During the summer of 2021, indie development company Neon Giant released The Ascent, a cyberpunk RPG that creates a brand new world with brand new characters for fans of the genre to immerse themselves in. And, yes, a wide array of stats to boost and skill trees to level up - a staple of the RPG genre.
Specifically, The Ascent offers eight upgradable skills for you to focus your effort and attention on leveling up, each of which offers its own unique perk package to make your character stronger than ever. Some of the skills are good. Some of them are really good. But only one of them can be crowned the best in our ranked list.
8 Aiming
It's worth restating the obvious here, but none of the skills available in The Ascent are inherently bad. Everything available for you to upgrade only serves to make your character stronger at the end of the day. With that said, there are skills that are universally sought after and useful to the entire player base, and skills that really only apply to a specific playstyle. At the bottom of our list is the aiming skill, one perk that lands firmly on the latter side of the spectrum.
In simple terms, the aiming skill helps the overall accuracy of your character by limiting the amount of bullet spread as you use your weapons. For players who prefer to do their dirty work from afar, upgrading this skill might be a top priority. For those who like to get close and personal when they fight, well, you might not need this one as much. Bullet spread can only do so much if you're firing a weapon two inches away from an enemy.
7 Balance
The aiming skill is useful - but really, only a handful of players with a specific playstyle will feel the maximum impact of upgrading that skill. The balance skill on the other hand is, well, kind of the exact same thing, but for the handful of players with the opposite playstyle.
Upgrading your balance will allow you to become the tank you've always wanted to be, one that, at the maximum upgrade level, can fully resist enemy stuns and knockbacks, while also limiting or fully eliminating the movement penalty incurred when handling heavy weapons.
Balance edges out the aiming skill for having elements of universal appeal, in having to deal with fewer negative effects from the enemy. However, similar to aiming, the balance perk can really only be fully enjoyed by players approaching combat in a specific style. Those who aren't as big a fan of charging into a fight full steam ahead might not see the full value in this one.
6 Evasion
In The Ascent, nothing comes easy. And with a cooldown meter on when and how often you can perform evasive moves in combat, even something as simple as dodging becomes difficult to rely on.
Lucky enough, upgradable skills exist throughout the game to make the "not so easy" a little bit more manageable. The evasion skill, for example, exists to overcome the cooldown on dodging and make your character an untouchable juggernaut.
Upgrading Evasion to its maximum capacity will mean lowering the cooldown rate on such moves by 200 percent. Similar to the last two skills, evasion is a bit of a matter of taste. Some players that engage in combat from afar might not have much trouble avoiding enemy fire, while others that pride themselves on being as aggressive as possible might not care too much about taking a bit of damage if it means dealing more.
5 Body Battery
Starting with the body battery skill, we slowly begin to shift away from the skills with a specific appeal, and more toward those with universal appeal. Body battery finds its way onto this side of the list by boosting the character's overall energy level. Kind of like a battery... for your body.
With a higher rate of energy, you'll be able to boost more frequently and move quicker around the field of battle, making upgrading the body battery skill an important goal, but maybe not an exciting one.
4 Weapon Handling
The name of the game for the weapon handling skill is speed, but speed in a very specific aspect of the game. Upgrading your weapon handling will increase your efficiency both in reloading your firearms, as well as switching between different weapons. Reaching the maximum upgrade level of 20 will mean boosting your speed in both of those elements of the game by 100 percent, giving you the ability to outlast your foes on the field of battle simply by being able to shoot more often than they can.
Regardless of whether you fight from afar or in the enemy's face, the combat of The Ascent can become hectic at a moment's notice. And while Revolver Ocelot from the Metal Gear Solid series might be a fan of reloading during battle, he's probably the only one. Not getting caught off guard with an empty magazine can mean the difference between life and death.
3 Tactical Sense
The idea of the tactical sense perk is very specific to The Ascent, which offers an array of "tactical weapons" for you to choose from, on the condition that you use tactical charge to fire them.
What tactical sense does is offers the player more tactical charge, allowing you to use your tactical weapons more frequently in combat by reducing the cooldown time between uses. A fairly middling skill on the surface, until you dig deeper into The Ascent's arsenal and discover that a host of grenades, turrets and even drones are available as tactical weapons - providing a useful edge in combat, as well as a fun change of pace to the status quo of gun combat.
2 Critical Hit Rate
Critical hit damage has become a staple of combat-based video games, with The Ascent being no different in adding this mechanic to gameplay.
The critical hit rate skill does, well, exactly what you would think - increases the rate at which you will land critical hits. At its maximum capacity, the critical hit rate skill will give the player a 20 percent chance to land critical damage on an enemy. That's one in every five shots that could become a knockout blow in battle. Not a bad perk to focus on.
1 Vital Signs
The one thing that everybody can use in a game where combat is an element, regardless of playstyle, regardless of anything else, is more health.
The Vital Signs skill, quite simply, will increase your health as you continue to upgrade the skill. It doesn't matter how good you are, how many hours you've put into the game, a no-damage run of The Ascent is, well, fairly unlikely. And if you're going to get hit, might as well make sure not every shot is a fatal blow and increase your Vital Signs skill.