Saros arrived with the weight of expectation that comes with a big first party PlayStation 5 exclusive, and it did not clear the bar set by Returnal. Before playing it, the reviewer had hoped it would be better than the earlier hit and become an undisputed classic. After finishing Saros, that hope was replaced by disappointment.

The verdict was blunt: Returnal remains the best exclusive on PlayStation 5, while Saros is worse in just about every way except maybe the graphics. The action is very similar, but the comparison only goes so far. Saros adds a shield that sounds promising yet feels underused, and the reviewer prefers the way weapons are upgraded in Returnal.

That gap matters because Saros was sold, and now judged, as the kind of release that can anchor a console lineup. It was described as the biggest first party PS5 exclusive of the year so far, but it also got overshadowed by Pragmata. For a game carrying that much attention, the complaint is not that it is broken. It is that it feels smaller, safer and more obvious than what came before it.

The strongest line through the comparison is the story. Saros is not a sequel in plot terms, but it is in every other way, at least in feel and structure. The reviewer said the story and characters are far too straightforward compared with Returnal, which created uncertainty about whether anything being seen or done was real. Instead, Saros follows a generic tough guy looking for his wife for most of the game, a setup that never reaches the same level of mystery.

That sense of sameness runs through the world itself. The reviewer said most of Saros takes place in the same dull grey world and ruins, and that the design does not change nearly as much as desired between areas. The Lovecraftian influence is still there, but it is more on the nose and nowhere near as interesting as Returnal. Even the game’s structure feels plain: each level is just a boss run, which makes it seem a bit too obvious.

There are bright spots. The graphics are good, especially in the underground area, and the shield adds a new wrinkle to combat. But those details were not enough to change the larger judgment. The reviewer said the developers seemed to make the story more obvious and straightforward as part of making the game more accessible, and that choice appears to have cost the game the eerie uncertainty that made Returnal stand out.

For Saros, the central problem is not that it tries something radically different. It is that it reaches for the same kind of experience and comes up shorter in nearly every category that made the earlier game memorable. The result is a polished PS5 exclusive that looks strong on the surface, but leaves the stronger impression that Returnal still owns this corner of Sony’s lineup.

A separate report on the game’s commercial start said Saros tops 300,000 sales in first two weeks, but sales momentum is not the same thing as lasting impact. On the evidence of this review, the bigger question is whether accessibility came at the expense of the strange, unsettling identity that once made the formula feel fresh.