Soulstice | PS5 Review

I long for the linear games of the PS2 and PS3 eras. That’s no secret to anyone that listens to our podcast. I like short, focused games that want to deliver on a very specific experience. Soulstice aims to do just that. One look at any trailer will tell you this game aspires to be like the PS2 character action games of yesteryear. Combined with its excellent art style and fun, grim setting, I went in incredibly excited for this title.

Once More Unto the Breach

Briar and Lute are tasked to stop a Tear in the sky over the major city of Ilden. It’s one of the great cities, and this Tear is allowing demonic entities to pour through into the normal world at an abnormal rate, leaving most of the populace dead already. It’s a slaughterhouse, and only a Chimera can stop it. Luckily, our protagonists are just that.

Briar is a superpowered force of destruction, a demon hunter in the truest sense of the words. Lute, however, is but a ghost. She’s a spirit, having long since died, but her soul is bound to her sister’s. A Chimera is the only force strong enough to take on the demon hordes, but in order for one to exist, two souls must be bound together through powerful magic. This requires the sacrifice of one soul into another. It’s a pretty messed up situation, and is where the meat of the story gets its weight.

Tears are rare, so several Chimeras are dispatched into the city. These make up the majority of the characters you’ll meet, but there’s only a handful of people in the game. Almost everyone else in the world of Soulstice is dead before your arrival. It sets a grim tone from the outset, and it never lets up.

One Flesh, One End

The demonic forces never let up, either. Combat is the name of the game in Soulstice, so you better get used to it. It’ll be familiar to anybody that’s played a game in this genre before, with a simple combo system and a wide array of sub-weapons. It has a nice, weighty feel to the combat, and an excellent assortment of badass animations. Where things are differentiated is in that fact you play as both sisters simultaneously.

Briar is the one doing the jumping, dodging, slashing, and killing, but Lute is essential to survival. She’s not relegated to a magic system or something secondary, she’s your primary means of defense. As enemies attack, there will be a prompt over their head letting you know. If you press this button in time, you can slow down or counter the foe (the game decides for you in a context-sensitive manner). It starts off simple enough, but things get trickier quickly.

Overload

As if having this additional button on top of dodging and attacking wasn’t enough, enemies in Soulstice are color-coded either blue or red. What this means is Lute will have to project the correct aura, using either the left or right trigger, around Briar for any damage to land. In fact, if you don’t have the correct aura, you’ll be stopped mid combo as attacks are deflected away. You also have to be careful not to leave the aura up for too long, as there’s a meter garnering its usage. If it fills up, Lute will dissipate for a short while, leaving Briar unable to defend or attack properly.

Honestly, this started off as a pretty fun idea. Mixed amongst the regular enemies would be these color-coded demons to watch out for. It kept me on my toes, and added an interesting extra wrinkle. Unfortunately, it becomes far too overwhelming. As you progress through the 20 hour campaign of Soulstice, it transitions from fun to frustrating. By the last third or so of the game, nearly every single enemy will be either red or blue, requiring you to constantly transition between both. You’re attacking enemies, switching sub-weapons to pick the ones the enemy is weak to, dodging all around the arena, jumping to attack flying enemies, defending via button prompts, constantly pressing either trigger to switch your aura, and keeping an eye on that meter making sure it doesn’t fill up.

It’s certainly difficult, but not in any sort of fun way. I could still manage to score a high rating in combat encounters, but I began to dread each and every one of them. It’s so frustrating to have to switch auras in between individual sword slashes, while also having to defend. Because, hey, if you don’t press that defend button in time, it can fill up your meter faster, too.

The World is Your Demonic Oyster

Exploration does little to alleviate the tedium of combat, either. As mentioned earlier, I really dig linear games. Usually even those games will have environmental variety, however. I hope you like looking at dark bricks, because that’s the only thing you’ll see in Soulstice for your 20 hours. Even the sewer system uses the same brickwork and doorways of the city above. The game tells you when you’ve entered a new district in Ilden, because they have to. There’s no way you could possibly visually distinguish between High Town or the Docks or anywhere else otherwise. Every part of the city looks like the rest of it. Whenever a fresh looking area is introduced, a cutscene quickly puts our protagonists to the other side of it and back into the city.

Conversely, everything else looks awesome. Briar has a great look that calls back to her obvious inspirations, and I appreciate that you can see the damage her life has put her through. Her fellow Chimeras also all look cool as hell, and every enemy design is quickly recognizable and, frankly, awesome. The bosses truly look mighty and you’ll always look forward to seeing the next one.

Sharp Eye Ya Got There, Don’t Lose It

The cutscenes are spectacular, though they are somewhat rare. Whenever they do show up, you’ll bear witness to Briar doing some truly inhuman feats with slick camera work. It was always a treat when one of these showed up. They’re seriously so good I almost wished Soulstice had an animated series I could watch. Unfortunately, most of the story is told in dialogue prompt exchanges. The acting is all well and good, but the writing is somewhat annoying. It’s not that it’s bad per se, but it’s weirdly repetitive. I’d estimate 50-60% of the dialogue spoken is akin to “We sure are getting closer to the course of the Tear.” Everyone is speaking a lot, but nobody is really saying anything.

It doesn’t help that the pacing is all over the place. You can go two hours without any meaningful story occurring, and then be bombarded with 40 minutes of non-stop cutscenes and dialogue. As with many games these days, it felt like an editor could’ve gone a long way. In fact, honestly, the game is probably twice as long as it needs to be considering the variety it has. It’s nearly all combat for 20 hours, outside of simplistic, color-coded puzzles.

In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is King

I need to make a quick mention of quality-of-life features. For one thing, Soulstice opens up by allowing you to pick your text size! 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. Another bonus is that the menus actually operate as if they’re on console. None of that awful on-screen cursor nonsense every game thinks works, but is actually terrible. There’s a full suite of accessibility options, as well, which is pretty helpful for colorblind folk like myself. 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.

Another small plus is the upgrade system. It’s a simple upgrade path for Briar, and a more complex skill tree for Lute. Unlike many modern games, however, the upgrades feel meaningful and there’s no way you can get them all in a single playthrough. It’s so refreshing to see an upgrade system that doesn’t get in the way of itself.

Maybe Next Time

Soulstice could have been so much more. If it was a tighter experience, it would’ve stood out more. As it is, it overstays its welcome and becomes far too boring by the end. The simplistic plot isn’t enough to hold your attention for the whole playtime, even with two very compelling lead characters. It’s a fine enough first entry, but I think a more refined sequel could really take things to the next level. These are characters I want to see more of, and I hope one day we do.

To hear me talk more about Soulstice, be sure to listen to Episode 418 of The Gaming Outsider Podcast around the 48:32 time stamp.

 

This review is based on a purchased copy of Soulstice for PlayStation 5. It is also available on Xbox and PC via Steam.