Soulstice, Italian Devil May Cry review

We find it with great pleasure to confirm more and more often that the Italian video game market is developing more and more creative and enthusiastic developers who want to have a say in front of the whole world. Joining the list today is a new boot project that we’re sure will grab the attention of many over the past few months: Soulstice.

Already the authors of Theseus and Joe Denver’s Lone Wolf, the Italians Reply Game Studio Inspired by classics like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta, this action game is available for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X | It offers in S.

We’ve told you about it a few times after testing some demos and now we’re finally ready to tell you what we think of the final version.

If you’ve studied your combos and are ready to learn everything you need to know, keep reading ours. Soulstice review.

Two for the price of one

Soulstice tells us Keidas, Holy Kingdom that the real and spiritual worlds are separated by a thin Veil. By tearing it apart, we risk wreaking havoc on creation, and we rely on Chimeras, or two people coming together through a ritual, to prevent this from happening. The body of the first accepts the soul of the second, thereby acquiring higher abilities. this heroes I am truly a Chimera made up of the souls of two sisters: Briar and Lute. The first is the character we control, and the second acts as a kind of guardian spirit, both in fights and narratively, because the voice of the older sister’s mind is more daring and impulsive than it is.

The couple is sent to İlden, where one of them opened. woundcausing all humans and animals to turn into deformed and insane creatures, it will obviously only want to tear us apart. The plot revolves around the partially monstrous figure of the Chimeras, the past of the two sisters and the secrets of the divine order of which they are a part. In a dark fantasy world, of course, nothing is truly spotless, and embroidery from above includes smaller gears like Briar and Lute that can exceed expectations and, of course, dominate.

In general, even when faced with a nicely designed world, Soulstice plot it’s pretty obvious and doesn’t represent the package’s strong point. The twists come one after the other if we want to describe them, but they’re all pretty phoney and predictable. What is not entirely convincing is the minor sequences and even more the exchanges between the two protagonists rather than the overall plot.

Spiritual struggles are, indeed, a give two girls depth In terms of characters and most of his dialogues from the beginning to the end of the game, it is a copy of the previous one: it almost looks like “things are going bad, we have no choice but to move on, we will do it together”. We have nothing more to add to the duo “do it”. Outside of the plot, Briar and Lute struggle to keep the player excited.

The repetition is then felt from another point of view:adjustment, as noted, is a single city with a medieval style. Like an acropolis as high as a mountain, it is a vast place built vertically from the piers to the upper city and temple. Unfortunately, most of these areas consist of stone rooms, sterile living areas and sewers. In the final stages the team got a little more daring, but most of the time it doesn’t seem like they’re really moving forward because each area looks the same as the last. To be honest, there are clearly repeated spaces (in a clever and logical way for the architecture) but at the same time, thanks to a very narrow color palette, Soulstice strains the player’s eye a bit because it has little to no uniqueness and stylistically interesting. environments, both very generic and repetitive. On a technical level, at least, Soulstice defends itself well, considering we’re not talking about an AAA production: the important thing is that the framerate is stable even at high details, and the action is fluid and without hiccups.

Even design of the most common enemies It didn’t particularly convince us. They are mostly humanoids of various sizes and shapes, but always very similar and lack inspiration in the details. Between the enemies and the environment, it is completely gray-brown that tightens after a few hours. The single color boost is represented by some enemies being blue and some being red, as they are attached to “Fields” that can be activated by Lute, which we’ll talk about in a moment. Basically, don’t expect to be particularly impressed by enemies that are far from the fantasy and diversity of creatures Dante or Bayonetta encounters.

Battle and explore

Up to this point, we have not painted Soulstice particularly positively, we admit, but one thing should not be forgotten: action game and the biggest reason many people buy it is the combat system, and from that point of view the Italian opera defends itself very well.

Let’s look at the basics first war system. Through Briar we have control of the attack, while through Lute we have power over the couple’s main defensive abilities. The Briar works as you’d expect: it has a main weapon, a sword, and a set of secondary weapons (six at the end), distinguished by some unique moves such as range, speed, effectiveness against certain enemies, and ability. to use a whip like a hook on an enemy or to spin the warhammer in a large radius.

singles weaponry have several combinations, all of which have the same structure. Even without reaching the depth of a high-level Devil May Cry, Soulstice still holds up well in terms of gear and the core structure of fights. You run, pick up enemies, steal combos, quickly switch weapons and maximize damage while prioritizing the various moves performed.

In fact, Briar and Lute have a rapport This, when maxed out, allows you to activate a brief state of frenzy called Furore, which makes him very powerful and fast and allows you to activate a devastating final move. You can also activate Fury multiple times in a fight (if it’s long enough) if you constantly switch weapons, take no damage, and attack nonstop.

In addition to all this, another mechanic, fields. Lute can create blue and red colored domes that make certain enemies of the corresponding color vulnerable, otherwise impossible to defeat. Camp cannot be activated indefinitely, under penalty of loss of Alignment and temporary loss of Lute, so you should always be clear about who you are fighting, whether you activate or cancel the Camp.

Finally, it should be considered very carefully. lute. Spirit takes care of attacking automatically, becoming stronger as Alignment rises, but above all it allows us to manually activate defensive moves. Any enemy that is about to attack us can be blocked by pressing a special key, even if we do not see it (the login icon is shown at the edge of the screen). This means that you should always look at the big picture by looking at the whole screen, not just the closest enemies we hit, so as not to miss the opportunity to block the opponent who is pushed back or slowed down. depending on the type. Acting in offense as well as in defense speeds up Harmony buildup and therefore makes us stronger. Lute is also the most customizable aspect of the couple: the spirit has many abilities that allow us to take a more aggressive and risky approach to fighting or improve our survival. Skills can be repositioned at any time so you can experiment with confidence.

Soulstice’s battle system rewards balance, speed and precision. So it’s a pity that the camera has trouble following the action on average, especially in the tightest spaces where it can easily fit into the corners of rooms. Summing up the amount of items to consider, you might have some trouble keeping up with what’s going on on the screen every now and then. The developers suggest a “locked” aiming system that most people might know for spirits, but in a game this fast it’s not always an effective solution and sometimes you’ll spend more time trying to lock the camera to the right enemy. beat it.

Obviously, you don’t waste time just fighting. Soulstice completely sprinkles battles with narrative stages, research and collection of resources, as well as small puzzle platforming sections that require you to destroy some blocks that hinder your progress. The rhythm is perfect and you get from one section to the next without weighing each component too much. Without the aforementioned scene and dialogue repetitions, Soulstice would have flown with delight.

To close the picture boss fightsome are linked to enemies who later become “common” enemies. However, there is no shortage of unique conflicts that are on average well-structured and intense, divided into several phases. It’s too bad the villains have little impact at the narrative level, but at least in terms of visual design they far exceed the core foes. The soundtrack is also pleasant, especially in key shootouts that load the player and accompany the fast rhythm of shots and dodges. Instead, dubbing is devoid of disgrace and high praise.

Finally, we note that one can be expected. minimum longevity Fifteen hours increase for sure if you want to replay to find upgrades and secondary challenges (battles in arenas, with special conditions) that were not completed in the first round. Additionally, each battle and episode gets a point, so you can play over and over on each difficulty to get the maximum.