Shoulders of Giants has finally landed on Steam, and alongside this new release comes the Ultimate patch, which promises to improve the fast-paced roguelike even more.

The game’s Ultimate patch includes an engine upgrade to Unreal 5, a major UI overhaul, tons of bug fixes, extra content, Steam Deck support, and more.

So, how does the game and its new update fare against other roguelikes? Does the new patch really make a difference overall? Find out in our full review for Shoulders of Giants: Ultimate.

Shoulders of Giants: Ultimate
Developer: Moving Pieces Interactive
Publisher: Moving Pieces Interactive
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Microsoft Windows (Reviewed)
Release Date: January 1, 2023, August 12, 2024 (Ultimate)
Players: 1-2
Price: $19.99

Shoulders of Giants is a 3D roguelike where players are put in the shoes of a space frog who controls a giant mech suit. Your goal is to cleanse corrupted planets, bringing back nature and sunlight, while also acquiring new skills, weapons, and cores, which serve as different equippable classes for your mech/frog duo.

The player has access to two sets of skills, one belonging to the mech, who fights enemies up-close with a melee weapon, and one belonging to the frog, who provides support and ranged damage. Toggling between your mech and frog is a seamless process, simply done by aiming down sights, and it’s a pretty smart way of giving the player access to two different playstyles.

The game lets you approach combat from whatever angle you want thanks to the weapons available. Players can lean heavily towards melee, keeping the frog in a support role, or go all-in on ranged damage, using the mech as a mobility tool. A mixed playstyle is also viable, thanks to the many skills that have synergy with each other.

It is unfortunate, however, that Shoulders of Giants does not play well. Melee combat is disjointed and lacks impact, while ranged combat is limp and feels inferior to melee when it comes to killing enemies with your basic shots. Most melee weapons are pretty decent in the air, so taking the time to aim and kill enemies usually feels unnecessary.

Most of the time it feels like the player is working against the game, and not in a fun way. Every time you take damage, it feels unavoidable, and every time you clear a wave of enemies, it feels like you brute-forced your way through. There is absolutely no finesse to the game’s combat system, and it usually feels like you are cheesing harder enemies and bosses rather than fighting them.

Boss fights in particular are a huge mess, usually composed of messes of particles and waves of spawning enemies. The best approach to boss fights is to activate all your skills at once and hope that you kill the boss before it kills you, since you’ll be punished for trying to learn the fight by being hit for massive damage by something that barely fits on the screen.

Shoulders of Giants also suffers from pretty bad runs, which is a crime for a roguelike. Every mission has about the same objectives, and depending on your build, each stage can be cleared in around five minutes. There’s barely any incentive to kill enemies unrelated to your objective, and there are basically no exploration elements aside from finding your current objective.

Almost every run will consist of finding different spires, defeating the orbs that hold it together, and heading towards the final spire to fight a boss. Sometimes the game will switch things up and throw in a slight variation of those objectives, but that’s about it.

The game has a decent amount of enemy variety, each of them filling different roles as healers, ranged damage dealers, tanks, or melee attackers. The fact that you have to focus on priority targets or flank the shielded enemies is almost fun, and the way they behave would make for an engaging gameplay loop if the game’s combat system wasn’t subpar.

Shoulders of Giants has released its Ultimate patch after its Epic Games Store exclusivity expired, which brings new content, bug fixes, and an upgrade to Unreal 5. As someone who hasn’t played the game before its Steam release, it is difficult to know if the engine switch has actually been a substantial upgrade, as the game currently suffers from performance issues.

Beefier PCs can power through the game’s bad optimization and deliver a somewhat acceptable performance, making players choose between heavy screen tearing at high frame rates or an FPS lock that constantly dips to 50 when Vsync is enabled.

A computer with specs closer to the ones recommended on Steam will struggle to run the game at higher graphical settings, which is disappointing but expected, as Unreal 5 is a beast that has yet to be tamed by most AAA studios, let alone indie developers.

Overall, Shoulders of Giants fails at the most basic aspects needed for a roguelike to be fun. It feels difficult to engage with the game’s combat system in the intended manner, especially as the difficulty starts to ramp up, and the game doesn’t help itself with a boring gameplay loop and repetitive runs.

The game has some neat ideas, especially pertaining to its different weapons, classes, and other unlocks, but it’s nonsense to expect anyone to grind for equipment in a game that simply doesn’t feel good to play.

Even though the game suffers from performance issues, weak gameplay, and repetitive content, Shoulders of Giants is not unplayable by any means; it’s just difficult to find reasons to play it when most roguelikes currently available are much more enjoyable.

Shoulders of Giants: Ultimate was reviewed on Microsoft Windows using a game code provided by Moving Pieces Interactive. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here. Shoulders of Giants: Ultimate  is available on Xbox One, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Microsoft Windows (through Steam).