Publisher: UltiZero Games, Sony Interactive Entertainment
Developer: UltiZero Games
Platforms: Playstation 5 (Reviewed), Microsoft Windows
As you may be able to tell from the title of this article, this is the 300th review I've written! I started this whole creative endeavor at the tail end of 2012, and I would've never dreamed I'd make it to this kind of milestone! So, thank you for being with me for all these years, and I look forward to hopefully reaching even greater milestones in the years to come!
So, before I move on to the review, 2 things about the future.
1): I've been thinking about rebranding. The whole "Right Trigger" thing hasn't been a meaningful name for me for a decade now, since I haven't had an Xbox in as many years. I also find it harder and harder to read my own font choices as I age, and while I could go and change things, I do worry about screwing up all of the formatting everywhere.
If I were to do something about this, I would wait until after this year's GOTY article, then maybe create a different blogger instance for the future. I'd obviously still keep this around for the sake of archiving, just with a link to the new platform on the home page.
All of this is just spitballing at the moment. Part of me doubts I'll feel strongly enough about it at the end of the year to do anything, but rebranding is something I've been considering lately.
2): I don't think there's likely to be a review of Hollow Knight: Silksong. Despite it being one of the most anticipated games of all time, I haven't been one of the people anticipating it.
I remember liking Hollow Knight enough back in the day to give it an 8.6, but it's one of those games that has done nothing but sour in my mind since then. Things that irk me bigtime now simply didn't register on my radar as much in those days, but when I imagine going back into that game now, I feel preemptively irritated.
There's nothing I despise more than contact damage in games, and another thing that drives me up the wall is the whole "sound cuts out when you take damage" thing. Both of these are things Hollow Knight had in droves. So when I heard that Silksong is basically just more of the same, but even more difficult (with some people saying that double-damage is a frequent occurrence), I started feeling seriously not enthused about the idea of playing it. Anything can happen. I find myself still feeling pretty curious what all the fuss is about with this sequel specifically. But it isn't a likely thing. So if you don't see a Silksong review before the end of the year is up, that's why.
Now, on to the review! Having already taken up so much time, I'm going to get right into the meat of it without my usual introductory paragraph.
Yes, really.
You are Kaser: a man who looks like a baby in a trench coat, and you're part of a resistance dedicated to killing the emperor and freeing the people from oppression. The name of that resistance outfit is GLIMMER (in all caps).
Yes, really.
During a plot by GLIMMER to kill Emperor HighCastle, meteors start falling from the sky and evil alien/demon things start killing everyone. Kaser ends up in a secret underground research facility and has to free an ancient dragon spirit named Lord Arena in order to escape, and he learns that these evil aliens/demons are call "Voidrax."
Yes, really.
Upon escaping the facility, Kaser's little sister has her soul taken away by a particularly big Voidrax, and from there, it becomes his goal to get that soul back. This journey will take him to such exotic locales as "an island a little to the south of the city" and "an island a little to the west of the city." Yeah, for some reason, nobody seems to ever go anywhere despite the harbor being open. Anyway...
I'll be blunt with you: you think you've seen bad stories in games. You haven't.
You think you've seen doofy nonsense in games. You haven't.
You think you've heard bad dialogue in games. You haven't.
You think you've heard bad voice acting in games. You...might have, if you've been around this industry since its earliest days. But I still doubt it.
Lost Soul Aside features the worst story, the worst dialogue, the doofiest nonsense (there's a part where an imperial soldier is oppressing a group of peasants, kicks a kid, and the kid goes flying like 10 feet through the air), and the worst voice acting I've ever experienced in all my years doing this...and I loved almost every second of this game because of it! I would laugh myself to tears almost every night because it would find some new and exciting way to be absolutely terrible.
"This land will be consumed by a crimson sea of blood" - as opposed to a green sea of blood.
"Fireworks will ignite the people's will to resist" - GLIMMER setting up a plan to signal the start of a revolution by setting off fireworks during the Emperor's birthday parade...think about that for a second.
"One thing to remember about imperial turrets, they self-destruct. Timing is everything!" - Kaser, to himself, with nobody else around.
"Those guards were poorly trained, with no combat experience" - thank you for clarifying that, Kaser.
"The Voidrax have invaded the primarius" - and the flipfloinks have doo-wopped the klinklanks in the wobbly dum-dum bush down in dingly-dell.
"What you call gifted energy is actually Voidrax energy" - well now I feel stupid!
"Pain is life's bitter truth...as bitter as this coffee" - random NPC at an outdoor table to nobody in particular since nobody is at the table with her.
"You seem like a true and brave hero" - phew, I knew he was brave but I worried about him being false.
"Behold, my ultimate artwork of blood!" - ooooh, edgy!
"I hope you have dug your graves ready to be filled!" - as opposed to already dug graves that are a little nervous about being filled for the first time.
"Sounds like you owe Lord Arena a big one!" - Lord Arena referring to himself in the third person out of nowhere and using modern lingo to do so.
Then an interchange that happens (paraphrased):
"This is Buckhorn palace."
"Buckhorn palace..."
"Ah, this was the palace ruled by Lord Buckhorn, wasn't it?"
"Yes, and Buckhorn palace is said to be the home of the Buckhorn spirit-dragon"
"The Buckhorn spirit-dragon..."
"Some people still believe in the Buckhorn spirit-dragon"
"The Buckhorn spirit dragon in the Buckhorn palace that was ruled by Lord Buckhorn back when Lord Buckhorn ruled the Buckhorn palace that was named after Lord Buckhorn (since he ruled the Buckhorn palace) and that serves as a home to the Buckhorn palace's Buckhorn spirit-dragon?"
"Buckhorn"
"Buckhorn..."
"Buckhorn"
I'm obviously exaggerating that last one, but not by much.
Even beyond the easily-quotable stuff, there's a bunch of really odd quirks in the writing. Entire exchanges will have sentences that feel out of order and tangential. For example, in the underground lab at the start of the game, Kaser is talking to himself, and the lines go as follows:
"This is crazy"
"What is going on here?"
"But right now, I need to-"
"These crystals, are they connect-"
"Yes, they are!"
See what I mean? It's like individual lines were placed into this section with no sense of context compared with other lines. You may also be able to pick up on the fact that lines frequently get cut off based on how I wrote that exchange down. Characters speak at about a million miles an hour and even that isn't enough to keep other lines from compounding on the lines already being spoken.
For another example of weirdness in the writing, take Kaser's sister. Every line she speaks to him has to include the word "brother" in it. "I'm coming with you, brother." "Brother and I will do this." "Well, brother, shall we go?" She's a girl like half Kaser's size but I was half expecting her to grow a white handlebar mustache at some point! It's beyond weird, it made my skin crawl a little bit, and it lends some credence to the prevailing theory about this game's writing: poor translation.
I think maybe a word for "sibling" is actually used frequently in the original Chinese, and maybe the translation into English is far too literal? That kind of thing would also explain why lines are weird in the specific ways they're weird, and if they couldn't do concise translations, it could account for the line readings cutting each other off.
But here's the thing: this is a directly Sony-backed project that has been in development for a decade. You're telling me that with Sony's money, they couldn't have hired a translator that could do their job? And if not that, you're telling me they couldn't have at least hired competent voice actors?
If you haven't yet played Lost Soul Aside, go to Youtube right now and look up some of the voice acting. It's some of the most laughably bad voice acting you'll ever hear! And unlike other times where I might rag on voice acting, I actually have some reasons why it's bad here.
One reason is a clear lack of direction, which is no fault of the cast. Take the whole Buckhorn exchange. Every time "Buckhorn" is said, it's spoken like it's the first time the word has been said, with the "buck" spoken in a higher pitch than the "horn." They clearly weren't being told they were having an exchange, they were just being given individual lines without context. Not just in terms of conversations, either. There are also lines delivered right in the thick of combat that clearly weren't presented to the cast as combat lines.
But that isn't to say the actors didn't do a terrible job on their own. The clip you're likely to see if you look up the acting is a clip of Kaser falling into a pit, and that bit of voice work couldn't be saved by all the directing in the world. At times it seems like the cast are simply reading off their line cards, and I mean that literally. Voice acting is always technically reading off line cards, but it's really like they're just...reading them. For instance, Kaser says "Out of...my way" at one point. In your head, what might a good actor make that sound like? In my mind, it's a labored line delivered as Kaser cuts through enemies. So, lots of exertion, maybe a little desperation, something that makes that "..." mean something. But no. It's delivered exactly as it looks. The guy just says "out of," pauses, then, "my way." I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried. The only somewhat decent voice work is delivered by Lord Arena's actor, but even he isn't anything to write home about.
Further compounding on all of this is truly awful sound mixing. Character voices will sometimes disappear entirely behind music or suddenly become loud, and the lack of enthusiasm from the cast only brings the volume down lower. It's either bad mixing or the entire cast kept moving while speaking into the microphone. Honestly, I'd believe either explanation!
This is what Yahtzee Croshaw refers to as a "spectacle fighter" and what boring game journalists refer to as a "character action game." That is to say the whole point is that you dispatch enemies in the flashiest ways possible using specific button combos and special attacks. A lot of flash and varying degrees of substance, in other words. You're primarily working with the following controls: square for attack 1, triangle for attack 2 (it isn't strictly light-vs-heavy like in most games), L1 to dodge, circle to parry, and x to jump. Combos are performed with any combination of those, with button holds sometimes making their way into the mix.
After certain combos, there's also a brief moment where Kaser glows blue, and if you press R2 in that time, he performs a combo-specific follow-up attack. So there's quite a bit of stuff that you can do at any moment to deal damage.
Further adding to the variety in gameplay is the differences between weapons. Kaser can swap between four weapons at will: a sword, a greatsword, a poleblade, and a scythe. There are a handful of weapons of each type, but we don't need to get into that. Each weapon type comes with its own tree of combos and a unique gameplay flow specific to it.
For the sword, the flow is pretty standard hack-and-slash fare, and the game makes up for that fact with a far greater wealth of combos than in any other weapon type.
The greatsword deals with...something like earthquakes? It's the one weapon I didn't ever use, so I can't say for sure.
The poleblade acts as both a slashing weapon and an energy gun of sorts.
Finally, the scythe's (my weapon of choice) gameplay style revolves around using space as effectively as possible. What I mean by that is that the weapon can be thrown and teleported to, dodging and attacking creates ghostly scythes that hone onto enemies you leave in your wake, the blue burst attack creates an array of landmines, etc. I couldn't think of a concise way to put any of that.
So, you have four weapon types, and each of them come with their own set of combos and overall styles. That's a lot of options to choose from! Surely there couldn't be any other ways you can customize the combat experience, right?
Well...what if I told you Lost Soul Aside also features one of the greatest weapon customization systems I've ever seen?
Each weapon comes with something like 6-10 passive bonus slots. These passive bonuses come in the form of little decorations like angel wings or a flower or what have you. Applying these bonuses means taking these decorations and putting them somewhere on your weapon...or by your weapon. You're essentially given a view of the weapon and are asked to drag and drop the decoration wherever you want. But it's like the developers didn't want to spend the time to actually make the weapon itself customizable and instead just made the whole object box containing the weapon's look and data customizable. So, you can take your sword or your scythe and make it into the most cursed elementary school macaroni art monstrosity you can imagine!
I personally decorated my sword in as cursed a way as I could, with a theatrical mask floating off to the side and holding up a demon wing, and I also had something spiky on the handle so Kaser could canonically be edgy about how he wields his weapon. Everything you do to your weapon in the customization menu shows up in combat, so let your imagination run wild!
And on the subject of customization, there's one more thing that amused me beyond belief. See, there are clearly spaces within the weapon system to "upgrade"...but when I looked it up, nobody seemed to know how to do it. I just love this game and how horribly it has been handled! You get laughable writing and voice acting, you get lazily cobbled-together customization systems that let you make ridiculous things, and you get an upgrade system that nobody knows how to use! Lost Soul Aside is the gift that keeps on giving!
There's a specific combo where you hold square to have Kaser take a step back and do a forward slash, then hold triangle to have him disappear into a cloud of completely anime disembodied slashes, then press R2 in the blue aura mode to have Kaser stand perfectly still and summon a cloud of disembodies slashes that move about twice as fast over a broad radius. I mean, come on, I defy you to tell me that isn't cool! Most combos are as active and engaging as that, and it makes for everything one could hope for in a spectacle fighter.
In addition, this particular spectacle fighter avoids a common pitfall for the genre: needing to jump to deal with flying enemies. Normally flying enemies in these games tend to be a bit too high, but in Lost Soul Aside, they're just low enough to still be hittable with your weapons normally. That goes a lot further than you might expect!
Where things tend to fall apart a bit, however, is in the finer details.
For one thing, enemies are just too tanky. I had the easy mode items equipped because I don't come to these kinds of games for difficulty. Even then, every enemy took way too much damage to kill. This can be mitigated sometimes with combos, but not always. This is made even worse by easily the lamest impact sound effects I've ever heard. Hitting an enemy sounds like having one person hold up a sheet of paper and having a second person hit that sheet with a drum stick. Whether as a result of a basic attack, a cool combo, or the super duper mega attack mode that you build up, the sound design here makes an already far-too-tanky enemy roster feel even tankier.
Bosses, on the other hand, are just tanky enough...but you don't have poise for the combos that require delays or button holds, and bosses move and attack too swiftly for that. You'll either miss or get interrupted, leaving you dependent on your basic attacks for the most part.
For combat scenarios against basic enemies, you're also always placed into arenas (as in battle areas, not the spirit dragon) that are entirely too small. Arenas are denoted by blue lines on the ground, and they almost never take up the whole visual space you're in. What this means in practice is that as you beat up on enemies, you will end up pressed against the limits of the space, and this will result in you ultimately juggling the enemy in place. Not the worst thing in the world, but it does take a bit of the spectacle out of the whole "spectacle" fighter idea.
On the opposite side of that spectrum, there's also a general lack of distance-closing available. With the scythe and its instant teleport ability, this isn't a problem, but in every other case you'll constantly knock enemies back...and it's always just a little too far for you to be able to continue the onslaught without having to both dash and slowly walk a bit forward.
As I implied there, movement is also more than a little janky for the high-speed context. Kaser is slow and graceless, and his inability to move in the air when he does aerial combos means there's a lack of seamless transition between land and aerial attacks in a lot of cases (scythe not included, because it's the best weapon).
If that were the end of the issue, that would be one thing...but you'll slog through this janky movement in a fight, then a cutscene will happen where Kaser anime jumps up an entire mountain and sprouts wings and a magic surfboard to glide across a valley, and it makes the janky movement sting even more.
One other thing before I move on to the next idea: there's no clear list of combos you've unlocked. If you want to remember what moves you can pull out, you have to painstakingly go through a weapon's individual skill tree, navigate the nodes, and find things out that way. Every other combo-based fighter comes with some kind of list, so this oversight is baffling.
Another major head-scratcher is the role water plays in a given level. In the prologue, for instance, you die instantly if you touch even the shallowest bank of a puddle (that isn't an exaggeration, by the way, they're literally puddles). In a subsequent area, all water was blocked off by invisible walls. In a subsequent area to that, there was water easily as deep as in the first level, but it wasn't perilous.
I remember there was one platforming section made up of spinning wheels and obstacles you had to dodge. In the middle of the water surrounding this gauntlet was a rock easily within jumping distance that would've allowed me to skip the whole thing. However...you guessed it, there was an invisible wall right at the start of the water.
Did this mean that there wasn't any danger of falling in the water in the gauntlet? Hell if I know, I didn't test it out! But why include the rock in the look of the level in the first place if it wasn't going to be part of a potential solution? Or why include it within easy jumping distance? I simply can't figure out what was going through the level designer's head sometimes.
But while these levels can at least look good in some cases, the same can't be said for the god-awful "alternate dimension" levels. Imagine the most bog-standard "geometric technology" levels you've seen in sci-fi (think the floating platforms at the climax of Mass Effect 2) and stretch it across more than one level, and you have the alternate dimensions. They're ugly beyond belief, last for way too long, and they feature annoying challenges.
For instance, there are usually segments where you have to run to the end of a gauntlet while avoiding a hazard of some kind. The hazard can sometimes be a turret, or it can sometimes be walls of energy. Sometimes the gauntlet is running forward, sometimes it's circling around an area as cover moves and shifts. In other games, gauntlets like these impose damage penalties if you get hit by the hazards. In Lost Soul Aside, though? They send you back to the beginning of the gauntlet. So you can get almost all the way through a challenge, then get hung up on the geometry of a piece of cover for just the slightest bit too long and get sent back to the beginning by a turret. WHY?
For starters, on PS5 there are some scattered, second-long performance hitches...but I hear things are far more dire on PC, so be aware of that.
There's also an issue present that I'm seeing more and more frequently: interact prompts not working the first time you press the correct button. In this case, it's specifically in regards to the game's manual save point: a character named Liana. You'll walk up to her and press the interact button, but nothing will happen at first, causing you to launch your triangle attack into nothing in particular the first time around. It becomes clear after a while that she doesn't become interactable until after a far-too-long stretch of canned dialogue. This is more an issue of convenience than a problem, per-se, but it's a problem in my eyes.
Animation glitching is also a pretty frequent occurrence, with the biggest problem being the run animation...yeah, the animation you'll be seeing more frequently than anything else. It looks like there's maybe a few frames over a couple milliseconds that are missing from the animation cycle. This causes poor Kaser to feel like he's running with a slight limp, but without any kind of specific movement in the animation to match. In addition, turning around quickly can sometimes cause Kaser to glitch out and rapidly flip between the two directions at the speed of light for a second before actually facing where you pointed him.
With both of these issues, one of two things happened: 1) the devs patched them out after a while or 2) I just got used to them. I can't say which one is true for sure. I think it's highly likely there was a patch that addressed these animation problems, but the point I'm trying to make here is that they seemed to stop being problems as the game progressed.
I've discussed sound briefly in previous sections, but these are far from the end of Lost Soul Aside's auditory issues. There are plenty of sound effects that simply don't show up when they need to. In an early level, I was on a beach with a bunch of crab enemies, and there weren't even any walking sound effects for them. After waiting there a full minute to see if anything changed, the little scuttling sounds of their legs finally loaded in.
Music, too, is an aspect of sound that isn't exactly handled well. The soundtrack is about as forgettable as an "epic choir" soundtrack can be (owing in large part to audio mixing, which I've already discussed). The track will change on a dime when you enter a new area (with no transitions). Before cutscenes, music will cut out entirely for a full second, then the cutscene will start. This is an issue that didn't seem to be addressed in patches.
Let's end this segment on the positives. I never noticed any texture pop-in, and I seem to remember the render distances being exactly right. I also never had any hard or soft crashes, and that is a massive shock to me given that this game is clearly put together with paper clips and rubber bands.
Well, yes.
But it's not a mutually-exclusive thing. Lost Soul Aside, I think, gets the same level of recommendation I'd give Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 or Sword of the Sea in spite of the score I'm about to give it. This rings especially true given that it resists the new corporate urge to charge a $70 entry fee. So if you're in the market for what is likely to be the funniest thing you've experienced in a long time, don't mind some actually pretty serious issues, and have a sense of whether or not it's going to be playable on your machine of choice, I unironically recommend Lost Soul Aside.
For the 300th time, let us review:
Awful story and characters - 1.0
Scattered gameplay woes - 1.0
Poor level design - 1.0
Alternate dimension hazards - 0.5
Technical issues - 1.0
The final score for Lost Soul Aside is the most highly recommended as possible...
5.5/10 - Slightly Above Average
Buckhorn, UltiZero games, Buckhorn!
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