Maybe my perspective is skewed because I'm playing this after Death's Door, but honestly, it's amazing that the team that made such an amazing game as Death's Door started with... This.

The aesthetic is unique, soundtrack is good, but as a game it's just boring or outright annoying. Shadow of the Colossus largely follows the same formula (the game even pays homage to it), but SotC does some things that Titan Souls doesn't:
1- Eye candy. As unique of an aesthetic as Titan Souls have it, you're just less likely to stop and admire the scenery. There's very little here to incentivize you to stop and wonder.
2- Bosses aren't as complex. In fact, some of them have achievements tied like "kill in 5 seconds". Imagine riding Agro for all that time only to reach a Colossus and finish the fight within the minute...

Titan Souls is disproportionate. It's a game that, for every 10 seconds you spend walking, you get 1 of actual, engaging gameplay. And when the entire thing offers around 3 hours of content, this means that you have 2 and a half hours of nothing and 30 minutes of gameplay. It's even worse if you go for a completionist run because this game is downright unfair at times. The dodge isn't as responsive as you'd expect it to be, and the attacks patterns sometimes feel like they're meant for a higher move speed that the one you're given.

All in all, this game doesn't offer much. Has an somewhat interesting idea while it fumbles on everything else. If you're not the type of person with a speedrunner's mindset to run the same things over and over again until you perfect it, then I can't really recommend this game.

"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.