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Overall, House of Ashes has been well-received by reviewers and gamers alike. In fact, the game is proof that the developers seem to be considering the criticism the community has provided after playing the previous games. As such, there isn't much in the game that needs urgent fixing.
While the game definitely has weaknesses, such as dialogue that could be described as 'lame' (yet probably perfect for its early 2000s setting) and characters that seem irritatingly tropey at the beginning of the story, it only really has a few fixes to do that could uplift it significantly at this point. These fixes are mostly gameplay and mechanics related, as well as a few issues concerning graphics and design. Issues pertaining to the story, plot, and dialogue won't be addressed here, since those can't be fixed in a developer patch.
7 Optimization Issues On Last-Gen
House of Ashes was released for both next-gen and last-gen consoles. Currently, console players find themselves in a strange in-between phase where console companies are trying to push next-gen gear on them, but with the lack of supply, this just isn't possible. This also reflects in the quality of new releases.
While the game looks good, it still has some graphical glitches and issues on last-gen consoles. This includes textures loading in slowly, or random blurriness and FPS drops. Of course, the developers most likely didn't have much of a choice with the release platforms, and this will continue to be a challenge for many new game releases until last-gen consoles are safely buried in the past.
6 Bad Follower Or Friendly Movement
Like in previous games, some scenes in House of Ashes won't just feature a single character trying to survive the horrors of the night. Players will have to manage character pairs trying to survive together, while also interacting with one another. These are some of the best, most interesting, and rewarding parts of the story, but there are some mechanical hitches.
Sometimes, the movement of friendlies or followers is a bit janky. They might occasionally plant themselves firmly in the way of the player's character, sometimes even blocking a doorway and making it impossible to get to the next area.
5 Skipping Cutscenes
There are a lot of cutscenes and visual content in House of Ashes. In fact, in some parts, it almost qualifies as an interactive movie or TV show, much like Black Mirror's Bandersnatch. While this is great during the first playthrough or for a movie night co-op with friends, it's horrible for replayability.
It would be nice to be able to skip these longer cutscenes or sort of speed through them, at least until the player must make choices again or interact with their environment, like engaging in dialogue. As it stands, replaying the game for new endings and decisions just takes too long and forces players to rewatch scenes they've already seen.
4 Not Being Able To Load Specific Checkpoints
In the same vein as the previous issue, simply loading up scenes to replay specific areas or decisions in the game is extremely frustrating, since a single scene will usually feature several character POVs on top of cutscenes.
It would be nice to be able to select a scene and then select a type of sub-scene, which could be divided by which character the player controls. This way, players can easily go back to specific decisions or actions they made and replay them. For example, being able to choose whether players play the Salim part of the Pazuzu scene or the Rachel and Eric part could be great in making the game more appealing for replay runs.
3 Easier Way To Track Decisions
While the Bearings tab is pretty good in House of Ashes, what the franchise could really use is a flowchart showcasing the decisions and paths that players have unlocked. Locked paths could simply not appear to avoid spoiling how many paths are even available.
The best example and model for this would be Detroit: Become Human, which provides a flowchart at the end of every mission or scene. While this is a bit much and might reveal too much in a horror setting, perhaps Supermassive's next game could implement something similar for the whole game to help players better visualize their decisions.
2 Waxy Character Designs
Overall, House of Ashes looks great, but there are some questionable design choices when it comes to the characters themselves. It feels like the male characters of the game in particular received greater attention to detail when it comes to their appearance designs than the female characters, for example.
Rachel and Clarice both have a strange, waxy appearance compared to for example Jason or Salim, who both have a lot of detail to their faces. It feels like the character designs in previous games such as Man of Medan were much better made and more equally detailed, but were somewhat rushed in House of Ashes. Even Little Hope, which was somewhat subpar as a game, did better with its character designs.
1 Track Locations For Secrets
Completionists will definitely understand this point. While Premonition pictures in the game will have the name of the scene they were found in underneath their name in Collections, Secrets don't get the same treatment.
Players wanting to go back and re-read Secrets fully or find them again could benefit from knowing which scenes they found them in. This is especially needed since the Collections tab doesn't allow players to examine the Secrets they found all over again and enjoy the lore of the game.
House of Ashes was released on October 22, 2021, and is available on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.