Saros Review: Spellbinding Sci-Fi in an Action Roguelite for All-Comers

Some measure out their lives in coffee spoons, but others count the saroses. Housemarque’s hotly anticipated follow-up to 2021’s sublime bullet-dancing roguelite Returnal delivers another provocative sci-fi adventure, with Saros far more accessible than the brutal perils of Atropos. I hesitate to claim it as the superior successor, but there’s little that compares with Saros’ confidently creative vision, and its lengthier campaign finds each new run easier than the last.

Returnal centered on Selene Vassos, a lone astronaut stranded on a deadly planet trapped in a time loop. Packed with tentacled monstrosities spouting ornate projectile mandalas, the game’s stressful roguelite combat paired perfectly with its story, with Selene eventually divining her connection to the planet and its traumatic circuit of self-destruction.

For my money and regardless of the medium, Returnal features one of sci-fi’s best narratives, bolstering its deliciously exacting third-person shooter gameplay such that every new scrap of progress felt earned. For better and for worse, Saros is less outright ruthless, but brings its own ingenious new story steeped in psychosocial metaphor and cosmic horror. Any Returnal fan would be a fool to pass it by, even though its friendlier approach makes it the crowd-pleasing counterpart to its weirder, more off-putting, brilliant sibling.

The Rescue Mission Isn’t Going Well

A Sci-Fi World Worth Exploring With A Strong Ensemble

You are Arjun Devraj, an enforcer stationed on the distant planet Carcosa. A crewmember of Echelon IV, Arjun and his comrades were sent to figure out what happened to Echelons I through III. More importantly, however, they are to secure the fiscal interests of Soltari, a massive megacorp seeking to establish a mining colony on Carcosa to extract Lucenite, a miracle mineral fuel native to the planet with the potential to corner Earth’s energy market.

By the start of Saros, the crew is despondent, operating out of a planetside FOB known as The Passage, and their mission progress is stagnant. They’ve tracked the ruins and evidence of an alien civilization ravaged by war, but have yet to find proof of life for the preceding Echelon colonists. As Arjun, you make forays into Carcosa, blasting away its biomechanical terrors, discovering new weapons and tools, chatting with your increasingly frustrated peers over comms, and mysteriously regenerating from an amber pool after every death.

Saros’ many intrigues uncoiled in time, collected in a growing database that tracks accumulated intel on personnel, equipment, and Carcosan flora and fauna, an elaborate sci-fi vein for adept lorehounds to plunder. As the game continues, its interpersonal relationships and the remnants of Echelons past develop into an engrossing tapestry, balancing its surface-level drama and allegorical rescue tropes with the deeper insights available in logs and codices.

That Returnal Muscle Memory Will Prove Useful

Expect More Bullet-Dodging and Gun-Scrounging, This Time With Metaprogression

Comparisons to Housemarque’s previous game are to be expected, and much of Returnal‘s gameplay and muscle memory echo throughout Saros. You still control your hero from a behind-the-back perspective that emphasizes the massive alien environs, traveling through procedurally generated biome chunks while seeking out collectibles, weapons, and artifacts, rinsing them off upon death. The adrenaline system reappears intact, where avoiding damage bestows combat bonuses to add an escalating sense of power. There are new guns, traits, artifacts, special sidearms, and even an ultimate-like overdrive, with new ingredients unlocking over time to be swirled into your next run’s loot pool.

Curiously, there are no merchants, opting instead for Saros’ most extreme addition: metaprogression, and lots of it. Structured as an upgrade tree, you feed collected Lucenite into the Armor Matrix between runs to activate permanent stat increases. As a result, the game grows steadily easier in spite of your overall performance, layering more HP, power reserves, stronger shielding, and other straightforward benefits throughout, though subsequent portions of the Armor Matrix are gated by boss clears.

Additionally, the World Modifier system provides a range of gameplay tweaks, allowing you to reduce incoming damage, increase the level of dropped artifacts, and apply various other boons. These are subject to balance conditions, so ticking more than a few boosts demands that you activate “trials” as well, shaving down the game’s challenge in a buff/debuff tradeoff. It’s a unique approach to player-guided difficulty and includes some valuable perks, like making a higher-level version of your equipped gun more likely to drop.

Technically, you’re free to ignore both mechanics entirely, though this would also mean missing out on the game’s primary use of Lucenite. I was initially excited to dive into the Armor Matrix, expecting modular buildcrafting or even special abilities to unlock. Sadly, it’s mostly a scatter of numeric increases, and could have been equally served (and more coherent) as a conventional player stat screen.

If You Love Your Gun, Keep Your Gun

With Its Eclipses, Saros Can Feel Like An Extended Conversation About Challenge

A key theme in Saros ties to its title: Carcosa’s eclipse cycles are constant and controllable. You’ll find a creepy alien device in each biome that prompts an eclipse, upgrading enemies, activating otherwise dormant traps, and generally making the level harder while boosting Lucenite gain. This appears intriguingly optional at first, yet another method to regulate the game’s difficulty, but it quickly becomes routine, albeit with fascinating elements connected to Saros’ lore.

Alongside all the scampering bullet-dodging firefights, Arjun’s melee attack can be held down to form a shield bubble that blocks certain projectiles while absorbing others to convert into energy reserves. This replenishes the ammo needed for power weapons, stronger secondary armaments that, much like the game’s firearms, drop with randomly rolled traits.

Returnal featured similar weapon traits, but they’re greatly simplified here and do not need to be leveled up. On top of that, you always retain your last equipped gun; nice in theory, but the post-run character level reset weakens your weapon and removes a random number of its traits. Still, this means that you never have to restart with a peashooter again.

Controlled Chaos, Controlled Difficulty, Beautiful Boss Fights

Is Saros An Extended Conversation About Challenge in Games?

After clearing through much of Saros, I opted for a modifier that cancels out all Armor Matrix upgrades. When my subsequent runs felt virtually identical, I grew disappointed with what was meant to be a crucial gameplay hook. Sure, lower stats slightly extended my firefights, but that didn’t necessarily make them more compelling, and I feel like Saros holds fewer gameplay surprises and less run-changing potential than Returnal, itself already lacking in this regard when compared to Hades, Risk of Rain, or The Binding of Isaac.

With no Tower of Sisyphus-styled endless dungeon to engage, I bumped against Saros’ challenge ceiling past the midway point and slept through a lot of its later combat. The weapons are still fun to shoot, with a decent variety to draw from and best-in-class haptic feedback on the DualSense. And yet, aside from the Smart Rifle (which trivializes certain sections of the game), they all felt just about as effective as the next.

As for the bosses, these are arguably Housemarque’s most beautiful encounters yet. They’re massive, mutated, deranged, crying and screeching things, elevated further by the game’s lore, with multiple clears unlocking greater context and database detail. While not the toughest in the genre, they’re mostly memorable all the same, and some late-game set pieces are awe-inspiring.

Saros Is For The People

A More Accessible, No Less Exceptional Sci-Fi Horror Mystery To Explore

Saros’ levels are beautifully eerie, with the best and weirdest vistas saved for its second half. Character and enemy design are generally excellent as well, though NPC conversations can appear disjointed, with underwhelming mocap outside its gorgeous proper cutscenes. That doesn’t distract from the game’s many superb voice performances, but it can get noticeably awkward at times. Returnal’s Jane Perry was transcendent, but her voice had to carry that entire game, so it’s gratifying that Saros’ ensemble cast, led by Rahul Kohli as Arjun is exceptional across the board, well beyond the quality we tend to find in our action fare (and we even get Perry’s return in a minor role as the beleaguered Commander Sheridan).

I’ve highlighted the game’s story in particular because, in the end, it’s what captured and kept my attention. There’s no specific need to go read Robert W. Chambers, or to familiarize yourself with the Mahabharata, or to dig up the game’s logs every time a character utters a strange word or enigmatic detail. But you should, and the story rewards this reactive attention like few others in the medium. It even features my favorite self-referential comment about roguelite proc-gen design: “Carcosa keeps changing its mind.”

I’d be glad for anyone who shied away from Returnal to find their footing in Saros. I also wish the game had increasingly challenging or riskier mechanical surprises, divisive as those two requests might be. But, more than anything, I’m excited to discover what others make of its story, to hear who it inspires, and even who it possibly angers. With its stunning alien environments and elegant action gameplay, Saros is an event-level PS5 exclusive that further elevates the Housemarque name, beseeching all-comers to Carcosa.

Saros

8/10

Released

April 30, 2026

ESRB

Teen / Blood, Language, Mild Suggestive Themes, Violence

Developer(s)

Housemarque

Publisher(s)

Sony Interactive Entertainment

Engine

Proprietary

Number of Players

Single-player

Pros & Cons

• A haunting alien planet packed with gorgeous sights and impeccable artistic design
• A provocative and sophisticated sci-fi mystery that rewards attention and investment
• Great controls, fun armory, and some stunning boss encounters
• Approachable challenge with built-in adjustment is a unique roguelite approach
• Outside of Returnal, there’s precious few games like this, and Saros stands out from the pack

• Even with mutable difficulty, the challenge curve bottoms out early on
• Limited endgame content to explore beyond the story
• Lesser variation in proc-gen level design
• A safer and more approachable riff on Returnal, Saros’ gameplay comes off as less gutsy and distinct