Fallen Tear: The Ascension is a Metroidvania, but it is also an action RPG, a JRPG and even a little bit Souls-like. At times, it came suspiciously close to a monster-hunting game. It’s a game that juggles so many things at the same time, adding skill trees, elemental abilities, companions, relationship systems, hunting contracts, a home base and multiple currencies. Just before you start thinking it can’t get more complicated, you run into challenging bosses and, of course, platforming. You gotta have that too. After spending enough time in Raoah, most of these systems start to fit together rather nicely and the game opens up into a wonderful world where we explore, find new abilities, become stronger, meet new people, bring them back to our home and then head out again to see what those new abilities have opened up. It’s a great game and we hope you join us after the trailer to find out why.
In Fallen Tear: The Ascension, we play as Hira, a young warrior with a mysterious past. We begin with fairly straightforward attacks, dodging and basic movement, and, as time passes, we turn him into an increasingly ridiculous little killing machine. Ascension abilities open previously inaccessible parts of the map, Mastery Skills improve the way we fight and move, and Hunter Skills are earned by taking on hunting contracts and defeating specific creatures. It’s a joy to watch our warrior become stronger and stronger, especially after the Elemental Imbuements come into play and start changing the way some of our existing abilities work. For example, a movement ability can become an attack, or an attack that we used for one thing can now help us break through an obstacle.
If It Moves, Hit It
We mentioned that everything starts out slow and simple, based on attacks, combos, dodging and counters. Eventually, we started juggling enemies through the air, smashing through armor, using elemental attacks, as well as calling on the abilities of our Fated Bonds. The Dash Counter is particularly satisfying when we get the timing right, because instead of getting out of the way of an incoming attack, we can turn the enemy’s aggression against them. There is a nice rhythm to getting in, doing some damage, avoiding the retaliation and then deciding which of our increasingly large collection of toys we want to use next.
The movement abilities aren’t restricted to exploration, and a double jump, dash or other traversal skill can also become part of an attack. Certain elemental abilities can turn those same movements into damaging attacks. Nothing is served on a silver platter, however, and everything must be earned. Once we’ve unlocked enough of them, combat becomes much more mobile and we spend less time standing in front of an enemy trading blows. We liked those moments of experimentation and doing what we found was the coolest.
Most enemies are manageable once we understand their attacks, but certain bosses and tougher encounters can suddenly hit considerably harder than everything around them. For some fights, the game demands that certain patterns must be learned and that we make better use of our abilities. Whenever we met a boss and died a couple of times, we couldn’t help but wonder if we should have spent more time upgrading Hira or done some things differently.
Friends, Fates and New Abilities
The Fated Bonds are probably our favorite part of the progression system because they allow us to bring people along for the ride. We can’t emphasize how cool this addition is. There are plenty of characters to meet and recruit, and each of them can affect combat, exploration and traversal. And, before you ask, yes, developing our relationships with them is not only possible, it also unlocks additional abilities.
Finding one of these characters feels different from finding an upgrade. It’s a joy to discover if their abilities might finally let us reach that suspicious-looking platform we’ve been thinking of for the last three hours. We feel it gives us fresh new ways to explore and makes the characters feel like part of the actual game mechanics.
But, as they say, wait, there’s more! As we recruit more Bonds, our home becomes more populated and useful. We can develop it, interact with our companions and take care of various activities before heading back out into the world. After spending so much time running through places filled with things that want to kill us, coming to a warm place that feels like home is a nice touch.
Home or outside of home, the world is breathtakingly beautiful. The devs made sure that every single scene feels alive with so many subtly animated details. It made us often stop for a second to just admire the view and enjoy the soundtrack.
Craving the Unlocks
It’s important to sum up the progression one more time. We have Ascensions, Masteries, Hunter Skills, Elemental Imbuements, Bond abilities, equipment and several different resources to keep track of. All of these make sure that Hira never feels completely finished. As strange as it sounds, there’s almost always another ability waiting to change the way we approach the game. We can improve combat, make exploration easier, take advantage of elemental weaknesses or invest in abilities that give us more options during fights.
The hunting system allows us to accept contracts, track down powerful creatures and earn Hunter Skills that can be useful elsewhere. It could easily have been one of those side activities we try once and then completely forget about, but, no. Here, hunting feeds back into Hira’s progression, and it helps us evolve and become stronger and better in brand-new ways.
Reaching the Unreachable
Raoah is large, interconnected and full of places that are clearly there to make us wonder how we’re supposed to get to them. What we loved the most is when we find a new ability and then remember that suspicious wall or platform we passed a while back. Sometimes we were wrong and we just remembered something incorrectly, but we were over the moon when we came back and got rewarded with plenty of cool things. Even if it wasn’t for the loot, it was just the idea that we were returning to an old area with a new ability and realizing that there are now new things worth investigating. Secrets, optional bosses, hunting targets and hidden paths are all there waiting for your second visit. Following the main path from one objective to the next is doing Fallen Tear: The Ascension such a disservice.
Great Ideas
Fallen Tear: The Ascension throws a lot at us. It takes some time before all of its systems start working together. Once they do, though, Raoah becomes a wonderful place to explore, fight, experiment and get distracted by yet another thing we can’t reach yet. We loved watching Hira grow from a fairly basic warrior into the ridiculous little killing machine we eventually turned him into. It can be a lot to take in, but we hope you’re willing to stick with it. If you do, there’s a rewarding adventure waiting just beyond the seemingly unreachable.
Our Score: 9/10
Developer: CMD Studios, Holysoft GmbH
Publisher: Holysoft GmbH
Genre: Action RPG / Metroidvania
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch
Release: September 2025
Players: Single-player
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