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..
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..
4 Comments
@cowboyjosh yeah ever since it came out I had my eye on it, felt like one of those under the radar games so I decided to get it whenever it went on sale. Certainly feels like one of those older era hack and slash games.
Very nice you played through this. I bought Soulstice on pc back in the steam summer sale, and had fun with the combat with the story intriguing me but hit a roadblock when I encountered a loading screen bug that wouldn't let me progress. Returned it via steam, but still wanted to give it a fair shot later on. After reading your review I'm now inclined to give it a higher priority but first buying a copy for ps5 lol. Love the 'Soul' tag in the end!
@Detectivefail Thanks! I feel like thats something I failed to mention in my review is that. It may be something with just the game itself in general because my application crashed a few times at certain parts and one instance I could trigger the crash by fast forwarding through a cutscene/dialogue section, but once I just sat through it or skipped the one dialogue part it was fine. Never was a huge issue since checkpoints were good at putting me right back where I was, but still would rather not had to of dealt with it the few times I did lol.
cowboyjosh
4 months ago