ever since I previewed Steel Seed here at Gamer Social Club, I have been anxious to get my hands on the full game. I love a good stealth game and this game fully delivered on that and more!
Steel Seed is a stealth-action adventure that takes place in a future where the world is hanging on by a thread. AI takes over the planet to heal it as humans stay in cryo-sleep waiting to be woken. You will play as Zoe and her drone Koby.
Zoe wakes up in a robotic body with no memories of who she is or where she is. She is immediately greeted by Koby, a droid who beeps at her and yet, Zoe understands what Koby is saying.
Zoe and Koby’s relationship throughout the game is one of the greatest strengths in this game. Their relationship reminded me a lot of Anakin Skywalker’s relationship with R2-D2.
Without any spoilers, you will be sent off to four different areas to collect 4 shards in order to reach the ending. The game roughly took me 12 hours to complete without getting all the collectables.
It is easy to see Steel Seed’s focus is stealth, but there is a lot more to the game than that. Combat, parkour, exploration, and a little bit of puzzles sprinkled in there. In this review, lets breakdown each of these categories and see what this game is made of.
Stealth
If you are a fellow Assassins Creed fan, just buy this game. I’m just going to end the review here, have a nice day. All jokes aside, stealth games that do stealth right are few and far between and this game does it right. Why? Lets talk about it.
Koby is an amazing companion with a lot of tools in his belt that can help with combat and stealth missions. If you know what’s good for you, you will rely on him heavily. He has mines, darts, provide cover for you to reach a destination unseen, and even shoot a kinetic mine that pulls enemies in to one location.
Most importantly, Koby can be used to fly around and tag your enemies quickly. As you level up, patrol patterns of the enemy can also be highlighted. When you die, enemies don’t stay highlighted. However Koby’s speed in highlighting them makes it a little easier to press forward without spending too much time in one location.
As for Zoe, you are equipped with a laser sword. You eventually unlock the ability to hack enemies and have them turn on each other. In the early part of the game, you will need to rely on your light feet and quick executions.
Map design in this game is brilliant. There is always a different way to approach an encounter. I found myself often in situations where I would be jumping from a high point to assassinate my enemy from afar.
All these elements combined left no room to desire more. I never entered a situation thinking, if I only had X thing then I could have done this successfully.
Combat
The combat in this game is very difficult. You can switch between story mode, normal, and hard difficulty at any point with no penalties. I played on normal. Approaching things in a stealth manner felt like that was how the game was designed. However, if you get caught, you will have a chance of survival.
You have a light attack, heavy attack, and a dodge. The more abilities you unlock, the more vast your powers become. By the end of the game I felt comfortable taking on a small group of enemies.
Its combat reminded me of Star Wars Jedi Survivor a little bit. Fast paced, but you need to watch the enemies moves to know how you will counter and dodge.
The combat is fun and flashy. There is a good mixture of enemy types that slowly evolve throughout the game. You got your standard enemies, large brutes, turrets, and invisible assassins. There are also enemies that will run at you and blow up. Once they are up on you, you will need to perform a quick time event to survive. Pushing the enemy off you in to a group of enemies and watching them all explode is a very satisfying event.
Exploration and Traversal
There are some great set pieces in this game. Most notably running from danger, sliding down a hill to wall run off a wall and land on top of an enemy executing them and slinging you in to combat. Some games have this once or twice, this game makes sure to give you that experience multiple times.
As you level up, you can use Koby to scan the enviroment and look for collectables. The collectables consist of many different kinds of loot. Some upgrade health, push the narrative forward with notes, and currency to upgrade abillities and unlock outfits.
A cool feature in this game is its progression. You don’t level up, you complete challenges that unlock abillites and costumes that you will then need to purchase. You work for everything in this game. It is a fun way to shake things up.
However it is also my largest complaint of the game. There are 40 abilities, and by the end of the game I unlocked 20. There is no NG+ mode. So going and 100%’ing the game in one playthrough is a must. However you will have 3 saves and you will be warned before entering the final encounter.
The fact that there is no NG+ highly discouraged me from wanting to get all the unlocks. In order to unlock them, I would have had find all of the hidden currency across the map and complete every combat challenge. A hefty ask to be able to take advantage of everything this game has to offer. I was left feeling like I missed out on things because I didn’t approach the game a specific way.
Narrative
The game’s story is a basic one. Zoe and Koby fight to save humanity. However, I felt invested. The voice acting was incredible. So many games push the narrative as you play, but when Zoe spoke, I really wanted to make sure I was catching everything she was saying. By the end of the game, I was in love with Zoe and Koby’s dynamic.
The writing can for sure be cheesy at times, but its made up for in good acting. I found the story slightly predictable, but that is a very subjective opinion. They did however get me with one good plot twist. I won’t spoil which one, but if you play it, I have a feeling you will know what I am talking about.
Performance
I don’t like to talk about performance in my reviews unless I have to. Unfortunately I have some notes. I won’t go in depth but I will bullet point some occurrences I had. Its important to note that these are all things that could easily be patched in the future, so take these notes with a grain of salt.
- Game crashes
- Character can get stuck requiring a checkpoint refresh
- Jumping from one tight walk to the other wouldn’t recognize the landing point
- Gliding and jumping could sometimes be janky. Like, it wouldn’t properly register I pressed the A button.
Summary
Steel Seed is the perfect game to jump in to after Split Fiction and Assassins Creed Shadows. Its setting and combat reminded me of one of my favorite games, Star Wars Jedi Survivor. As a fan of stealth games, this game provides a solid experience that will not disappoint. The game never overstayed its welcome and constantly provided new experiences keeping the game fresh throughout my 12 hours with the game. Its gameplay loop of stealth, combat, and platforming made it hard to put the game down. However its lack of New Game + made the high requirements for unlocking new skills pointless. It left me feeling like I didn’t get to have the best experience I could have simply because I couldn’t find all the collectables or farm challenges.
Steel Seed was reviewed on the Xbox Series S. We would like to thank ESDigital Game and Storm in a Teacup for the code to access the game.
Steel Seed is available today April 22nd 2025, on Xbox Series X/S, Playstation 5, and PC.
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