Soulstice

Soulstice is very much a mixed bag of a hack-and-slash RPG. While it sports excellent properties like nice visuals and designs, an interesting premise, and excellent voice acting, it still lacks gameplay optimization.

Solid hack'n'slash reminiscence with a touch of Berserk and Devil May Cry, which falls short of its potential thanks to the poor combat camera.

Soulstice is a strong entry to the action RPG market, and a great showing for its young development studio. It manages to ride a fine line of providing a considerable yet fair difficulty to players of varying skill levels while also including many options for die-hards to ratchet up the challenge far beyond what a standard campaign requires. At the same time, it establishes an intriguing new gameworld that provides a satisfying first outing while leaving the door wide open for future adventures. It may not immediately aspire to the same household-name status as some of its sources of inspiration, but fans of the genre would be hard-pressed to not find plenty to enjoy here.

Soulstice is a small, but fun and engaging project with some minor but noticeable shortcomings in later stages.

With Soulstice, the developers at Reply Game Studios have probably created their most ambitious game. Nervous beat'em up set in a universe reminiscent of the Claymore manga, it plays on the duality of force fields (evocation, banishment) and a mix of exploration, puzzles and action for lovers of the genre. Unfortunately, the lack of means is felt over the length and we very often complain about a badly adjusted camera and obvious technical problems (slowdowns, excessive copy-paste, textures from another time, etc.). Not to mention this permanent juggling at the level of the side keys of the controller. In the end, Soulstice is a game far from being uninteresting, but which is reserved for fans of the genre and amateurs of scoring.

Soulstice feels – in a good way - like an action game of the past thanks to its brutal and intense action. As this continues to develop well, it manages to keep you playing. The downside, however, are the puzzles, as they are uninteresting and the level design feels a bit odd at times, which disrupts the flow. Some things to keep in mind, but the overall package is definitely to be appreciated.

Soulstice is an excellent first effort in what must be an enormously difficult genre. Just imagine the work that must go into crafting such big, challenging action set pieces and leave the player feeling satisfied rather than infuriated. Soulstice isn’t perfect, but I hope the development team does stick at this, because they’re on to something special.

Soulstice has some pacing issues and a dodgy camera but the combat is smooth, challenging and requires skill to master. A few tweaks would make this a fantastic game but even as it is fans of the character action games should definitely give it a chance.

Soulstice is enjoyable for the most part, even though it has its annoyances. Being available on next-gen consoles and PC only, it looks fantastic at times and has a great sense of scale. Its boss fights are exhilarating too, and there are some other hair-raising scenes that try to provide a little variety. Factor in multiple difficulty levels and many secret challenges to be found, and you have an action adventure game that you can really sink your teeth into.

Soulstice is a melting pot of things Devil May Cry does well and adds interesting demanding combat with two characters and situational countering. However, its predictable somber story and uninteresting world work hard to drain the fun out of things and its camera wants to be more enemy than friend.

When it all lines up perfectly, Soulstice can be wonderfully satisfying. Unfortunately, some strange design decisions and camera issues stop it hitting SSS-rank. [Issue#20, p.84]

So, the aftertaste of the dish that Reply Games serves us is somewhat bitter. It's based on a classic recipe, but falters and fails both in its execution and in its inspiration to add extra ingredients.

With its stylish Anime-inspired presentation, accessible combat and intriguing plot, Soulstice makes a strong first impression. Over the course of the game’s 15 to 20 hour runtime, however, the shallow, often chaotic combat, mindnumbing level design and uninteresting progression system drag it down quite a lot. If you desperately crave a new, somewhat big budget hack & slay, the game might be worth a look, but don’t expect it to reach the heights of any Devil May Cry or Bayonetta.