Ghostrunner

Introduction

Ghostrunner is One More Level and Slipgate Ironworks' first-person cyberpunk parkour game, published by 505 Games and released on 27 October 2020 at NZ$49.95, casting players as a cybernetic warrior climbing a mega-tower to overthrow its tyrannical ruler. Combat is built on instant deaths for both sides — one hit kills an enemy, and one hit kills the player. It sits at 90% positive ("Very Positive") across 24,352 English-language Steam reviews. This review read the 100 most-helpful negative reviews of 2,332 total, plus a sample of the 100 most recent English reviews.

Reviewers agree it's well made — the fight is over difficulty

Unlike most of the negative samples this outlet has read this session, Ghostrunner's critical reviews rarely dispute the game's craft. "This is more of a mixed review than a negative review," reads one representative 2020 review, praising the core combat before landing on its actual complaint. This review found words like "frustrating," "hard" and "die" across roughly a third of the 100 negative reviews read, spread evenly from launch through 2026 rather than concentrated at any one point — a genuinely persistent design complaint, not a bug that got fixed or a launch-week overreaction. "If you're a casual gamer you will repeat the same jump again and again for hundreds of times," reads a 2026 review comparing the game unfavourably to the more forgiving Mirror's Edge.

Achievement data confirms it

This review checked Steam's global achievement statistics to see whether the difficulty complaint holds up independently of what reviewers say, and it does clearly: the easiest milestones sit around 75% completion, while the hardest sit at just 1.6% — a wide spread consistent with a demanding game that a meaningful share of buyers never finish. Several reviewers explicitly recommend trying the free demo before buying, a specific and repeated piece of advice this review found nowhere else in its research this session, suggesting the community itself treats the difficulty as the one real gate between loving and bouncing off the game.

A design choice, not a flaw, for those who push through

What separates this complaint from most difficulty criticisms this review has read is how many reviewers describe changing their mind. "I am no longer a young man," reads one blunt, resigned 2022 review acknowledging the game demands sharp reflexes it no longer has — but plenty of others describe an initial wall giving way to genuine mastery. Recent sentiment (79% positive) sits below the 90% lifetime figure, a real softening this review takes as reflecting the difficulty complaint rather than any new problem — no other theme appears with comparable frequency across the sample.

Verdict

Ghostrunner is a genuinely distinctive, well-crafted parkour-combat game whose reputation for difficulty is real, well-corroborated by both reviewer testimony and Steam's own achievement data, and consistent across every year since launch — not a flaw the developers ever tried to soften. For players willing to push through repeated deaths, reviewers on both sides of the score describe a movement system that becomes something close to a flow state once mastered. Try the demo first if brutal trial-and-error challenge isn't usually your thing; otherwise, this is an easy recommendation.