Soulstice: Deluxe Edition (PS5)

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Even for that completion time, it was so damn engaging that I felt like I had played it for 100 hours. It’s a credit limit that’s sits alongside your PayPal account which you can use for your online purchases. But by the time you’re sent on your mission – to investigate a supernatural storm corrupting all life it spreads across turning them into heinous beasts – you're the only one around to get the job done. The story of Ilden's veil torn above the sky is intriguing, with beautiful twists and a well-studied mythology, it is therefore a pity that the setting is not able to sustain this charm, despite the very good basic technique, trapped in a artistic direction that is often too generic and redundant. That said, Soulstice is structured as a game that you really should play until you finish, it’s not one you can put down and pick up after a couple days.

There’s a lot to discover (and a lot to master) as you slowly trek through its massive world and uncover one of the most enjoyable detective-style stories that I’ve come to experience. If you add the insane camera flying all over, locking you in corners and the combat knocking the wraiths too far away that you can’t get to them all in time, it becomes torturous, trying and failing to stop him being revived over and over. Soulstice is a near complete package of a game, but at times it can be overwhelming when you are controlling nearly 2 characters in some very heated moments of combat. Sure, it had me wishing there was more to the puzzles, or that it was harder, but the amount of content to experience in both the combat and the story is insane. Several other Chimeras have also shown up to assist in the fight, all of whom you’ll eventually meet.Weapons are unlocked and upgraded throughout the game and can even be switched on the fly to unleash stylish and highly devastating combo attacks. Hell, you can even turn on an option for Lute to auto-defend, which I did turn on for the last few chapters to alleviate the tedium. Gets boring in the middle where the scenery and enemies are very repetitive with the game having you fight in the same town from start to finish. I did have some instances where I felt some slowdown, but that was far and few between (and only on the last non-boss encounter chapter if memory serves me right).

Lute is the light in the edginess and I’d say she even serves as a straight man (but instead of against humor, it’s against edge) with how well she plays off of all the other characters you encounter. Through Briar and Lute’s bond, they can activate Unity, which only occurs once you successfully hit a certain number of attacks. Summary The balance of the Holy Kingdom of Keidas is compromised when powerful, feral creatures known as "Wraiths" invade from the other side of the Veil, threatening to consume the living. There’s a full suite of accessibility options, as well, which is pretty helpful for colorblind folk like myself.

Though, I wouldn’t recommend this as your first game in the genre (I’d more recommend Devil May Cry or Bayonetta as your first hack and slash). The story is a bit of a slow burn at the start, and while you have a good journey getting there, it is still a game that throws a lot for you to learn along the way. I think I would advise anyone interested to get it on sale, but if you want a game and like the genre I'd say it has potential to be fun. Well, each class has its own type of special move that you can use after a set amount of time in Rapture. When I heard about Soulstice, the one thing that sold me on it is that it was said to be similar to Devil May Cry and Bayonetta, which are two games that I love.

Soulstice does itself no favours by borrowing heavily from Bayonetta, and then falls short of its inspiration in every area. I honestly would recommend Soulstice for anyone that thinks they’ll like the combat or fans of the genre. Wooden docks give way to a massive hulking stone fortress, and that’ll be your home for a chunky portion of the game. Explore a dark world brimming with hidden mysteries, master a diverse combat system, and inhabit the dual forces of two sisters in a coming-of-age dark fantasy story with fast-paced action, vicious enemies, and spectacular boss fights. There are plenty of plot twists in each of its many chapters, all of which kept me wanting more and more as I sunk hour after hour into it.There's a ton of replayability and a high skill ceiling to achieve, but the lack of variety in gameplay elements and wonky camera angles keep it from being truly amazing.

In a world where every AAA game has to patch this in later, never learning from this mistake, it’s refreshing to see Modus Games and Reply Game Studios be smart enough to have it from the start. In practice, it’s lots of upgrading and you can have them all so you don’t have to choose one route. I hope you like looking at dark bricks, because that’s the only thing you’ll see in Soulstice for your 20 hours. Wraith-type enemies can’t be hit in the normal realm, so Lute brings them into the physical with the blue field, ready for Briar to chop up.I can find Devil May Cry a bit stupid at times – at no point in Soulstice did I fight wielding two motorcycles for example. I could be wrong about this, as I’m going off of how it felt while playing, but it really felt like the developers knew what enemies they wanted to put into each fight (which I have no problem with), but then just set them in a line to march into battle when an enemy dies or an invisible timer sets off for more enemies to spawn.