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.

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 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)

I came across this game through PS Plus but it was so engaging out the door. Its art style is very cute and timeless, and the gameplay loop is very addicting. Me and my friends had a blast taking on this gauntlet of a boss rush and this game does something very unique in which all bosses die in only one hit. It sounds boring, but the bosses as well as combat is perfectly balanced to be a constant power struggle as you learn the enemy's weakness and the boss constantly moves around trying to get you. It was a good experience and fun to go back to.

"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

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

I was actually quite far into the game, probably fought a difficult boss and gave up? I really liked the atmosphere and especially the music. The idea of being able to fight with only one arrow is definitely interesting and the battles were also very varied and innovative....

Years later I tried it again and I've spontaneously finished the whole thing and defeated the last bosses. I quickly realized why I put the game down back then. Some of the boss fights are simply very random. You have to find the right tactics, which is cool, but the execution depends on so many random factors that a victory hardly felt like a success to me. Having to walk long distances to the boss when you've been defeated is also a flawed design decision.... So overall I was rather disappointed. The music is nice and I like the graphics too but the gameplay is frustrating and as I said partly unfair and random....meh.

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.

Titan Souls is a boss rush game that pits the tiny protagonist and their bow against gigantic enemies in pixel art arenas.

The idea is solid - each titan is basically a puzzle, they die in one hit but so do you, so you have to identify where the weak point is and find the opening in their attack pattern. Everything is small so accuracy is tough and missing means you'll have to slowly call your singular arrow back over to you while dodging the titan's aggressive onslaught.

Gameplay is fast paced and challenging to start with but never really evolves beyond the same single mechanic. It's designed to be over as quickly as possible and while there can be a bit of a mad scramble between the start of the fight and figuring out how to deliver the killing blow there isn't much substance to the encounters other than roll-dodging for dear life.

While my instinct is to be hard on this game I have to appreciate that it came out of a small gamejam project which was polished and tidied up for steam. It feels like a small dame dev portfolio piece, but the price absolutely reflects that so just be aware you're getting what you pay for, albeit respectably polished and good for a short single playthrough.