Tormented Souls Review

The survival horror genre I have mixed feelings on, when it's good, it's great, when it's tedious, it's unbelivably tedious. In Tormented Souls' case however, it manages to be up there with the likes of games older Resident Evil all though there are some things that annoy me about it, what's here is great stuff. I'd say it's up there with the A listers of the genre and beats out all of the C tier games. 

The best way of describing the game, like many have said, is basically Resident Evil meets Silent Hill and there is a lot from both series TS borrows from. You got the one location setting from the first RE, the limited saving of the older RE games, the interconnted map, being able to reload most weapons from the menu, the puzzles, the resource management, the decently powerful guns, and there are things from the SH series like the atmosphere, follow camera, tone, unlimited inventory space, and the fact the game deals with religious themes as well as the psychological horror.

However, TS does have it's own set of innovations like how you need a lighter and need to light candles in dark areas to see and in order to avoid getting a game over, how melee really comes in handy to save ammo, how there is a dedicated dodge command unlike many REs, and there is video tapes that puts you in different dimensions.

The strengths of Tormented Souls comes from it's level design and how it obtains the "sweet spot" when it comes to challenge. The level design feels very meticulous and calculated, for example at one point in the game you need to to use an elevator to get back to a higher floor to use a bolt to open a door, but the elevator can't be called from that floor but there is a cart where the elevator is to prevent it from going back up. There is also narrative foreshadowing how a switch that is in the main hall of the Wildberger Hospital will play a key role at the end of the game. Another example is how there is a switch with 3 key sockets that will help you open a door underground or how the underground sewer you will find a vault you will go into later. That's the thing with Tormented Souls' level design almost everything in the Wildberger Hospital services a unique purpose that you will start to come back to later down the line.

The next aspect that TS does well is the moment to moment challenge regarding combat, in the early game, much of the tension can come from finding areas to light with your lighter and while the enemy variety can be a little on the smaller side, I do think the enemies generally put up enough of a challenge and there is just enough amount different enemies to avoid the game from being stale. You do get a flashlight later and this could sound like it ruins the game, it does feel pretty liberating to get, being able to shoot and see in the dark at the same time. What TS does really well however is the moment to moment tension, early in the game, it can feel a little too unforgiving due to how stingy the film reels are but once you get a quarter way through, combat does a good enough job at making me feel weak but not too strong, at the same time, enemies take quite of nail gun shots to kill, and they go down quicker with the shotgun and electric lance, but at the same time there is a risk reward factor of, using the crowbar and wailing on the enemies while they are down, to save more ammo and hope they stay down long enough for you to kill them without using more shots of any of the guns. TS doesn't shower you with healing items like the old school RE games does with RE2 being the biggest culprit, in the former you get just enough amount of healing items that the tension of, "oh man will I find another healing item" is maintained throughout the game. Same goes for saving, early game is stingy with the film reels but after a point, the game gives you just enough to the point where the tension is maintained.

Things I didn't like about the game is the map, the former because I don't care for overly complicated puzzles in games since I don't have the patience for them anymore but that is a personal issue. The biggest problem I have is the map, and consistently unhelpful it is. I had to use a walkthrough a lot because the map in TS does a terrible job at slowly making rely on it less and less. With RE, I use the map a lot at first but then slowly able to memorize the layout, in TS while I was able to understand the layout, the map did a terrible job at easing me in and another big issue is that while the map isn't good, it takes way too long to bring it out, why bringing out the map wasn't mapped to the touch pad on PS5 is truly beyond me. How you bring it out in the game is that you have to press start, select the files tab and then move the cursor over to select it. The map is not only cumbersome to use but even selecting it too much of a pain. I prefer to not use maps in games but TS gives you a lot to keep track of and some parts of the map I forget, this is where I feel the 2002 remake of RE is an improvemnt over TS in.

Overall, I enjoyed the game a lot. I'm not super big on the survival horror genre but this game was a title I enjoyed much more than I was expecting to once I got past that early game hell.