Lost Soul Aside Review
Rating:
Recommend!
Available on:
PlayStation 5, PC (Epic, Steam)
In 2014 before Lost Soul Aside and Ultizero Games existed, there was a lone developer by the name of Yang Bing had decided that Square-Enix was taking too long to release Final Fantasy Versus 13, before its cancellation and reworking into Final Fantasy 15, resulting in dawning the infinity gauntlet himself and deciding he was going to do it himself, uploading gameplay for a game that they were working on to YouTube, not knowing the large splash this gameplay video was going to make across the internet. 10 years later that game would finally launch on PlayStation 5 and PC as Lost Soul Aside.
The presentation, graphics and environments look good, the combat can be fun if you’re willing to experiment, but on the other hand the story is rather dull and Kazer as a character is a bit bland
I’ve been wrestling with my feelings on Lost Soul Aside, on one hand there are times that I would find myself having lots of fun with the gameplay, feeling engaged with the action combat by linking combos switching weapons, juggling and ending them with abilities, other times I could feel myself zone out while a story cutscene is playing or the 5th combat sequence against low level enemies is taking place. The presentation, graphics and environments look good, the combat can be fun if you’re willing to experiment, but on the other hand the story is rather dull and Kazer as a character is a bit bland, the voice acting feels disjointed and not well directed, at least in English it felt this way, it’s entirely possible that it’s much better flowing in its native language of Mandarin. The default outfit for Kazer is also rather uninspired, with him wearing all black, I think giving him a bit more than the red pattern on the inside of his coat to look at which you rarely see would have been good, thankfully on PC when linking your PlayStation Network account you are given a more unique costume, but compared to other characters who have more colour in their design, in some instances I could say that they went a bit too much to the other side with Liana as the example, it feels like an artistic clash that makes her or Kazer feel out of place when they are on screen together, but perhaps it’s for visibility reasons since you need to see her when travelling throughout the game. The animations that play when you launch yourself a long distance are pretty fun, Kazer will fly for a bit, then run on crystals doing a spiral, then surf on crystals for a bit too, some nice visual flair.
Exploration is very linear, the game at its heart is a linear Action-RPG, there are many long corridors that merge into an open circular battleground to fight enemies, occasionally some platforming or puzzles which at the beginning are very light and lack any challenge, but as you reach the end of the game the puzzles become more involved building upon the earlier easy puzzles to create some engaging and unique environmental puzzles. Offshoots from intended paths will also be found which usually contain some kind of treasure, while a nice addition I continuously found that the reward was not worth the time, the silver lining to this is that they do break up the corridor feeling which is nice. Even when placed in a more open area where it feels like the game will let you explore an open area it doesn’t last long before you’re back to the corridor feeling, it also quickly becomes apparent there’s nothing really to look for in the levels except the challenge gates. These are bonus objectives that will give you certain restrictions in a combat scenario such as “Don’t get hit”, and to defeat all enemies within a certain timeframe. Completing these challenge gates will give you rarer items, they are fittingly called challenge gates as this is where the player’s combat knowledge will be tested, a lot of the difficulty in Lost Soul Aside will come from these, expecting players to plan tailored loadouts to enter with to combat status effects while inflicting the most damage possible. You’re also given a very basic crafting system, throughout the areas you explore you’ll be able to interact with materials such as flowers to collect them for crafting, these will also appear as small yellow drops but primarily it always feels like you’ll just obtain small amounts of gold.
I believe Lost Soul Aside’s combat would have benefited from including a style gauge or post-combat ranking, having something to incentivise you to mix up combos
By far the combat is the best thing about Lost Soul Aside, taking core gameplay ideals from the games that inspired it, those being Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden. It’s easy to see that it leans more towards the Ninja Gaiden gameplay rather than Devil May Cry, while both are action games with lots of freedom in combo structures, Lost Soul Aside lacks the staple of Devil May Cry gameplay (and by extension the Bayonetta series) and that is the style gauge. I believe Lost Soul Aside’s combat would have benefited from including a style gauge or post-combat ranking, having something to incentivise you to mix up combos by switching between the four weapons you will ultimately unlock (Sword, Greatsword, Polearm, Scythe) to keep them fresh would have worked better to keep myself engaged with the combat. Throughout the game after combat encounters you’ll gain XP that will be used to upgrade Kazer’s offensive abilities, adding new combos, variations of your attacks and also giving plain stat boosts, the upgrade menu is quite comprehensive with each weapon getting their own skill tree. One thing that really annoyed me, probably more than it really should have, was the upgrade menu using your analog stick and D-pad inputs as a menu mouse. The reason this was annoying to me was there’s not a quick way to move between all the upgrade nodes, I don’t mind the analog stick being used for the fake mouse but at least set the D-pad to immediately switch between the upgrade nodes, the speed that the cursor moves was quite slow and while this is minor it’s something that I noticed when upgrading skills multiple times.
As mentioned previously Ninja Gaiden is clearly one of the main inspirations to Lost Soul Aside, where they differ is that in Ninja Gaiden the need for a style/ranking meter is discarded, instead it looks to make any enemy you encounter to be a challenging encounter, this is not the case with Lost Soul Aside as a majority of the enemies lack threat, it’s entirely possible this could change when you unlock higher difficulties but from the standard playthrough where you do not get to choose the difficulty they’re just not a threat at all, most of the time when I died it was because I stood too long in fire that would give a persistent damage on a status infliction. The lack of a style meter or post-encounter ranking means there’s nothing stopping me from finding one combo I liked on a weapon and just spamming that, which ultimately makes the combat feel unengaging and shallow. It can be said this would be a self inflicted issue since there’s nothing stopping me from actively trying out other combos or to look for moments to link a combo from one weapon to another, which I did do just to avoid monotonous combat, but as previously mentioned there’s no incentive for doing it, you don’t get rewarded for doing combos other than to feel cool and get to watch the flashy animations, and in my experience people are going to take the path of least resistance.
The bosses are probably a highlight for me and I was pleasantly surprised with how each boss felt fresh, and fair. Many of the bosses have some unique mechanics attached to them which were a pleasant surprise, I was expecting full combat the entire game but there’s a couple of times where a boss encounter pivots away from this to include environmental mechanics that are usually tied to a new weapon being acquired while travelling to said boss, adding new puzzles and it again successfully keeps myself engaged with what is happening, in some cases there’s just new combat mechanics ranging from multi-phases bosses to kaiju fights which added greatly to the spectacle of bosses and I found myself actively excited for the next one. An example of this, after finding the greatsword weapon there will be moments that require you to use the greatsword to activate switches to turn on barriers on a time limit, otherwise you’ll get an energy beam to the face. This is later reinforced after receiving the polearm weapon, while fighting an otherwise invulnerable boss you’re required to throw the polearm to damage weak points that will make the boss vulnerable to your attacks, all the while dodging their attacks. These were great sections as they give more depth than just “hit the boss until they stop moving” and are a great way of showing the players that these weapons can interact with the environment which is used later in the game for some puzzle solving, platforming and combat.
I’ve been enjoying the music, it feels varied with a nice range. There’s a nice tranquil, slow piano music that gives off Final Fantasy but then there’s electronic energy filled music being utilised for boss fights and such too. It’s nothing groundbreaking and it’s never the focus of a cutscene but the music isn’t overbearing and repetitive, if anything the music is rather forgettable.
Lost Soul Aside feels flawed, it was made with passion and from the dream of a developer that enjoyed a genre that at that time of its conception was in a bad spot, we’ve been treated with so many great character action games since that original demo gameplay through games such as Devil May Cry 5, Bayonetta 2 and 3 that ultimately makes Lost Soul Aside feel dated. I hold great appreciation for the development history of Lost Soul Aside with its humble beginnings and it’s a testament to the reverie that the original creator has for the genre and is entirely a success story in its own right that the development was seen through to the end, to make his dream a reality, but I feel it had the potential to be more. I would still recommend Lost Soul Aside if they are fans of the character action genre, or if they were still interested after watching some gameplay I’d probably tell them to pick it up on sale.
