I can't even remember what it was that led to me searching for "games like X" but this one came up and happened to be on a deep sale at the time, so I snagged it and decided to take my first trip into the Ys franchise. Boy am I glad that I did!

The action gameplay in this is excellent. It's fast-paced, very tight, has a good mix of hack and slash and special power usage, and features some fun platforming elements too. Great 2D pixel graphics just hit right for me and this looks amazing on PlayStation 5, with several distinct areas to explore that don't blend together at all. And, as you'd expect, the music is quite good too.

The story is apparently told from three different perspectives and while fairly slight, I felt it does a wonderful job of presenting the history of this world and I really liked how the writing handles character development. I enjoyed getting to know them and was sad when my time with them was over. I usually don't play through games multiple times but I'm definitely considering it, just to get the other two unique viewpoints of this story. If not, I'll at the very least look up that information before continuing to my next game in the franchise (which is absolutely happening soon).

This was so good! I'm really stuck between giving it a 4 or a 4.5... it's so hard to choose... I may change it in the future...

Tormented Souls completely nailed the RE1 vibes. All of it. The feel of the mansion, the puzzles, the areas, the music, the storytelling, even the colours.

At the start of the game, I was actually freaking scared bro. I was pooping my pants because the tension was so high. It wore off as the game went on, but at the start of the game, I was actually scared! Which I can't say for any of the classic, fixed-camera RE games.

One thing about the camera I liked was that it wasn't always fixed to the corner of a ceiling. Sometimes it would be like a third-person camera that you can't control. It would follow you and make it feel like you're in control, but you still can't look around that corner without walking around it - no matter how much you want to. This, paired with the minuscule amount of Saving Items in the first half of the game made me feel so tense exploring every new room. The Healing Item scarcity was really good, I never had a stockpile throughout the entire game. The ammo scarcity could've been a bit harsher, I killed most enemies I came across and didn't really run out.

This game does a lot of the classic survival horror mechanics really well and even improves on them in some cases.
The music is really great and memorable, although it could sometimes feel a little bit too similar to Resident Evil.
I actually enjoyed the story quite a bit and the way it was told! All of the notes told the same overarching story but from different perspectives and they were interesting, I never wanted to skip over any.
You don't have to worry about sorting your inventory in this game which makes the gameplay much more streamlined.

But at the same time, there was still a bit of clunkyness with certain things. Like changing weapons, you have to navigate through two menus to do that which feels quite interruptive. Now, I'm not asking for a Doom Eternal weapon wheel, that would be stupid. But this wasn't it. And some puzzles have point-and-click aspects with things that are easy to miss. I looked up a solution for a puzzle, but it turns out I was doing the right thing all along, I just hadn't clicked on the exact correct part of the screen. The "plot twist" is also completely obvious after playing the game for less than a minute. Literally. That's not a massive deal, it's just kinda funny.

Overall, Tormented Souls is awesome! I'm super excited for the sequel to come out. If they can improve on this game, the sequel is going to be amazing.

Super charming with cute characters and awesome worldbuilding, full of clever puns and both ocean, pop culture, and soulslike game references. It's one of the only games in this genre that I've been able to fully engage with its story emotionally and understand, and that alone makes it pretty special to me. It also features a wonderful soundtrack that fits perfectly for this underwater adventure.

Mechanically the game is pretty solid, too. It can take a while to get used to the unique parry and I never really grew to love it, but it feels amazing when you do get it to work. The rest of the combat is okay. It's not quite as tight as you expect in a game like this. Difficulty was pretty well scaled, with some later bosses be a heavy challenge. I also really respect the game for having such robust accessibility settings that allows anyone to play this and essentially one-shot enemies if they choose. Play it your way and have fun!

I don't love challenging combat anyway, so it was the old school mascot platformer feel of the game that endeared me to it so much. Even though movement and traversal weren't fantastic, exploring the areas, unlocking secrets paths to find collectibles, a strong use of verticality throughout, and above all trying on the vast array of different adorable shells and experimenting with their powers was a joy.

Sadly, the game is pretty buggy with trophies that don't work (sigh) and some nasty lag at launch, but I do expect that'll get better quickly with patches that the devs have already said are coming very soon. I'm glad I went and played this now, though, because I can be recommending it to everyone for the rest of the year.