It's immediately obvious that Shadow of the Colossus influenced Titan Souls: a mostly empty overworld, restrained and simplified controls (two buttons, used for a roll and shooting/recalling your single spirit arrow), and gameplay centralization around the thirteen boss fights are all reminiscent of Team ICO's most acclaimed work. Unfortunately, Titan Souls is nothing more than a poor man's carbon copy, because its boss designs leave something to be desired. Bosses go down in one hit, and so does the player: there's no room to learn on the fly when any hit will end the fight and respawn you outside of the arena, forcing yet another trek back. This devolves into spamming "all or nothing" attempts via trial and error: dodge through attack patterns until the boss displays its pink weak point, taking your shot when the moment presents itself and ending most fights in a minute or less. As a result, the game fails to create an engaging difficulty curve and never hits that sweet-spot, because there's just a sudden jump between struggling and breaking through, replacing the journey in-between with sheer tedium. It's the classic mistake of conflating difficulty with punishment, made even more flagrant in hard mode by simply accelerating enemy attacks/throwing out more projectiles instead of utilizing trickier and unique patterns to stratify different playthroughs.

Most importantly, Titan Souls lacks Shadow of the Colossus's ability to create a realistic feeling of presence. There's no intimacy to be found due to the brevity of fights and the absence of any other significant NPCs, and the game fails to build up any anticipation due to how condensed the overworld is (resulting in little travel time), failing to provide any cooldown or catharsis for similar reasons. After all, volume swells cannot exist if there are no punctuated moments of stillness to break up the action (something that this game desperately needs, considering how background tracks are constantly playing throughout the overworld). Ultimately, Titan Souls is yet another indie imitator that will forever live in the shadows of its influences: it appears to capture the surface appeal well enough, but fails to emulate any underlying details that would elevate it beyond a homage to something greater.

Titan Souls tem uma premissa massa. 1 hit, 1 kill, somente chefes, como em Shadow of the Colossus.

Essa premissa é interessantíssima e os primeiros chefes tem uma dinâmica boa e manejável.

O problema começa a surgir quando você vai avançando. Os chefes vão ganhando formas de se proteger de um hit fácil, com movimento, contra-ataque, defesa e múltiplos ataques de diferentes direções.

Isso não é necessariamente ruim quando você tem um checkpoint bem colocado com um reload rápido na ocorrência da falha que será bastante comum.

Jogos como VVVVVV fazem algo nessa linha, mas se tem algo que pode arruinar a experiência nessa proposta é justamente o que Titan Souls entrega: o excessivo tempo fora do gameplay.

Loading, deslocamento do save point até o chefe, loading do covil do chefe ao entrar, animação de introdução do chefe...tudo desperdiça tempo útil do jogador que poderia estar tentando novamente passar do chefe, mas se vê constantemente perdendo mais tempo aguardando e antecipando o combate do que efetivamente travando-o.

O nível é tão absurdo que eu resolvi contar. Cerca de 10s pra dar load, 10s pra chegar no covil do chefe, 10s carregando a sala dele. 10s após entrar e ativar o combate se locomovendo, atirando a flecha dele e esperando ele se preparar pra começar a luta. 5-10s de luta, morte. A proporção é de 4:1, ou, em piores condições, 8:1.

É ridículo o tanto de downtime que se tem nesse jogo. A maior parte dele se passa fora do prato principal, de forma tediosa e irritante. Simplesmente sem condições de continuar, mesmo após derrotar cerca de 6 chefes, o nível de irritação supera e muito o que o jogo tem de bacana, que é seu combate mortal e desafiador, mas gratificante e justo.

The hubris of naming a game "____ Souls" in 2015 is astounding.

Reducing a combat-focused game to a series of boss fights is not an intrinsically untenable concept, although it certainly raises the question of what value a large and barren overworld brings beyond adding a load screen between each attempt. The issue is that this design puts tremendous pressure on the design of the combat and the bosses to be stellar, since the game has nothing else to offer. And stellar these bosses are not.

Of the six fights I beat and eight I played before setting this game down in exhausted disgust, I'd consider every one of them to be a "puzzle boss" in the context of other combat-focused games. The challenge isn't in mastering the combat system, and sightreading is completely out of the question when a single hit is fatal. The challenge is always just engaging in trial and error until you find the cutesy little weakness every boss has and manage to eyeball the correct arrow angle in your half-second opening. It's the worst parts of the worst kinds of bosses you'd expect to see in a generic Metroidvania, not something worth showcasing as an entire game.

It uses its mechanics ""elegantly"" (as in, it's very simple and efficient for the player to understand and use), yet by the later half of the game, its kinda held back from its limited mechanics. This also impacts the boss mechanics: While it makes use of all of the players toolset, some can feel relativitly janky (see lava slime boss). It doesn't help that the bosses dont feel like bosses, but rather like "short super-meat-boy like puzzle levels". By that I mean the player is just trying to quickly go through the first 30 seconds of the encounter and try to hit its weakspot without dying. Doing so otherwise complicates the fight unnecessarly and just makes it way too hard and tedious than it needs to be.

It's an alright game with a cool hyperfocus on one mechanic, but that is pretty much it.

I have very mixed feelings about Titan Souls.
On one hand I found the world pretty bland and the lack of an actual (explicit) story felt like a missed opportunity. Additionally, the gameplay loop of constantly dying in one hit and having to walk back to the boss can get tedious and annoying quickly.
On the other hand, the small team of developers had some great ideas for the boss fights which often felt rewarding to complete and the obscure lore has its charm (on this topic I recommend this video by SolarPellets https://youtu.be/BtiNAqAJgAY ).

But I must say that I'm glad they made this game especially after playing it's spiritual successor Death's Door which takes a few core elements from Titan Souls to make a much more complete experience (and one of my favourite games)

Um dos meus jogos 2D favoritos, eu amo a gameplay desse jogo, por mais irritante e difícil que as boss fights do jogo possam ser, não é injusto ou frustrante, o que faz com que a vitória se torne ainda mais recompensadora.
O design do mundo e dos chefes são lindos e únicos, fazendo cada um, ou cada lugar ser memóravel.
As músicas são ótimas.
Por mais que eu ache que o jogo pudesse ser maior, ele está ótimo na sua duração, e com certeza vai entreter qualquer um que esteja disposto a passar raiva em batalhas contra chefes

2D Shadow of the Colossus. I really enjoy games like this that essentially strip the fat off and say ok the fun part of the video game are the bosses so thats all we're giving you. A lot of the challenge of these games is usually either trying to puzzle out the bosses weakness or being good enough at the game to defeat them, but this game does a fantastic job of combining them with having your arrow one shot every boss with very strict timing windows and having to figure out how to get them to expose their weak point in the first place.

"You have paid a high toll indeed
For the abomination in your quiver"

Fairly short boss rush game with a fun gimmick: you die in one hit, but so do the bosses. You can only hit a boss in their weak point, so every fight becomes a puzzle of finding out which attacks leave windows of opportunity, or in some cases, of how to expose the weak point in the first place. I had a lot of fun figuring each boss out, and they all held my interest long enough to ever give me a chance of getting bored or frustrated before the fight was over. This game can be quite challenging, but every death is fair.

There isn't much of anything to explore in the overworld other than a couple puzzles here and there, meaning the world is pretty empty aside from the bosses themselves, but that's not something I personally had an issue with at all. There's also some sparse but neat lore to learn throughout the game in certain areas, stuff like murals on walls. I'd recommend checking out a video on it if you're interested but didn't understand too much. The game looks quite nice visually too, and David Fenn does a great job of giving each area and boss a unique identity with his work on the soundtrack. The area themes create a somber tone to accompany the downtime that comes with exploring the overworld, and some of these boss tracks really kick ass.

I've heard a lot of criticism from people about how the game has respawn checkpoints based on the area you're in instead of right outside the boss door, leading to extensive runback downtime that can sometimes be longer than each attempt at the boss itself. But this criticism has always confused me, as I never experienced this problem myself; the longest runback I personally experienced was... maybe 30 seconds tops, I'd guess? And very few of my attempts were super short. Maybe I ended up being too good at the game to properly understand where they're coming from.

The only real criticism I can give this game is that I found a few bosses to be disappointingly easy or uninteresting. Although that criticism can be given to pretty much any game, it ends up being a larger detriment than it would be otherwise since this game specifically focuses on nothing but the bosses.

All in all, Titan Souls is a short but fun and interesting experience, and I can confidently recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good challenge. As a bonus, if you're ever unsure, it goes pretty cheap on sales.

FAVORITE CHARACTER: Knight Elhanan
FAVORITE BOSS: The true final boss
FAVORITE SONG: Forest Songs

Um action/adventure 2D claramente muito inspirado em Shadow of the Colossus. O objetivo é explorar um mundo vasto, porém vazio, em busca dos "Titãs" que precisam ser derrotados para prosseguir no jogo. A história é bem abstrata e não é muito claro o real objetivo do seu personagem, mas a pixel art e a trilha sonora são bem agradáveis. O principal ponto da mecânica de Titan Souls é que tanto o seu personagem quanto (a maioria) dos chefes morrem com um único golpe/tiro, e sua única arma é um arco com uma única flecha que precisa ser chamada de volta a cada tiro. Então as batalhas se resumem a sobreviver tempo suficiente para entender o momento exato de atirar sua flecha no ponto fraco do Titã. Isso pode ocorrer em segundos, e entender como um chefe funciona traz uma sensação boa. Um dos combates finais em específico pode ser especialmente frustrante, pareceu algo mais aleatório do que os outros chefes de melhor design. Mas num geral acho que é um jogo recompensador para quem quiser superar sua dificuldade.

Uma mistura de Shadow of the Colossus + Dark Souls pixelado.

Mais difícil do que parece, tanto você quanto os inimigos morrem com 1 hit.
Eu gosto de desafios, mas nesse jogo apesar de ir jogando, aperfeiçoando, decorando padrões de ataques dos boss e testando abordagens diferentes até achar uma que funcione, eu não senti aquela satisfação de vencer um desafio, com nenhum dos inimigos, apenas não senti nada.
Morri umas 200x até zerar, e a dificuldade em si não é frustrante, é um difícil bacana. Mas algumas coisas me incomodaram um pouco.

O rolamento do personagem é meio quadradão e não tão preciso no timing, não é fluído.
Os checkpoints são desnecessariamente longe da sala do boss, isso sim é frustrante, ter que repetir o caminho toooda vez que morre.

Num geral, não é um jogo ruim.
EU particularmente não gostei muito, mas reconheço que é bastante por opinião minha mesmo, outras pessoas podem sim gostar mais dele, então vale a pena experimentar.

I was always fascinated by the simplicity of the game. You have one weapon (the bow), one arrow, you die in only one hit, but so does your foe.

It's this simple premise that makes me come back to Titan Souls. It's this simple premise that made me attempt to beat it in iron mode. A mode where you start from the beginning if you die, or in other words, get hit only once. A task I never would have dared to attempt in any other game. And yet, because of the simplicity, because every boss can be killed with just one well-timed shot in seconds, this daunting task seemed doable. The game is by no means easy, especially when you play it casually for the first time. And so it is great fun to learn how to defeat the colossi - that killed you countless times before - in mere seconds.

I really enjoy the world, the pixel art, the atmosphere, and the music of Titan Souls. But while the empty world does a great job of creating this melancholic, lonely atmosphere I wish there would have been some more incentives to explore it. Some hidden secrets somewhere. As it is, it is a bit too empty for my taste.

essentially 2d shadow of the colossus, or at least that's what it's trying to evoke. it gets there, partially, in a way that i don't really want to examine too thoroughly. all that is to say, the real magic from sotc was the vibes and, as part of those vibes, how the game shattered any sort of dissonance between the player and the player character; that is, sotc is THE greatest rolE playing video game of all time, and titan souls is a fun two button boss rush with a cobblestone Aesthetic

if both of these video games were worse, i would say that the legend of zelda: twilight princess is to darksiders 3 as shadow of the colossus is to titan souls. however, the reader, in this comparison, must understand that this comparison only works if you only understand the legend of zelda: twilight princess in it's hypothetical form - a game that could have been a sequel, thematically, tonally, to the legend of zelda: majora's mask. if you consider this hypothetical version of the legend of zelda: twilight princess to be the canonical release, as i do, then you will understand the comparison.

"If you had one shot or one opportunity
To kill a titan in one moment
Would you capture it or just let it slip?
Yo" - EM

Distinctive, challenging and amazing.

Hidden gem of a game.

se foda, simplesmente desisti de tentar platinar porque ainda vai ser um tempo e esforço e neurônios que NÃO VALEM a pena gastar

eu odeio esse jogo com todas as minhas forças, não por ele ser difícil ou pelas mecânicas ou qualquer coisa, esse jogo é simplesmente esgotante e frustrante, eu tive mais bugs e problemas (até matando os bosses do suposto jeito certo de matar eles) do que tive de horas de jogo, e saber que ainda vou precisar fazer speedrun desse jogo maldito, zerar matando todos os boss sem morrer e ainda fazer um New Game + sem morrer de novo, eu sinceramente prefiro cair de moto