I beat Saros last night, and the funny thing is, I don’t think I’m done with it.

Not in a checklist-brain way. More like: I still have the itch. I want another run. I want to see what other busted, beautiful nonsense the game will let me discover.

Last night I had one of those runs where everything clicked. I was shredding enemy encounters in 30 seconds or less. Enemies were dying almost the second they spawned. I shit you not, I killed the Legion boss in roughly 30 seconds.

That is such a specific kind of video game joy.

It immediately took me back to Einhander , where finding the perfect weapon could turn a three-minute boss fight into a 30-second execution. It also gave me that Dark Souls feeling of walking back through an area that used to terrify you and realizing:

Oh. I’m the problem now.

That feeling rules.

The best power fantasies are earned

What I like about this kind of power fantasy is that it only works because the game made me struggle first.

You don’t start out feeling like a monster. You learn enemy patterns. You get clipped by stuff you didn’t see coming. You explore. You build up meta-progression. You slowly start to understand what the game is asking from you.

Then eventually, something flips.

The same enemies are there. The same kinds of encounters are there. The same world is still trying to kill you. But your relationship to it has changed. You’re faster. Meaner. Smarter. You know what matters and what doesn’t. You know when to play safe and when to absolutely delete something before it gets a vote.

That’s the secret sauce: the game makes you earn the right to feel like an absolute menace.

A lot of games want the player to feel powerful, but power without memory doesn’t hit the same. If you’re overpowered from minute one, that can be fun, but it doesn’t have the same emotional shape. The good stuff comes from remembering what used to be hard.

The reward isn’t just better gear or higher numbers. It’s realizing the stuff that used to scare you is now getting erased on sight.

Mastery is when fear turns into flow

That’s why the Dark Souls comparison stuck with me.

One of my favorite feelings in those games is going back through an area that used to feel impossible and suddenly moving through it like you own the place. Not because the game got easier, exactly. You changed. Your hands changed. Your brain changed. You can read the room now.

Saros taps into that same thing, just through its own action-roguelite lens.

The meta-progress helps, sure. Builds matter. Weapons matter. Numbers matter. But the better trick is that all of those systems are wrapped around player fluency. You feel yourself getting better at parsing chaos. You start making cleaner decisions. You stop panicking when the screen fills up. You recognize enemy behavior earlier. You take risks because you actually know what you’re doing.

And then, every once in a while, the build comes together and the game basically says:

Alright. Go be disgusting.

That is a fantastic loop.

The platforming doesn’t fight you

The other thing I’m really enjoying is that the platforming and dodge corridors are actually fun.

That sounds like faint praise, but it isn’t. Platforming in action games can go sideways fast. The moment the player starts feeling like the game is eating inputs, hiding rules, or asking for precision the controls don’t support, the whole thing turns into a “come on, man” simulator.

I rarely feel that in Saros.

I’m not constantly calling bullshit on jump setups. I’m not hitting a platforming section and thinking, “Alright, time for the bad part.” The game gives you enough control in the air that movement feels intentional instead of floaty or stiff. Pair that with air dashing, and suddenly dodging through danger becomes its own little performance.

Blasting through a laser-wall grid without breaking stride feels incredible.

That’s the key part: without breaking stride.

The game understands that movement challenges feel best when they preserve momentum. It’s not just asking you to stop, line up a jump, execute the jump, then continue playing the fun game. The movement is the fun game. The dodge corridors work because they feel like extensions of combat rhythm, not interruptions from it.

You aren’t just avoiding damage. You’re threading a needle at full speed and feeling cool as hell when you pull it off.

Air control is trust

Good air control is one of those invisible design things that players feel before they can explain it.

When it’s bad, everything feels unfair. When it’s good, you start trusting the game. You trust that your dash will go where you expect. You trust that a jump wasn’t secretly doomed three inputs ago. You trust that if you fail, it was probably because you mistimed something, not because the game decided to get cute.

Saros has that trust.

That matters because once I trust the movement, I’m willing to play closer to the edge. I’ll dash later. I’ll take a tighter route through the lasers. I’ll keep shooting while moving instead of stopping to baby every jump. The game gets more exciting because the controls have earned confidence.

That’s such a huge part of action game feel.

A good movement system doesn’t just make a character agile. It makes the player brave.

Also: holy hell, the sound

Dudes, playing this game on a big Dolby Atmos-enabled sound system is a real treat.

The sound design has weight. Not just “the guns sound good,” though they do. I mean the whole sonic palette has this oppressive texture to it. The game is willing to let sound occupy the room. It’s willing to fade to black and just let the atmosphere melt into you for a few seconds.

I love when games have the confidence to do that.

So many games are terrified of dead air. They always want to push you to the next objective marker, the next voice line, the next reward pop-up. Saros seems much more comfortable letting a moment breathe, or maybe letting it suffocate a little.

That is not just presentation. That is mood design.

Those little fades to black, with the sound pressing in, reinforce the feeling that this world is hostile and strange and bigger than you. Even when you’re on a busted run shredding everything in sight, the atmosphere is still there, humming underneath it all.

That contrast works. You can feel powerful inside a world that still feels oppressive.

Actually, that might be why the power fantasy hits so hard.

The world stays dangerous, even when you don’t

The best thing Saros is doing for me right now is creating that tension between oppression and mastery.

The game can feel harsh, loud, dark, and overwhelming. Then suddenly you get the right tools, the right upgrades, the right rhythm, and you punch a hole straight through it. You’re not escaping the atmosphere. You’re overpowering it.

That’s different from a game simply becoming easy.

When a game becomes easy, you check out. When a game lets you become dangerous, you lean in.

That distinction is huge.

I don’t want every run to be a steamroll. I don’t want every boss to fold in 30 seconds. But I absolutely want the possibility that, if I understand the systems and get a little lucky and make the right choices, I can turn into a boss-melting freak for one glorious run.

That possibility is what keeps the itch alive.

Why I’m still thinking about it

Beating Saros didn’t make me feel finished with it. It made me more curious.

That’s a pretty special place for a game to land. The credits, or whatever version of completion a game offers, can sometimes feel like a clean exit ramp. Nice, done, uninstall, next thing. But here, I’m still thinking about the run I had. I’m still thinking about what other builds might be hiding in there. I’m still thinking about that Legion boss getting absolutely deleted.

More importantly, I’m thinking about why it felt so good.

And I think it comes down to this: Saros understands that mastery is emotional.

It’s not just mechanical skill. It’s not just upgrades. It’s not just buildcraft. It’s the feeling of remembering who you were ten hours ago and realizing you are not that person anymore.

You learned the enemies.

You learned the movement.

You learned the shape of the chaos.

And then the game handed you enough power to make all that learning explode.

That’s the good stuff.

That’s the kind of thing that makes me want to run it back.

Spoiler image, don't look below, and read my poetic thought.

A thing of beauty, my human eyes thrive in the singularity of human creativity.