Soulstice Review

This was a weird game, at first I thought it was a "Soulslike" considering how many of those kinds of games get made nowadays and "Souls" was in the title but instead the game turned out to be an action game like Devil May Cry where it's story and tone is heavily inspired by dark fantasy anime and manga like Claymore and Berserk with the game having heavy inspirations more so from the former. 

If you ever wanted a decently made "big budgeted" Claymore game than this game is as close as you will get to that. Speaking of which I will say that the plot being heavily inspired by it examples being the dark fantasy setting, an organization bent on wiping demons, an energy source that the warriors in the organization uses that will turn them into monsters when overdosing, agents that speak to the these said warriors and so on, a woman having a tragic past and the organization weaponizing that. Soulstice's story is interesting and well told enough that it doesn't feel too derivative of it and wish I was viewing Claymore instead. The opening exposition heavy cutscene was admittedly not a way to initally engage me in the story since it's just expostion being said without much visual flare or music but it gets better after that. 

This transitions me to my next point in that the story for Soulstice especially for the kind of game that it is well told and interesting, it's not a high standard, since many of Platinum games' titles aren't very well written. I do think the story of Soulstice with how Briar and Lute work together, and how the backstory of them and how the story in general is told in a way that both manages to feel natural within in the game, doesn't get in the way of gameplay too much and it does a good job and not feeling like the developers were cutting corners due to the lack of fully rendered cutscenes, nothing in the way the excessive cutscene use and the corner cutting isn't as egregious as Bayonetta relying on it's static film reel cutscenes. 

With the way the story is told with the flashback seqences of primarily being in Briar's mind when playing as Lute, the characters and story can feel more fleshed out than many other games in the genre even Donovan and Hannah feel decently fleshed out. Layton as well. 

However the cliffhanger ending, the fact it takes over 20 hours to beat and it ends with the, "villain only having a temporary setback" after all the actions the player did really does ruin the momemtum the story has up until that point since it's setting up a sequel that might not get made like an early 00s game. 

Speaking of early 00s games, Soulstice doesn't just feel like that with how it has fixed camera angles and light exploration, platforming and puzzles, it can also feel like that in how the game takes place in one location but is primarily a linear game like Mundas Castle in the first Devil May Cry or Vigoor Empire in Ninja Gaiden. So it was rather interesting to have Soulstice even with it's loading screens feel like you are slowly going on a long journey to get from one side of the city to the Cathedral towards the end of the game. 

The combat in the game is decent or at least I enjoyed despite not being big on the genre. It has the decently rewarding feeling combat of being in the rhythmn of hitting enemies and then moving out of the way at the right time. 

The weapon system of enemies being weak to certain weapons building up their stun guage was interesting and kind of reminded me of Doom Eternal even if it felt like I was often better off just widdling their health bars down with the hammer and then using the whip for crowd control then using the sword and using the bow on occasion. 

A big issue with why I never engaged with this system as much is that the game has a lot of pause combos and I am not big on those since, I want to be on the offensive, and waiting for a few seconds just to make my combo longer I just don't find to be very pragmatic and is just easier and requires the path of least resistance just to mash the hit combo over and over than wait and possibly miss chances of extending the combos, so as a a result I didn't buy many of the combos from the store. 

The game also doesn't borrow from the Capcom developed DMCs. Oddly enough, it borrows from the Devil May Cry reboot by Ninja Theory and it's infamous color coded enemies. I never recalled it bothering me that much in that game, and to Soulstice' credit, before the final enemy guanlet, this system never really annoyed me, since the game gave you enough healing items, take a decent amount of damage during combat, checkpointed well and enemies not being overly big damage sponges until that point. HA

However, you can turn this off in the accessiblity options menu which I never knew until after beating the game so if this bugs you can turn it off even if makes me question the developer's integrity by doing this at all. 

If you also don't like games where enemies can get their health back, then skip this, I did find it fair enough before the final enemy guanlet. 

Lute and the Unity system is also an aspect that makes it stand out from other games in the genre, but it seems like a system that heavily rewards people who are very good at the game and I can't comment on that since I am not big on the genre to want to get good. Lute can kind of be useful, but it can get very grating when I want to kill a color coded ghost and then Lute would lose power and the enemy could get his health back, I wonder if I could've made this more manageable in the accessiblity menu. 

Another thing that makes the game stand out is the "transcended form" and how you could get game overs and while I like the idea of combing gameplay and story, it makes the form especially at the final enemy guanlet where things get super challenging all the more useless. 

Two of the biggest issues I have with the game is that the game is just way too long and doesn't have enough to break up the pace to hide it's repetitive nature and the camera. 

Soulstice is already over 20 hours and since gameplay like DMC and Platinum games, aren't that long by comparison, it makes the repetition in them don't stand out nearly as much. However Soulstice is mainly combat and doesn't have much in the way of situational of depth compared to an older God of War game. The platforming, backtracking, puzzle solving isn't as good as GoW. As a result, I had to take frequent breaks from Soulstice because chapters can go on for ages especially early on. By the time, I got to the final enemy guanlet and the game ramping in challenge so much by the end to the point where I lowered it to easy just to get it done faster and see the end of the story. 

The final issue I have is the camera, more so how it can't decide on which camera system it wants to use. During exploration sections, the game has a fixed camera but during combat, the game can have a Kingdom Hearts camera system of sorts where it's controllable but it's reliant on a lockon that focuses and tracks the enemies. 

I managed to get used to it for the most part, but there are a number of moments in the game where I was like, "I really wished the game gave me a better angle on the action". Since in closed spaces you can get boxed in and it makes it hard to see where you are positioned when enemies attack you. This especially became a problem in the final enemy guanlet where it was hard to see, there was lots of flying enemies where the lock on would track them as they are attacking towards me, plus having multiple challenging enemies made it the worst part since so many times I would get hit because the camera would follow the flying enemies as I would try to move out of the way, they also did a lot of damage. 

The final two bosses after this aren't anywhere near as challenging even with the difficulty lowered. 

Overall, Soulstice is a very flawed and overly long action game in the vein of Devil May Cry that has a better story than most games in it's genre. It's rather impressive since this wasn't a big AAA effort and while I am a casual fan of the genre and got some enjoyment, there were many times were I did get frustrated a long the way, and worn out from how long it is.

If you like Devil May Cry, Platinum titles, and dark fantasy anime and manga like Berserk and Claymore, this game is certainly worth looking into in spite of it's flaws. If you don't care for that then skip.