Guns of Eschaton Review — Scores and Early Impressions

There is no review score. The game releases on 8 December 2026, the Metacritic page has no entries, and the Steam store page shows no user reviews because the game itself is not purchasable yet. Anyone quoting a rating today is quoting something else — a sentiment, a demo impression, or a number they made up.

What does exist is a narrow band of pre-release material, and it is more informative than a score would be at this stage.

What early hands-on coverage says

The most substantive outside look came from Gamescom 2026, where press played a work-in-progress build and covered it in preview form. The framing that recurred across coverage compared the game to Red Dead Redemption and Evil West for atmosphere, and to Witchfire for the spell-and-gunplay loop — a comparison the studio's own design supports, since the game pairs scarce ammunition with occult abilities.

The specific mechanical impressions that came out of that coverage:

• Sequence shooting reads as the identity. Hitting weak points in order, rather than hitting them accurately, is what separates the combat from a standard shooter.
• The downtime is real. Reloads and repositioning take up a meaningful share of a fight, which is either the point or the problem depending on what you want.
• The art direction is the differentiator. Coverage consistently names the setting as the thing that stays with you, which tracks with the game being the last world Viktor Antonov designed.

None of that is a verdict. Preview builds at a trade show are not final builds, and the demo has since been patched five times.

The studio's own positioning statement

Unusually, the developers published a direct note before launch stating that the game might not be for you. The substance: the game makes you think; if you want a fast, direct adrenaline shot, it probably is not for you; your shooter instincts will mislead you; waiting for the correct shot beats spraying.

They also stated what they will not do — make the game easier or more generic — while promising to keep making it clearer. For a review picture, that is more useful than a score: it tells you the axis on which the game will be judged and the axis on which it refuses to compromise.

What to judge it on before launch

The demo is the only honest instrument available. It contains the Eye Angel boss, two archetypes, the camp shop and the full Codex system. Three things are worth checking while you play it:

1. Does the reload rhythm feel deliberate or tedious? This is the single question that predicts whether you will finish the game.
2. Do you enjoy reading the Codex? The book is the progression system. A player who ignores it will find the game unfair.
3. Does the art hold up at ground level? Screenshots are composed; the frontier at walking speed is the real thing.

If all three answers are yes, the pre-order discount is worth taking. If the first one is no, no score will change your mind.

How to read the score when it lands

When reviews do appear, three things in them will carry more weight than the number:

• Whether the reviewer finished it. The game is built on attrition, and a partial playthrough cannot judge the back half.
• Whether they played co-op. Two-player progression changes the difficulty curve, and a solo review describes a different game.
• Whether the complaint is difficulty or clarity. The studio has drawn a line between the two, and the distinction decides whether a criticism is about design or about onboarding.

What a score would and would not tell you

When reviews land, the number will compress a set of judgements that are unusually separable in this game.

Combat. Either the reload rhythm reads as tension or as friction. There is no middle position, and no reviewer will be neutral about it.

Clarity. The Codex either teaches you or fails to. A reviewer who never opened it will describe an unfair game; one who did will describe a legible one. The difference is not skill, it is whether the onboarding landed.

World. The art direction is the least contentious part. Almost all early coverage names it as the strength.

Length and pacing. A twenty-hour campaign built on attrition lives or dies on whether the middle third justifies its difficulty. That is the part a pre-release build cannot answer.

A single number will blend those four into one figure, and the blend is where the useful information gets lost.

What to do between now and launch

The demo is free and it is the only instrument that measures your own reaction rather than someone else's. Two hours in the slice answers the combat question, and the combat question is the one that decides whether the other twenty hours are worth your money.

Everything else — the score, the consensus, the comparison to other western soulslikes — arrives with the reviews in December and can be read then. Nothing about waiting costs you anything except the pre-order discount, and that is a ten percent decision rather than a buying decision.

That is the whole of the pre-launch picture: no score, useful early coverage, and a free build that measures your own reaction better than any verdict will.