Mediocre 2000's DMC-likes and GOW-likes are back baby.
Took a slight detour from Sora's adventures in Disney worlds to check out this game that apparently takes a lot of inspiration from Devil May Cry, Bayonetta and old God of War, three franchises invoked that would more than turn my head in the direction of the source. The spectacle/stylish/character action genre desperately needs more games and bigger names today that aren't the dominant first two names that define the genre. And God of War is busy doing less interesting things now and on a break, not to mention Platinum is imploding on itself at this rate. Regardless, I checked this out today and...yeah.
So this really does feel like DMC, the design philosophies are flying all over the place: the hyper zoom in at the conclusion of fights, the almost exact same button combos but the controls are downright mad here, basic weapon variety/switching, a devil trigger that most games have shoe horned in today, and other details. It's cool to have some familiarity and it's not bad to take some ideas from the action giants as they are bursting with a lot of great ones, yet the execution of all of this is very messy and rough around the edges.
As Briar, you fight enemies with a long sword while also having your ghost sister Lute help by countering attacks when prompted by the circle button when enemies are about to attack. One major issue I noticed from this is the inconsistency in which counter attacks are executed as sometimes enemies become frozen, sometimes their attacks are interrupted, or sometimes their attack actually gets parried/countered back. Even after hours of doing this, the system never really seemed to work that well and countering felt more of hassle to do while attacking and I ended up doing more attacking and then just dodging to avoid this issue. The fights themselves were fine but became very repetitive even with the later weapon choices opened up down the road. I don't hate the combat, but it lacks polish and constantly feels off as hitting enemies and parrying never felt fluid or smooth and fighting just became miserable as time went on. Briar is so ungodly sluggish with a piss poor stinger and lock on, and lacking other quick movement options, alongside the very slow moving enemies too. This game also does the very cool but actually terrible thing of color coding enemies that you can only attack if Lute is projecting a red aura or a blue aura, but only for a limited amount of time before she quickly becomes overwhelmed. The basic combat itself is competent, but never really rises into anything unique or original, and wore out its welcome quickly.
Levels and gameplay outside of battling is similarly very dismal. The environments are real grayish and drab looking, living up to the "soulslike" name plastered on the game, and follows a completely linear route with no path diversions or difference in environmental design to bring life to the world. I guess you could say there are puzzles but they are all braindead. There's platforming yes, and it is both dull and so awkward given the camera moves in different angles while progressing and cannot be moved in a sizeable way to determine how far or close you are to platforms. It tries to take the approach of the God of War trilogy with the camera/perspective, but instead making it painful and missing so much style and composition to emphasize the scale and detail of the levels. These levels are so damn long too, almost Sonic Unleashed levels of horror with 20-30 minute treks through dreary, uninspired, hazy, goopy stages.
I've been real negative but at least Lute and Briar are decent characters with competent voice acting performances. There's really not much to them and they're about as deep and interesting as a puddle like the overall story is here, but they made the journey less mind numbing I guess. The graphics look okay for a indie action game. Uh, not sure I can really say anything else positive about this game though.
Soulstice is not an absolute trainwreck and I honestly want to see the developers of this make a sequel that builds up significantly from the very bare bones and generic stuff here. The game here is dreadfully bland, but it does capture that early aughts edgy and "cool" charm that many action games of the time lived and breathed. This game could definitely work for people craving some character action fun outside of the big names and who don't take too much issue with the combat and world, but I couldn't do it and there isn't a ton of things redeeming to even bring me back to playing this. Soulstice makes the Darksiders games look like masterpieces and I might even return to the first game I put down in January and finish it before moving to the second entry, well all of this after Kingdom Hearts 3 at least. The gummi ships are calling me.
Took a slight detour from Sora's adventures in Disney worlds to check out this game that apparently takes a lot of inspiration from Devil May Cry, Bayonetta and old God of War, three franchises invoked that would more than turn my head in the direction of the source. The spectacle/stylish/character action genre desperately needs more games and bigger names today that aren't the dominant first two names that define the genre. And God of War is busy doing less interesting things now and on a break, not to mention Platinum is imploding on itself at this rate. Regardless, I checked this out today and...yeah.
So this really does feel like DMC, the design philosophies are flying all over the place: the hyper zoom in at the conclusion of fights, the almost exact same button combos but the controls are downright mad here, basic weapon variety/switching, a devil trigger that most games have shoe horned in today, and other details. It's cool to have some familiarity and it's not bad to take some ideas from the action giants as they are bursting with a lot of great ones, yet the execution of all of this is very messy and rough around the edges.
As Briar, you fight enemies with a long sword while also having your ghost sister Lute help by countering attacks when prompted by the circle button when enemies are about to attack. One major issue I noticed from this is the inconsistency in which counter attacks are executed as sometimes enemies become frozen, sometimes their attacks are interrupted, or sometimes their attack actually gets parried/countered back. Even after hours of doing this, the system never really seemed to work that well and countering felt more of hassle to do while attacking and I ended up doing more attacking and then just dodging to avoid this issue. The fights themselves were fine but became very repetitive even with the later weapon choices opened up down the road. I don't hate the combat, but it lacks polish and constantly feels off as hitting enemies and parrying never felt fluid or smooth and fighting just became miserable as time went on. Briar is so ungodly sluggish with a piss poor stinger and lock on, and lacking other quick movement options, alongside the very slow moving enemies too. This game also does the very cool but actually terrible thing of color coding enemies that you can only attack if Lute is projecting a red aura or a blue aura, but only for a limited amount of time before she quickly becomes overwhelmed. The basic combat itself is competent, but never really rises into anything unique or original, and wore out its welcome quickly.
Levels and gameplay outside of battling is similarly very dismal. The environments are real grayish and drab looking, living up to the "soulslike" name plastered on the game, and follows a completely linear route with no path diversions or difference in environmental design to bring life to the world. I guess you could say there are puzzles but they are all braindead. There's platforming yes, and it is both dull and so awkward given the camera moves in different angles while progressing and cannot be moved in a sizeable way to determine how far or close you are to platforms. It tries to take the approach of the God of War trilogy with the camera/perspective, but instead making it painful and missing so much style and composition to emphasize the scale and detail of the levels. These levels are so damn long too, almost Sonic Unleashed levels of horror with 20-30 minute treks through dreary, uninspired, hazy, goopy stages.
I've been real negative but at least Lute and Briar are decent characters with competent voice acting performances. There's really not much to them and they're about as deep and interesting as a puddle like the overall story is here, but they made the journey less mind numbing I guess. The graphics look okay for a indie action game. Uh, not sure I can really say anything else positive about this game though.
Soulstice is not an absolute trainwreck and I honestly want to see the developers of this make a sequel that builds up significantly from the very bare bones and generic stuff here. The game here is dreadfully bland, but it does capture that early aughts edgy and "cool" charm that many action games of the time lived and breathed. This game could definitely work for people craving some character action fun outside of the big names and who don't take too much issue with the combat and world, but I couldn't do it and there isn't a ton of things redeeming to even bring me back to playing this. Soulstice makes the Darksiders games look like masterpieces and I might even return to the first game I put down in January and finish it before moving to the second entry, well all of this after Kingdom Hearts 3 at least. The gummi ships are calling me.