Lost Soul Aside [Review]

It doesn't take long to understand what is good and what is bad about Lost Soul Aside. An action game with nice combo-mixing and platforming, while almost everything else falls flat. Fortunately, this “everything else” is not as egregious as it first appears to be, although ultimately worse than the good battle system and platforming, in a game plagued by technical problems and unbalanced systems.

LSA seems to have an indie game budget and definitely has an indie game sized team behind it. It tries as much as it can to be polished on its battles and platforming, and it is fun most of the time when doing these two things. The game has a structure similar to DmC and Bayonetta 1, but unlike these two other games, it doesn't feature that much enemy variety, sadly.

The platforming is fun and tying the weapons to different kinds of traversal is interesting, although some weapons do more than others. Actually, this feeling of systems being unbalanced kinda reaches the whole thing, some skills are way better than others, the equipment tab is horrendous (and so are the trinkets themselves), some accessories are useless while others have 2 paragraphs of text. There was no real reason to challenge my gameplay style nor experiment with new combos.

Some weapons seem to have been better realized than others on their power progression, and while the first sword, for example, has a good and balanced evolution, the later scythe barely changes how it plays with added levels on it. The “attachment” system to empower weapons is also awful, and it is hard to see Kaser, the main character, really getting stronger. There aren't interesting side activities or hidden bosses beyond some secret challenges on some areas that aren't that fun nor varied.

Outside the movement and battling, yeah, it is rough. There's traversal stutter everywhere, some of them dipping to 0 FPS, and while the game plays well and can maintain 60 fps most of the time, it is only while battling. Walking through the maps and entering new corridors always result in frame rate dips, and it is frustrating when it happens while doing some platforming. There's clipping everywhere, dubious invisible walls and many repetitive and samey environments – but there were moments that the vistas were pretty, though.

The story is really, really bad and the characters are indeed that unlikable and difficult to remember, as is the world building. Everything lore wise feels cheap, badly edited, with baffling fade ins and outs from cutscenes that really seem to be more of an annoyance than a feature of the game. Lost Soul Aside simply feels like an overly written and overacted script, with the most generic premises that one can imagine for a game… Nothing really works, and by the end, the story kinda knows it, and abruptly ends without really any kind of progression for any character.

It has a special place on my collection, as the whole development of this game is interesting to me, the amount of willpower required to actually create something new out of a major AAA cancellation starting with only one person. As the team grew, the game grew, and it is one of those experiences that gets better the as it progresses, with better maps and bosses. It never becomes great as a game, but for a first project, what it accomplishes is impressive nonetheless.

Thinking in isolation, there are some high highs and many low lows. If I was to recommend a game regarding its battle system alone, I would recommend Lost Soul Aside with almost no issues, mixing the combos is fun, the dodging and blocking are satisfying and so is the platforming. But with a dull story, bad enemy variety, really uninteresting characters, generic world, really baffling script and editing, and its technical issues; the cons somewhat overshadow the pros. Fortunately, in the end, what matters is that the game is finally complete, and with it, UltiZero Games may develop something new in the future that may be really great.

For now, though, Lost Soul Aside is simply above average.

6.5/10