Um Hack n slash ótimo com um combate prazeroso e frustrante ao mesmo tempo. Seu leque de possibilidades, golpes e combos é bem grande, mas ele peca e muito na quantidade de inimigos em tela. Quantidade essa que faz sua perfomance diante do ps5 ir 60 a 20 quadros em muitos combates. Soulstice bebe muito da agua de jogos com devil may cry e bayoneta, um AA que tem seus méritos mas que peca e muito em sua duração. São 25 missões onde 40% delas tem batalhas e areas de parkour mega desnecessárias, os desenvolvedores esticaram demais um jogo que deveria ter no mínimo ter umas 15 horas de companha.
Para amantes do gênero soulstice é um prato cheio, com pouco estilo mas muita criatividade.

Disappointing. The combat has a lot of great aspects, but they're held back by terrible inclusions elsewhere. The field system adds nothing to the combat. It just makes it more tedious to go from fighting one enemy to another. The currency is given out far too slowly (for context, I got pretty high ranks on most of the chapters and didn't buy any items, yet I still was only able to afford 1 move per end of chapter). The item system takes up far too much real estate on the controller, and the camera is one of the worst I've experienced in this type of game, and that says A LOT.

I'd only recommend this to the most diehard of Hack n' Slash fans.

This game is currently in the Humble Choice for March 2024, and this is part of my coverage of the bundle. If you are interested in the game and it's before April 2nd, 2024, consider picking up the game as part of the current monthly bundle.

Bayonetta while missing the charm.

Soulstice is designed as an action game. There are long levels separated into arenas. There’s a scoring system designed for replayability and a ton of mechanics that need to be tried and mastered. While playing Soulstice there were a lot of games that came to mind. Metal Gear Revengeance, God of War, Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, and even Darksiders. And Soulstice feels like it’s standing on the shoulders of greatness with its combat system.

However Soulstice is missing something important compared to all those games, it’s not one simple thing, but more a style, a presentation, a defining animation, or a character personality that works here. Solstice just feels like it’s lacking an important part of the DNA of this genre, and it’s noticeable.

Pick this up if you like the action-adventure hack and slash, like Devil May Cry, but understand this is a B-tier effort. There are also a lot of different mechanics at play here, perhaps too many but also it allows players to get engrossed in the combat system.

If you enjoyed this review or want to know what I think of other games in the bundle, check out the full review on or subscribe to my Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/PX2c6Gm5Jbg

O jogo é muito bom tem seus pontos fortes e pontos fracos. Seus pontos fortes são: uma boa ambientação, gráfico muito bonito, uma trilha sonora decente, um combate muito bom e fluído, ótimas batalhas contra chefes, personagens interessantes (menos as protagonistas), cutscene e animações incríveis, uma boa dificuldade e variedade de inimigos e armas. De ponto fraco não encontrei muitos, mas algo que me frustrou foi os cenários repetitivos, quedas de quadros com muitos bonecos na tela, uma historia um pouco confusa e não muito bem explicada, vida dos inimigos desbalanceada, personagens chatos (protagonistas). Contudo é um excelente jogo hack n slash com elementos de plataforma, recomendo fortíssimo. RESUMO:
Gráficos: 8/10
Jogabilidade: 9/10
Enredo: 6/10
Dificuldade: 8/10
Trilha Sonora: 7/10
NOTA FINAL: 8.5/10

Eis que os desenvolvedores do jogo são fãs de Devil May Cry e Berserk, assim fazendo um jogo unindo as duas obras.

Coincidentemente, essas duas obras são uma das minhas favoritas também, então... tecnicamente, jogar Soulstice seria unir o útil ao agradável. E o resultado?

Assim....

NÃO FOI NADA AGRADÁVEL......
MAS NEM UM POUQUINHO AGRADÁVEL.

Eu já esperava que Soulstice não fosse nada demais, mas que fosse pelo menos divertido de jogar. Sempre que eu olhava os trailers de gameplay, me passava uma lembrança da época do PS2, onde tinha aqueles jogos que surfavam na onda de Devil May Cry e God of War, aqueles bem cópias mesmo, só que com nomes diferentes, mas pelo menos... eram divertidos (que eu me lembre eram divertidos). E vendo Soulstice, me passou a relembrar esse sentimento, então pensei: "UAI, POR QUE NÂO JOGAR, NÃO É MESMO? NÃO DEVE SER TÃO RUIM"

Mas é bem ruim sim....

Começando pela duração do jogo, já que ele tem ai mais ou menos, de 16 a 18 horas de jogo (ele tem 25 capítulos no total), e OKAY é uma duração razoável pro gênero, o problema é a falta de ritmo que o jogo tem e a execução/dinamismo das fases. A maioria dos cenários são extremamente repetitivos e geralmente você passa uns dois a três capítulos no mesmo cenário, sem mudança alguma, com hordas de inimigos que não acaba e chega a cansar de enfrentar.

Na verdade, o termo "cansaço" é o que define bastante minha trajetória com Soulstice, talvez por isso que eu demorei tanto pra zerar. Os inimigos são extremamente chatos de enfrentar, a trilha sonora é esquecível, a história é simples e existe, mas ao mesmo tempo é ignorável (até porque a maioria dos grandes "PLOTS" do jogo, é completamente previsível e a narrativa se estende até demais pra tentar explicar algo), os puzzles são sempre os mesmos, as boss fights são extremamente fáceis, e os personagens da trama também não se ajudam (é sério, todos são esquecíveis pra mim, inclusive as protagonistas).

O jogo se estende demais pra uma história que nem tem muito pra o que oferecer, e ainda deixa um puta de um gancho no final (um gancho bem ruim inclusive) para uma continuação.

Poucas coisas se salvaram no jogo pra mim, como a ambientação, que realmente lembra muito Berserk e seu tema de Dark Fantasy, e o combate que é divertidinho e funciona pra um Hack and Slash, tem uma boa variedade de combos que da pra fazer.

Foi uma grande decepção pra mim, achei que seria algo legal e divertido, mas no final só me fez ficar cansado com o passar dos capítulos.

Picked up this game with Gotham Knights last year during Black Friday and thought this was some souls like type of game, but came to find out it was a DMC clone which in my opinion was a sigh of relief considering that I have several soulslikes already to get to in my gigantic backlog.

Loved the designs of the characters and the bleak world they made for the environments until everything in the game nearly looked so similar with not much variety. The first half of the game for the most part was just screaming out mediocrity as I was on the verge of feeling like I made a mistake until the story started to get more interesting. Seeing the Berserk and Claymore heavy inspirations also made me more interested and the fact I absolutely loved Lute she was such a great character, pretty cool sister dynamic there.

The rapture form was like a typical type of rage mode, but the cool part was the different finishers you can do based on which of Lutes skills you decide to purchase and can change from time to time, also Lute in combat was so damn helpful too not like other AI that don't do much, she was there helping and saving me in dangerous fights from time to time which helped a lot since I decided to play the game on a harder difficulty. The berserk mode was such a cool concept and I really like how it was your kind of anime-style going insane and nearly uncontrollable unless you master it, which in turn had major consequences and could actually kill you.

Some bigger fights with the elite enemies can feel like a chore as you can't fight the way you want and have to constantly switch these two ethereal rifts to damage certain enemies. Its a conflicting beast as the more you learn the abilities and weapons switching it can be really fun, but sometimes it can be frustrating at times. The amount of depth the combat system has is unique and some fights can destroy you and cause you to use all consumables based on your mistakes which increase the initiative to not screw up as much and try different weapons and combos since some work better against certain enemy types compared to others.

One of the coolest powerups you get is like Devil trigger, but unfortunately for story reasons you do not receive it until the last few chapters in the game. Story has some cliche types of situations, but also its on spin with the world building and setting it creates with an unexpected ending that leaves on a cliff-hanger. I feel like they have something really special here and a good bit of things to improve on. I would love to play the sequel if it gets made, but a good chunk of things could use some work like making some fights more engaging and more diverse locations to look at and not so much blue everything. This game certainly won't be for everyone, but for the most part I came out liking it more in the end. The Soulstice does have some "Soul" in it that's for sure.

I really should get to watching Claymore one of these days..

First, a tip for AMD GPU users: use -dx12 as a launch option. It will give you abysmal shader stutters at times, but it will straight up double your framerate.

Anyway, I actually love this game but it has two big flaws. But first, what I enjoyed... I actually love the game's aesthetic, seeing Briar go sicko mode was what even made me interested to begin with. Plus I'm a sucker for the use of blue+orange color palettes, which the game uses pretty much most of the duration.

Also shoutout to Stephanie Joosten who apparently voiced both of the protagonists and she aced that shit. All of the main characters have pretty good voice acting tbh, but some of the throwaway characters are funny bad.

The story surprised me in how enjoyable it is, same with its characters. It's nothing ultra unique or anything, but I feel like it's cool as fuck and well done. It's my type of edgy, basically.

Moment to moment gameplay is great, and this is like the second time I've seen color-coded enemies actually be used well in an action game. Unlike something like DmC, you're not having to switch to different weapons, you just need to manage Lute's (the shade) fields and project the right ones for the enemy you're facing. You also have to manage Lute to counter enemy attacks to protect Briar (the actual attacker), which seems super simple at first but gets pretty overwhelming later on with how much shit goes on.

I loved the boss fights as well, though I didn't find most of them too tough. I died a couple times to the last three, but mostly because I adamantly try to not use items of any kind and I was on Knight difficulty.

Music is a nice mix of EDM and orchestra that really works for me. Thank FUCK this game didn't fall into the trap of using straight-up generic ass soundtrack orchestra garbage. That said, as great as the music is to fit the mood, it's not particularly stand out either...

But now, let's talk about my big two flaws. The first one is just the game's length.

I love the game but GODDAMN man it could've been half as long. It's 25 whole chapters and it took me around 25 hours to beat too. Some chapters are all story, others are just a boss fight, and others are like no story and long ass stages. I feel like character action (or stylish action or whatever the fuck you want to call it) games work best when they're relatively succint and incentivize you to replay with upgrades in higher difficulties. You can probably beat most of the DMC series in the time it takes to beat this one game. As such, I highly doubt I'll be replaying on a higher difficulty, which is a goddamn shame because you unlock new shit up until the very finale.

Can't say they don't at least try to spice things up the whole run, considering the new mechanics and weapons you get... but the stages are all visually samey. So in the end, the game really feels like its overstays its welcome. The finale goes hard as fuck tho.

My other big flaw is just the camera. I won't be pissing and moaning about the static angles out of combat because those never bothered me and I had no issues with the platforming at any point. However, camera mid combat sometimes shit itself so goddamn hard that I can't get a read of ANYTHING that's going on, especially if you use the lock on. Fiddling with the camera while dealing with the abilities of both Briar and Lute is too much at times.

Anyway, it's absolutely amazing and hilarious that the game ends with TWO entire sequel hooks. It made me think of Kingdom Hearts for some reason. I really enjoyed the game for what it is, so I'll be there if Soulstice 2 gets announced, but I just hope they know to trim the fat for their next game.

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.

Que joguinho mequetrefe, se fosse curto até dava pra passar pano, mas ele se estende ao extremo, joguei 7 horas e não aguentava mais. A história eu sinceramente não faço ideia do que se trata, ela já se apresenta de forma desinteressante e com o passar do tempo eu já tava jogando no automático, o combate é bacaninha de início até ficar extremamente repetitivo, pesado e chato, os golpes não têm impacto, a gameplay é travada, o sistema dos campos de energia azul e vermelho são um inferno e só atrasam mais ainda a gameplay, os ângulos de câmera de Onimusha 2 são uma obra-prima perto desse jogo aqui, é simplesmente horripilante a câmera, além disso as cutscenes são extremamente expositivas e só servem pra mostrar os cenários, são poucas as cutscenes que realmente acontecem alguma coisa. No geral, esse jogo não vale a pena, eu não desejo pra ninguém isso aqui, ele parece um hack n' slash que deveria ter lançado no máximo até 2010 e que precisava ter no mínimo 1/3 da duração, a única coisa que eu posso elogiar é o gráfico que é bem legal e a estética que lembra Berserk/Claymore, mas até isso é um problema, já que fizeram cenários tão iguais que eu acabava me perdendo enquanto jogava mesmo o jogo sendo uma linha reta, sinceramente eu parabenizo os 12.0% que aguentaram zerar isso. Além de todos os problemas citados, esse jogo é mal otimizado e crashou umas 6 vezes, até corrompeu meu save e eu tive que baixar ele de volta na nuvem da Steam.

Just got the Platinum after around 47 hours and 5 playthroughs, I guess it's time to drop my thoughts. I was originally interested in this because I'm a massive simp for Stefanie Joosten and wanted to see what she was doing after MGS, and it delivered in many ways and not so much in others.

First some negatives: I'm aware these are common criticisms and I don't want to sound like I'm just repeating what others say, but I agree with a lot of them. The pacing of levels, ESPECIALLY on a first time through, is very inconsistent. A few missions definitely could have been trimmed down, particularly during the second third of the game. While the game does take place in one castle/city within one night, there still could have been more of a variety in the visuals (hopefully this gets improved in a future sequel). The lock-on felt VERY inconsistent, much of the time it locks onto the nearest enemy, but other times it targeted random mook #2109 instead of elite enemy that I actually wanted to lock onto, and flicking between targets sometimes felt inconsistent as well. On higher difficulties, the remixed enemy setups don't feel like the DMC standard it aims for, many of the layouts lack synergy (extremely ironic since synergy attacks are a central part of combat, lol). I don't feel this is a huge downside, but enemy encounter variety could have used a few more unique types as well. The camera being an homage to DMC1's fixed camera wasn't too bad during traversal segments, outside of a handful of moments, but the camera can be rough if you're cornered by a bunch of big enemies.

As for what I liked? The combat, once you unlock everything, is EXTREMELY fun and satisfying and scratches the DMC itch. It's been compared to the DmC reboot and I feel it does things better than the reboot did, namely the color-coded enemies don't forced you into using specific weapons. The weapons flow pretty seemlessly into each other during combo branching points, there's even cool stuff you can do that isn't explicitly explained, like cancelling a full pause combo into rapture state. While enemy weaknesses to certain weapons didn't play as big a part as I expected outside of a few specific enemy types, but I didn't mind since I was having fun styling on them.

The aesthetic and art style of the game is pretty neat, it feel edgy in a throwback-to-00s-action-games way so it appealed to me. The story wasn't particularly unique, but it was interesting enough to keep me watching. Stefanie Joosten voicing both Briar and Lute deserves a special mention, since it shows her doing distinct voices for the two of them. The score was another great part of the game, it combines the standard orchestral sounds you'd hear in action games with dubstep-oriented synthesizers and drums.

The bosses are more good than bad. A few end up coming back as stronger enemies, but none of them are particularly bad. The major transcended bosses are great though. Donovan makes for a cool Vergil-esque mirror match, Jared and Jadon taking the form of a giant head is pretty creative, transcended Donovan is my favorite fight in the game (he reminds me tons of Urizen in DMC5). The final boss was kind of a bummer my first time through, then I learned a way to melt her lifebar and enjoyed it thoroughly.

I might be rating the game too much here, but I can't help that I had so much fun here. One of my personal favorite games of the last few years, and knowing that Reply Games aspires to make action games like Platinum is really endearing. Whether they follow up with Soulstice 2 or a new game altogether, I hope they take the lessons from here and work on the fixing the downsides to make something super cool. I'm aware this game won't be for everyone and the flaws might bother others a lot more than it did me, but I had a blast with this.

8/10

The game captures the essence of the games it draws inspiration from on the PS3 and Xbox360 (which also revolves around DMC). There's nothing difficult, no bossfight is difficult, and the ones with "special enemies" are extremely equal. The story drags on to the point that at one point you no longer care about knowing what happened, you just want it to end quickly. The game tries to make you get closer to the characters, but fails as most of it is unbearable. Another thing that the game fails a lot is the presentation of new enemies, which are constant, enemies with different powers, but which just take longer to die.

This game feels straight out of the early 2000s from it's heavy Berserk and Claymore influence to it's DMC and GoW inspiration, Soulstice I think holds up to a the PS2 classics. However, that's almost to it's detriment. It's game design feels very old and dated, but for me, that's where it's charm lies. This is a really solid groundwork for what could be heavily improved upon in a sequel. One of my favourite games I played this year and one I will grind through to get all platinum on all stages.

I love this game so god damn much

If I had to criticize this game a bit, I think it's bosses and challenges can be a bit cheap, and I think it's environment can get very bland and forgettable, even if it's story is not.