YMMV / The Surge

• Broken Base: The game's vast departure from the standard Souls-esque formula, featuring an non-customizable protagonist, item crafting, and a more story heavy narrative. Some people see this and other aspects as a case of They Changed It, Now It Sucks!. Some people see it as Deck 13 Growing the Beard and making their own thing instead of trying to completely copy the Souls formula. A third party thinks that the game shouldn't be compared to the Souls titles at all and be allowed to stand on its own.
  • The game having only five bosses. Some say that it's unforgivable given that Souls-esque games rely on punishing bossfights and they should be the biggest challenges. The other side however makes points that the bosses require much more effort to put down, have their own mechanics and Hardcore Kill options. There's also opinions that with a considerable amount of mini-bosses and most enemies being tough themselves there's already enough challenge going on. The DLC introducing only two new bosses didn't help much.
• Demonic Spiders: The Bloodhound robots are surprisingly durable, incredibly fast, do a ton of damage even with the best gear available when you fight then, and often it's possible to end up aggroing several at once.
  • Staff-wielding enemies are very rare early on, and for good reason: they are deadly because of their sheer speed. It is nearly impossible to exchange blows with them without taking at least some damage, which is what makes CREO Security troops so dangerous, on top of all their other deadly advantages.
  • The Nanite Mass - luckily you only meet them in The Nucleus and there's about 8 in total but they more than make up for that in sheer amount of frustration. Not only they have a sizeable healthpool their attack are confusing, highly damaging and come out quite fast and they're all but immune to staggering. To make the matter worse they can shed their armor to create a copy that will try to damage or root you to the ground, opening up the bigger mass to ruin your day. On top of THAT you cannot kill them normally - you have to deplete their life and overcharge them like the Power Circuits but the prompt appears when it feels like and only when you're close so you can find yourself mashing the button while the Mass unleashes atacks on you.
• Genius Bonus: Jonah Gutenburg, the founder of CREO, may be a reference to Johannes Gutenburg, the man who introduced the printing press to Europe, just like how CREO introduced the Neural Implant technology to the world at large.
• It's Hard, So It Sucks!: One recurring complaint in reviews of the game was that it's often unreasonably hard, even beyond the accepted limits of a Souls-like RPG, to the point of being straight-up unbalanced. In particular, late-game enemies were called out for being so overtuned that they can 2-shot even a fully tank-built character and taking far too many blows to down in return, until it's better to just sprint past them to the next objective instead of trying to fight.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: A common complaint - the game does lack in content having only a limited amount of areas, weapons, enemies and bosses and can be finished in 20 hours which isn't too much for a Souls-style game. The DLC tried to fix it but with only two areas, two bosses and three new armor sets it's debatable if it succeeded.
• That One Boss: Big Sister 1/3 can be this. Especially since the camera doesn't like having to track its multiple arms and you get a weird 2D camera angle when next to the main node, it can be tricky to target what you want to hit or understand what's going on.
  • The Black Cerberus. He's already hard enough with his own long combos, area-of-effect attacks, rockets and stunning waves. But what makes this fight even more challenging is having to fight a P.A.X up to FOUR times through the fight. This can be circumvented by having it shoot the white tanks but not only is that easier said than done but also it's never explained.
• Narm: The Iron Maus Gear Set. You're dressed up as a giant iron mouse. In fact, all the A Walk In The Park DLC's mascots can make any scene unintentionally hilarious because Warren will be running around with his head as a giant donut or can of soda, which just instantly robs any serious scene of its horror value.
  • The Chrysalis Trooper is a ferocious enemy that can easily shred your health, with one of its signature moves being to rush towards you while spinning like a top. Before they do so, however, you may catch them pulling a T-pose. You may give a few chuckles at the silliness of such a sight.
• Narm Charm: The Iron Maus armor gives you Adam-West-Batman-y punching noises. And a cheesy theme song that plays in Ops.
  • Nothing robs the game of its seriousness faster than the DLC outfits and weapons all put together. Cybernetic abominations and rampaging artificial intelligences face their worst enemy: a a cyborg cowboy astronaut wielding a giant coffin and a flaming candy cane. But that hilarity is what make it so awesome.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The music that plays when putting on the Iron Maus Armor sounds a heck of a lot like the opening bars of "Minnie the Moocher."