The game introduces us to our playable hero Kaser and his younger sister Louisa who were left orphans after the war between the Empire of Celestria and the Kingdom of Frosthold. They both joined GLIMMER a resistance group with the goal of taking down the Empire. We re introduces to Selene,
a woman that acts as a leader and keeps Kaser in the loop of things. Selene introduces Kaser to two new members, Gethya and Zana, who came to their area and plan to launch a surprise "attack" during the Empires festival parade with the goal of inspiring people to rise up. Glimmers begin their rebelious act but things
imidietly turn around as alien creatures also appeared out of portals and began attacking people left and right. These creatures are called the Voidrax and they seized the souls of everyone they came across. During the chaos, Kaser fell underground seperating from his sister. Panicked, Kaser tries to make his
way to the top. On his way he begans hearing a weird voice that promised to help him. The voice instructions lead him to meet the voice, Lord Arena, a giant Dragon like Voidrax. The dragon lends his power to Kaser and they both escaped the underground lab. kaser reunites with Louisa saving her life but an
explosion knocks him down trapping him under a wall. During this time, Louisa's Soul was taken by a giant Voidrax.
Kaser wakes up and catches up with Selene who gives hima brief of what occured and the state of the town. Lord Arena who looks like a small dragon snake lurking around kaser, mentions that there is still hope for Louisa as even though the Voidrax took her soul, they can always release it back. Ofcourse this was just a speculation.
He suggests travelling to Mount Salvation to meet with Queen Seleria, a powerfull being that once teamed up with Lord Arena who might have answers about whats going on. kaser teams up with Gethya, an archeologist with teleportation powers who volenteered to join. The heros make their way to Mount Salvation. Gethya chooses not to follow and stay
near the boat whilst Kaser and Lord Arena make their way through. The road to the Queen was guarded by four legendary Lords who do not recognise Lord Arena as they were corrupted with the Voidrax energy. The two fight their way through and with each encounter they release the corruption off the Lords. The Queen herself was not influenced and
welcomes Lord Arena and his chosen hero.
The Queen's role is to guard the seal that imprisons the voidrax and Lord Aramon, a powerfull being who tried to conquer the life Nexus and the world a millenium ago. Aramon successfully manipulates the Voidrax energy and uses it to control the monsters in order to collect souls that would weaken the seal even further allowing him to escape.
The Queen entrust the duo, to collect the five soul Crystals fragments that re scattered across the Alternate Dimensions. She cannot go herself as she has to stay near the seal.
Kaser and Lord Arena make it their goal to stop Lord Aramon. Arena has a personal hate against him whereas Kaser wants to bring back his sister soul. The emperor himself reveals that he wants to team with the heroes as his supposed goal is also to take down Aramon. He even tries to influence Kaser by telling that he was manipulating the voidrax energy to create
Super-warriors in case Aramon ever came back. The Emperor used to be the fifth lord that protected the Queen a millenia ago but he lost faith in her and wanted to be ready for any scenario.
Will Kaser restore his sister's soul?
Will Aramon escape his seal?
What is the Emperor's true goal for the hero?
The story is clearly influenced by the Final Fantasy Vii story. We have an empire(Shinra in FF) that manipulates energy(Voidrax/Mako) to create super warriors/soldiers. We have a powerfull being(Aramon/Sephiroth) who manipulate the energy for their own goal. Our hero, joins a rebel group for personal goals(Glimmer/Avalanche) but end up
joinning something bigger than expected. Lost soul aside missed one core element. The original FF7 told the story in 40-50hrs(80-100 for full side stories etc), even the recent Remake project is trying to tell the narrative in three parts( Remake, Rebirth, TBA) each being 40hrs+.
Lost soul aside on the other hand is only a 20-25 hrs experience, which means the pacing is kinda off. For example the oppening scene about the Empire and Glimmer's rebelion is literally only relevant for the first 1 hour of the game, then it takes the back seat as it becomes an adventure about collecting crystals fragments with a new threat in the horizon.
Thus the main narrative seems to be lacking identity. Despite that, the world building is interesting as well as the lore of the world. The same can be tell about the locations, from hidden villages, to sacred Temples and mountains, to the poor cities and the alternate dimensions. The relationship between Lord Arena, Queen Seleria and the Emperor are also done well
to create a believable tale. Unfortunately, the cast is hollow. Some heroes get interesting stories but they remain in the background whilst others dont get any developemnt at all. For example, characters like Zana and Gethya are interesting, one is a gifted warrior whose past we get to learn around the middle of the game (and i wont spoil) and the other is passionate about ancient locations, myths and exploration. She even acts crazy when comming across statues/
ancient temples to the point that she seems mad. They join you during certain missions but will either take a break or they ll take an alternative path leaving you to traverse alone. On the other hand, characters like Selene and even our character Kaser feel Hollow and one dimensional. We dont get to know their motives, their goals, their ambition or anything about them.
Finally, the pace of the story at times is slow, as the player gets from fight to fight to fight and after 5 more fights and platforming they reach to the next story point before doing the same another 2-3 times before the main narrative progresses. For example, you re at the bottom of a tower and have to go to the top, during which you fight 5-6 boss encounters, 10-15 voidrax encounters, 2-3 puzzles before reaching the middle of the tower.
Theres a reason why DMC games keep the story simple and can be copleted within 10-12 hrs and has bunch of arena challenges to test compat. Thankfully, the gameplay of Lost soul aside is one of it's strengths.
Lost soul aside is an Action RPG developed by a team of inexperienced devs whose team peaked up at 40, nevertheless, they somehow manage to create something very good thats worth praising. Throughout the game we control Kazer, a young man who teams up with a Glimmer, a revolutionary team to take down the Empire.
Kazer is Gifted, meanning he can use special powers and is good in combat. He eventually joins forces with Lord Arena, a Voidrax which allows us to use more powerfull attacks. The gameplay is best seperated into two forms. Outside and during compat.
Outside combat we can walk around in small linear worlds. Kazer, can sprint, jump, double jumb and eventually expand his manuver on the air with a dodge from certain weapons(Spear/Scythe) or airstep. Pressing any of the combat buttons will allow you to perform your combos naturally unlike other games where
you need to be in combat to extend your combos. Around the world, Kazer can interact with NPCs, chests and key items. Hitting consumable items, like plants, boxes, vazes, fruits etc, will break the item allowing you to collect automatically. You cannot just walk ontop of them and interact, you have to hit them.
Exploration is also not rewarding, as most of the times you ll end up thinking you can go and explore an area just so youn can hit an invizible wall. All the key items are usually placed infont of you. Theres a small minimap in the top right that depicts the hero, enemies and some key elements. The map can expand by pressing a button.
By interacting with Liana, an NPC who will be appearing in every mission, you can save the game, craft potions and change the appearance of your hero or a weapon. Interacting with her will always restore your Hp and will also restock your potions abck to maximum.
During combat, Kazer is "trapped" withing a decently sized area and will only be set free once all the monsters are defeated. The game has the typical combat mechanics, these being:
To me the gameplay of Lost soul aside was very fun, it clearly tried to replicate the DMC combat and to what its worth i believe it succeded. The buttons are very responsive in combat and it creates amazing combos filled with style. All the weapons feel unique and when you fused with Lord Arena you feel like a badass. Unfortunately, the game's sound effect make each blow feel like it has no impact which removes the sense of connecting blows. The game has a big variety of monsters each with their own attack patterns and weaknesses. Once again, despite the comendable ammount of enemies and fun of the combat, the enemies are filled with shields that makes some encounters mid way through the game feel tiring. Mobility wise, the game settled for a more linear approach filled with a couple of puzzles, some platforming tasks and certain abilities to use to unlock new areas.
Techincally speaking, Lost soul Aside doesnt have much post content but what it has is good. During your walkthrough, the player will come across certain out of place elements. Lightnning holes and a weird lightning plant. During these the player will have to collect the items appearing within time. Sometimes is flowers that appeared, sometimes a flower appears after one is taken and when interacting with the lightning plant, spheres will appear around the area, numbered 1-6, where the player will have to catch them in a direct order. The other thing is the Dispersed Dimension challenges. These challenges usually require the player to fight enemies on an arena with multiple enemies and challenges. The players will have to clear objectives in order to win. Last but not least the player can collect weapons, lore papers, crafting recipes, Lord arenas power gems and others which will help Kaser power up. Upon completing the game atleast once, two new harder difficulties become available(along side chapter select) and a Boss Rush mode.
The graphics of the game are for the majority of the time very good. It was build using the unreal engine 4(Not 5.) The cutscenes of the game are sometimes very good and energetic where as sometimes it looks very lazy
and uninspiring. Sometimes, most of the times the cast is exchanging dialog whilst the models are simply standing still or play their idle animations. One thing I noticed, is that throughout the game there was barely any blinking animations.
The charactcers look like dolls without a soul(no pun intended). Gameplay wise, the developer team made alot of animations for the attacks, battles and others. It goes without saying that the game's visual department is very good.
The level design is once again convoluted. On one hand, it looks good and magical that makes you want to venture around but you will most likely hit an invisible wall. Also the maps outside, in the land, it looks magical and mysterious but most of the
alternative dimensions are boring combinatiions of gold, silver and crystals around the land.
The same thing can be said about the music and audio. Once again it comes with its good and its bad. The backround soundtracks are very good, with some good rock pieces, some calm music here and there and ofcourse OSTs made by none other than legendary composer
Yoko Shimomura, who worked in many Final Fantasy, Kingdom hearts and other titles. However the effects are lacking. Hitting enemies with the weapon doesnt feel satisfying. Many compared the blade effects found in the trailers
to be much more impactfull and cool in comparison to the final product. The voiceacting became a meme and a punching bag of many as certain scenes were hilariously bad. The english cast fails to deliver quality audio whereas both the chinsese and japanese seems to be just okay.
During gameplay, Lord Arena becomes really annoying as he keeps talking and talking amd talking after each action which wouldnt be a problem if it wasnt for the fact that he only has 3-5 lines repeating over and over about how great and mighty he is.
Overall, Lost soul aside is a very good game but the inexperience of the developer team can be seen left and right. The passion for the project is "visible" throughout but the expectations were just too high. I personaly enjoyed my time with the game, the main narrative is a bit "self confusing"
as concepts that were introduced early on added nothing to the over all plot and things that made you believe would play a massive role were either kept out or underused. The majority of the characters are underdeveloped to the point where you simply just dont care about them. The lore of the world though its
interesting and there are some mysteries that manage to catch my attention. There are moments where the game is hyped with cutscenes full of actions but there are times where even though theres a clear action, the sound effects under deliver them. Lastly, most of the cutscenes include the character models standing
still whilst their idle animations are being triggered which once again makes things look and feel boring.
The gameplay is mainly fun but i cant stop thinking what it could ve been. To be more specific, in the trailers we see our character flying and using certain types of attacks that didnt make it into the final product. However this is not what it could ve been but what we have and i believe that
the gameplay and specifically it's combat is it's strength. The beginning of the game might be tuff as Kazer only uses one sword which limits the fighting style but the more you progress and obtain new powers and abilities the better and richer each encounter becomes. Each weapon feels unique with
it's own unique combos, finishers, dodges and animations. The linear level approach works well for the game and the platforming is straight forward. The puzzles are not really challenging which is good as it would ruin the momentum build prior.
The issue i had with the gameplay was the ammount of boss encounters and heavy shielded enemies i was phasing each time. Dont get me wrong, i am not complainning about the number of them or the combat, but the ammount of encounters each time in comparisson to story progression. Imagine going up a ten floor staircase
where each step includes platforming to reach an arena to fight a bunch of enemies with a couple of heavy shielded ones(mini bosses) just to go on the next step to fight a big boss and repeat that until i reach the top, just so my character can say ok, we came here but now we need to reach the other top ontop of another staicase.
This repetition occurs often it drains the fun out of the combat. All these bosses, minibosses and mobs could ve easily been used in the boss rush/ Arena battle game mode.
Visually the games looks pretty good in terms of it's world design and certain characters appearance. During compat, the fighting is stylish and flashy, however you know when a big parry attack is comming or when you should be dodging. Equiping charms in your weapon can become visible which adds charms and personalisation to each weapon.
On the other hand, some NPC look boring as if they came out from a different game and usually re barely animated. As i mentioned, blinking is somehow extremely rare as i recall only seeing it once or twice through out my 20hrs run. And once again it was frustrating how most story was given through avatars standing next to each other.
Audio wise the games narrative can only be enjoyed in Chinese or Japanese as the majority of the English cast didnt try hard enough. The games audio effects do not feel satisfying as most of the times it feels like you re hitting an enemy with a stick than a sword. The effects heard in the trailers were different, much better and thankfully it was
noted by the devs who said they ll work on it. Similarly there are a couple of moments after taking down a main boss where a cinematic is triggered but theres no sound effects to add to the attacks or impacts of the blows. It would also help if we could make Lord Arena talk less about how great he is cause after every encounter, every iteme picked,
he would give one out of the 5 phrases he has. EVERY TIME!!! The music however is very good, heavily influenced by both Devil May Cry and Final Fantasy.
The games post content as mentioned is unlocking extra difficulty, mastering the weapons and going through Boss rush. It fits the game's gameplay and it's a great addition.
It took me 20 hours to finish my walkthrough and got most(not all of my collectables). I believe this is a game worth experiencing however not to the price that it came out(70). I see some of the online critisism and the overal rating(63) which i disagree. I dont do ratings, but if
I did i would say is a 7/10 game. Something you would enjoy and worth your time just not on the price of something like an actual Final Fantasy or God of War.
This is a video of me reviewing the game