Soulstice First Impressions

With the sheer number of AA and indie Soulslikes dropping nowadays, I leapt to a certain conclusion when I first saw the title and reveal trailer for Soulstice, a new action game from Modus and Reply Game Studios. I thought, “Here’s another Soulslike! Let’s see what she’s got.”

But then I saw a little more of the gameplay and realized that the name is a bit of a mislead – this ain’t no Soulslike. Soulstice tackles a different beloved genre altogether: it’s a hack n’ slash very much in the style of Devil May Cry and even the old God of War titles.

It really clicked for me the minute I got the controller in my hands. Something about the game’s fixed camera angle almost instantaneously transported me back to the classic PS2 days and I was like, “Oh. This is how we doin’. Let’s GO!”

The only way I can really describe the sensation was nostalgia with a twist of the unknown. The game straddles this weird void in time where at once, it feels both old and new. It pays homage to its DMC roots while peppering in enough modern newness to create something truly interesting.

To set the stage, Soulstice takes place in a dark fantasy world that, aesthetically speaking, is almost like DMC meets Demon’s Souls with a hint of an anime twist in some of the character designs. You play as two sisters, Briar and Lute – Briar being the main physical body you control and Lute being an ephemeral spirit that’s tethered to her.

In a world full of Chimeras and Wraiths and Possessed with a giant Tear widening in the sky over the charred and crumbling ruins of a Gothic castle, the sisters’ goal is basically what you’d expect: kill everything and somehow try to close the void that seems to be threatening the world.

I’ll be honest, the story didn’t grab me overly much from the outset – but over time, the thing that’s been winning me over is the development of the dual protagonists. As sisters, they have a meaningful bond and truly care for one another. As each is burdened with their own form of suffering, you as the player witness them going through some personal struggles that both unite and separate them and I think this will end up being the true strength of the narrative.

At present, I’m roughly one third of the way through the game based on a quick look at a guide to see how many chapters there are so I can’t give a comprehensive review of the story, but that’s my impression so far.

And while the budding narrative of sisterly trials and tribulations is increasingly piquing my interest, what’s really driven me to want to write up this pre-review is the gameplay.

As I mentioned before, starting up Soulstice really was one of those rare transportive moments in gaming where something new manages to evoke the feeling of something old – and for Soulstice that seems to mostly work in its favor, but also a bit to its detriment and I’ll get to that in a bit.

But first: the basics. From the point of view of a mostly fixed camera that acts very much like it did back in the PS2 days, you’ve got some basic platforming and traversal tricks to get you from point A to B in each chapter. But the main attraction in Soulstice is the combat.

It’s combo-based hack n’ slash and at the end of each battle you get a rating that ranges from iron and bronze up to diamond and platinum. Your score at the end of each encounter is influenced by factors like how much damage you take, how good your combos are, how long it takes you to finish and so on.

Briar is your primary damage dealer. She comes equipped with a greatsword for her basic melee attacks and can pick up other weapons as you progress for her heavy/special attacks. These include things like a war hammer and gauntlets.

For each weapon, you can spend the game’s main currency (which you pick up from defeating enemies and breaking objects in the environment) in Briar’s skill tree to unlock various combos and perks. These are what you’d expect – various active abilities mapped to specific button sequences that let you juggle enemies, string together multiple strikes, execute charged attacks, etc., as well as some passive abilities that increase your proficiency with the associated weapon.

So far, it all sounds pretty standard fare for a would-be DMC clone. But things start to get interesting where Lute comes into play. While not an exact analogy, Lute is to Briar almost what Atreus is to Kratos in the latest God of War games.

She supports Briar with some ranged attacks that will target enemies throughout combat. But even more importantly than that, she acts as Briar’s block, parry, and counter system. When you see an attack icon flash over an enemy, a timed button press will cause Lute to block or parry for Briar – rebuffing them or even freezing them in place for a short time and creating an opening for you to chain together more blows while avoiding damage.

On top of that, Lute can create two types of energy fields – one blue and one red. These fields are on a timer that, if you let it run out, will cause Lute to “overcharge” and fall out of commission for a bit – leaving Briar exposed. But you’ll need to use them both in and out of combat in order to make various objects and enemies of corresponding colors become tangible. This will allow Briar to land on various platforms, break certain objects, and deal damage to different types of foes.

Not only does this heighten the tension of battles and add a more strategic layer to the combat, it also adds a little flavor to the otherwise straightforward platforming and traversal. Plus, when these semi-hidden objects are combined with the forced perspective of the fixed camera, it enables the devs to hide some clever secrets in the environments – from currency caches to challenges like timed trials and other combat simulations that help you master the sisters’ abilities while also unlocking useful rewards.

For at least your first pass through each chapter, you’ll want to poke and prod at the edge of every screen to find what you can. Otherwise, you could be missing out on important resources that help you upgrade each sisters’ abilities (governed by separate currencies for their skill trees) or even entire optional fights. (But don’t worry, chapters are easily replayable once you’ve completed them.)

The most exciting parts of the gameplay though are the systems you unlock and master as you start to progress the story a bit more. These systems marry into the narrative’s development of the dual protagonists and are called Unity, Synergy, and Rapture.

In the top right corner of the HUD during combat, you’ll see two icons representing Briar and Lute. The better you perform in combat, the closer these icons move together (“uniting,” as it were). String together enough attacks, blocks, and parries while avoiding damage and eventually these symbols will start to glow yellow (as will Briar’s weapon).

Achieving “synergy” between the two sisters in combat by pairing their abilities effectively (and by unlocking the corresponding skills in their skill trees) lets you unleash big finishing moves that deal a hefty amount of damage.

You can also eventually unlock the ability to enter into a “rapture state” which is basically a purple berserk mode where Briar goes a little Cheshire-cat looking for a hot sec (for reasons I won’t divulge) and everything gets a bit of a turbo boost. You deal more damage, you dodge further and faster, and all that good stuff that comes with being an unhinged Berserker.

At the end of the day, the dual gameplay systems that marry together the sisters’ abilities – particularly while in combat – are what make Soulstice stand out and be more than just a DMC or GoW clone. But despite how well put together the combat systems are, the game does fall into some traps as it pays homage to those classic PS2 era games.

The pacing outside of combat can be a little blah. Sure, you can just run from combat encounter to combat encounter, but you’re gonna be missing out on a lot of important upgrades along the way. You’ll need to spend some time just standing around murdering the hell out of every barrel, table, and dilapidated wooden bench you see in order to get the currency you’ll need to upgrade each sisters’ skills and buy expendable health/revival items.

Also, the layout of some of the chapters can be a little odd. Some chapters are much shorter or longer than others, and some don’t even really include a major boss fight. The boss fights that are there are pretty memorable, but sometimes they can seem few and far between – and enemy variety usually starts to feel like it’s lagging during those intervals too.

One thing to keep in mind there is the size and scope of the game – Soulstice doesn’t have the AAA team and budget that a DMCV has, for example, so the variety in gameplay isn’t going to be quite as deep. That said, the game is visually impressive for the most part despite that – the aesthetics are cool but the performance I’ve seen on PS5 has also been pretty smooth minus a few weird texture pops here and there that aren’t all that distracting. More importantly, frame rate has been smooth and supports the game’s hectic action sequences.

The voice performances have also been very solid so far – not just for the two sisters, but for the supporting characters as well (although from a visual standpoint, you can tell that Briar and Lute got a little more TLC than most of the others).

One last thing I’ll note that I found both impressive and praiseworthy was the game’s upfront prioritization of accessibility options. It’s slowly (painfully slowly at times) becoming more mainstream and commonplace for AAA games to have in-depth accessibility options from the second you load up a game for the first time, but that isn’t always the case for smaller games with smaller budgets, less experienced teams, etc.

But Soulstice immediately presents players with a decent array of options –from your standard text size and formatting to a color blind mode and even a good variety of gameplay assists so that players with many different skill levels, audio/visual needs, and motor capabilities can enjoy this game. Job well done in my book.

All in all, I’m very impressed with what I’ve seen from Soulstice and I can’t wait to stop writing this review-in-progress so I can get back to playing it instead of just talking about it.

While I’m personally not always a fan of the DMC or Bayonetta style hack n’ slash games that have a combo meter or scoring system for battles (I find it distracting and frustrating more than motivating), for some reason I don’t want to put Soulstice down. It’s not my typical go-to kind of game, but it’s pulling me in more and more as I go.

As it stands, my recommendation is that fans of old school DMC and GoW games have to give Soulstice a try or at least put it on your wishlist for a day when you’re looking for that next game to play. To do otherwise would be a disservice to yourself as a fan of the genre. Personally, I think Soulstice will turn out to be one of 2022’s hidden gems so the more attention we can bring to it, the better for all of us in the gaming community at large.