100% Worth a play for those who appreciate experimental gaming gems.

First impressions of A Thug's Ascension will probably turn away the average gamer. It looks like something you'd expect to find out of a random Roblox Directory.

But by the time I finished playing, I found the art style had become a key part of the games charm.

As the events of the story played out, the rough and tough testosterone filled characters and the progressively darker topics paired nicely with the low poly aesthetic bringing a mismatched cohesion to the game. It created a schoolyard charm to the serious moments and made the endearing moments feel more personal. Like a buff tattooed biker selling wood carvings of house pets at a small town farmers market.

Some of the topics that start to come up later on in the story I can see coming across a bit controversial but I don't believe any of them were added with bad intentions. In every moment, it felt like their purpose was to create a more meaningful and emotional story.

Please don't let what you are about to read turn you away from the game!

The biggest area I struggled with the game was the writing of its dialogue. There's a lot of filler and padding mixed in with the plot and important information. It was often hard to tell what was important or not and resulted in many moments where the game dragged on. There is a difference between a story being slow-paced and a story filled with a lot of extra information that doesn't mean anything.

To add more context to the dialogue, I started skimming through large sections of dialogue 40 minutes into playing. It was at that moment I realized how much fluff was in it. It took me 4 hours to complete the game. If I hadn't started skimming through a lot of it, I could have easily added in an hour maybe an hour and a half of the game of just reading the dialogue. And it still felt like a lot of what I read wasn't important.

But there were also many moments where I was glued to the screen during moments where things got really good. So different areas are hit or miss.

At the end of the day I enjoyed the game and I am happy I pushed through some of it's tedius moments and finished it.

For those that do pick this up, there's 1 incredibly important thing you need to know!
During a few moments in the game, if you push forward too quickly you will instantly die. You won't know how or why. In those moments, you need to wait until the shooting pauses or more enemies spawn around you. If you try to move forward before that happens, the invisible death wall kills you to stop you from progressing further than you are supposed to. If this sounds confusing right now, don't worry it will make sense when you encounter these moments in the game.