The Relic: First Guardian PS5 Review. The hardcore action-RPG genre has been growing every year, with almost every major action game borrowing aspects or imitating the type of game. The Soul’s formula seems to have become the standard these days with these types of games, and The Relic: First Guardian is no different.
The Relic: First Guardian PS5 Review
A Forgettable Story Saved By The Story Of The World’s Citizens
You take on the role of The First Guardian as you are awakened from a rock by a magical woman named Elisa. You don’t know much about her at the start of the game, but more and more is revealed through the connection between the protagonist and Elisa.
The game’s story is vague, though it has a narrative; it never really clicked for me because the narrative between Elisa and the protagonist mostly happens when I’m out in the world slaying enemies and exploring. Elisa starts to talk about your past, and it’s hard to pay attention when you’re constantly focused on staying alive.
The best part of the game’s storytelling comes from the abandoned villages and world you explore. You constantly find small journals or memories of the people who live or lived in the world. You learn about what happened to a specific village and even learn about the boss you’re about to face off against because most of the stories are about them and what led them to become the way they are.
The world is filled with what are called Brutals—humans who have become consumed with anger, rage, desperation, and sadness. Learning about what led these people to become the way they are is some of the best storytelling the game provides, and I loved learning about them and the world they lived in more than I did the main quest’s storyline.
A Vast World With Plenty Of Content
The world starts small and linear but quickly opens up to larger and larger areas. It’s a great way to expand the world as you learn its mechanics instead of throwing you into a large world and expecting you to find your way through it.
The world in The Relic is fun to explore. You can pick up side-quests from villagers or find and explore caves and caverns on your own. Exploration isn’t always rewarding, though. For the most part, chests that you find will contain Gold to use to buy items that you find plenty of as you explore, and you can only carry a few of them at a time.
There were also plenty of times when I would pick up items from defeated foes, but the game wouldn’t tell me what I picked up. Later on, this also happened when I unlocked chests.
The game’s map, though functioning enough, doesn’t allow you to place markers or anything to keep track of areas you may have explored but wanted to come back to because you couldn’t defeat a boss. The game doesn’t mark these locations on the map, and you essentially have to remember where specific locations are.
Bugs Lock You Out Of Quests And Progression
It’s still worth exploring every corner of the world because you may run across hidden quests, new weapons, and new armor. This unfortunately is also a double-edged sword and leads to one of the game’s most devastating issues. I found throughout my exploration that I was clearing areas and defeating bosses that were tied to quests that I hadn’t unlocked yet.
By doing this, I was locked out of finishing the quest, and the quest just remained in my quest log with the objectives still open even though there is no way to complete them. I encountered a few of these, and it actually stopped me from truly exploring the world out of fear of being locked out of a quest again.
This also happened to me with the main quest. After defeating a story boss, I left the area to heal up and restore my healing items.
When I returned to the boss area, the item I was supposed to collect to progress in the game was no longer there, locking me out of progressing through the story. I was forced to start a new save file after fourteen hours of play. It’s a shame, and it really took the steam out of my sails.
Your Skill And Gear Sets You Apart
Combat is the most addictive part of the game. Even as I ran into issue after issue, I found myself coming back because the combat was just so satisfying. It doesn’t do anything different from other hardcore action games, but its strategy is what made it more intriguing to me than so many others of its kind.
The Relic doesn’t have a leveling system, and there aren’t any attribute points to distribute. Instead, all of your stats and progression are tied to your weapons, armor, and skills that you unlock.
Upgrading your weapons and finding new armor is how you stay alive in The Relic’s world. The game offers plenty of weapon variety between two-handed weapons, swords and shields, staves, and daggers. Each one provides its own benefits, as you can imagine, and fits a specific playstyle.
Skills are where the bread and butter comes in, and I found myself mostly relying on my skills over my basic attacks. Skills are extremely powerful and can quickly turn the tide of battle.
You can equip up to four skills that range from support to attack. Each weapon type also provides different skills. The two-handed weapons are mostly slow but powerful attacks that deal tons of damage, while the staff provides magic spells that can strike enemies from a distance.
Brutal Combat Is Satisfying And Rewarding
As I mentioned, the game’s combat is where it shines. Once you learn how enemies react and fight, you can form a strategy to defeat them. The game’s enemies are relentless. They are constantly on the offensive, and most of them don’t give you a chance to breathe.
Bosses in particular all fight as if they’re berserkers, giving you maybe a second or two to recover from a consistent onslaught. The game’s parry system comes into play here as every parry decreases the enemy’s stun gauge. The game doesn’t display an enemy stun gauge, but the game’s tutorial tells you it’s there.
After parrying enough attacks, the enemies get stunned, and you can unload all your powerful attacks. You can, of course, build a more agile character with specific armors and weapons, but you have to find those first.
It’s yet another thing that The Relic: The First Guardian doesn’t do particularly well. It forces you to play a specific way from the first few hours, and not until you find specific weapons like the daggers and armor that specifically support an agile playstyle can you actually fully experience that type of playstyle.
A Staggering Amount Of Bosses To Defeat
There also isn’t a large variety of enemies to face off against, as they’re mostly bandits and feral zombie-like creatures, but in terms of numbers there’s plenty of them.
The Relic offers around 70 bosses to find and defeat. Some of these will play exactly like others you’ve faced off against. In other words, one large two-handed bandit fights almost identically to the last five you faced off against.
There are some unique takes, like a giant troll-like enemy that destroys the trees and environment around it. I also faced off against a werewolf-like creature that was fast and relentless, not giving me much space or time to counter its attacks.
Visually, The Relic isn’t that special. The character models are emotionless, and they never really look at you when they talk to hide the fact that their mouths don’t move when they talk. Meanwhile, terrible lighting effects result in a drop in frame rate occasionally and make it impossible to see anything in front of you.
There are areas you enter where it’s night, pouring rain, and the city is on fire. The lighting is all over the place as it tries to reflect the rain and the fire at the same time, making it incredibly dark while looking down someone’s high beams on their vehicle ten feet away.
Sound Design During Combat Makes You Feel Every Blow
There were plenty of moments where I couldn’t see anything in front of me as enemies jumped out right in front of me, getting in a lot of cheap hits. The voice acting also leaves a lot to be desired from the actual cast of characters and people you talk to, but the narration you hear from the memories you pick up and listen to is actually pretty solid.
The sound design during combat, on the other hand, is another thing that I loved about the game’s combat, as it enhanced every swing and skill attack I produced. It made every attack sound and feel powerful and destructive.
The Relic: First Guardian has a lot of things holding you back. Plenty of glitches and quality-of-life features were missing that could have made the journey better.
The game’s game-breaking and story-breaking progression was a heartbreak to deal with, but I just couldn’t put it down. The game’s combat had me hooked after I found my groove with the skills and weapons that suit my playstyle; I just wanted more and more. Exploring the world and finding a new cave or hidden town with a devastating story to tell kept me going. It’s just a shame that so much of The Relic: First Guardian is broken and frustrating.
The Relic: First Guardian releases on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on July 31, 2026
Review code kindly provided by PR