Oh, the hype. What’s the definition of hype? To me, I see it as us doubling down on our expectations toward something we desire. In this case, a game. If the game meets our expectations, we’ll be ecstatic, cherishing that experience for a long time. But if it doesn’t, we may grow bitter, as if we had just found out we’d been betrayed.
To this day, I have mixed feelings about Final Fantasy XV, and much of that comes from the hype I built up during its long development. Ironically, Lost Soul Aside was announced as being inspired by Final Fantasy XV, and it didn’t take long for countless comparisons to be made with the late Final Fantasy Versus XIII.
After my disillusionment with Square Enix, I wasn’t going to put my trust into another game that spent 10 years in development and features yet another silky-haired protagonist, clad in tailor-made black garments, wielding all sorts of weapons with slickness and dexterity, right? Right…
Once Upon A Time
First, a brief introduction regarding the game’s development. In 2016, developer Yang Bing posted the teaser for Lost Soul Aside on YouTube. The game quickly caught attention thanks to its style and references, frantic combat, and the fact that it was being developed by a single person. The video drew the attention of not only the gaming community but also Sony, which sent Yang Bing an email.
Fast-forward a bit, UltiZero Games was founded with Sony’s backing, and Lost Soul Aside became one of the titles under the company’s China Hero Project. The game’s proposals, Yang Bing’s drive, and now Sony’s money were at least a guarantee that Lost Soul Aside would see the light of day, even if it was nearly 10 years later.
As I said, I’d been following the RPG closely, always with anticipation. Each new trailer got me more hyped and hopeful. However, as the release date drew near and the marketing efforts were still weak, I began to grow suspicious.
Then, we discovered that the game hadn’t been sent to any outlet for review (I had to purchase my own PS5 copy), and I started to feel uneasy. At long last, I played Lost Soul Aside. After about 30 hours to conclude the main campaign, collecting and doing everything I could in a normal playthrough, I’m here to share my review of Lost Soul Aside with you.
A Hollow Story
Lost Soul Aside begins by introducing us to GLIMMER, a resistance group fighting against the empire’s oppression. The protagonist, Kaser, a physically gifted warrior, is part of this group, as is his sister, Louisa. The prologue portrays the events of GLIMMER’s first strike against the Celestria Empire during a military parade at a festival.
Whenever a game’s premise presents a familiar setup, I imagine it will focus on a distinct narrative and presentation to produce an authentic and creative work. Unfortunately, that’s not the case with Lost Soul Aside. From beginning to end, the RPG is predictable. Being predictable is not something inherently bad. For instance, we know what will happen at the end of every rom-com, but we still watch because we long for that happy and cozy ending.
However, Lost Soul Aside makes an effort to share a plot, introduce characters, and expand its worldbuilding, whether through NPCs that react poorly to surrounding events or through endless walk-and-talk sequences. The game cares about telling a story; the problem is that it failed to make me care about the story being told.
As soon as GLIMMER launches its attack against the empire, things just… happen. While Lost Soul Aside seems to have a somewhat interesting lore, the narrative is too choppy and rushed. Each scene’s transition is so dry and abrupt that I often wondered if I had accidentally skipped one. What’s the opposite of exposition? Because that’s pretty much it. There’s a lot of style in the cutscenes, and some of them look cool as hell, but no substance.
When the resistance begins to face off against the empire, a third mysterious force appears. Amidst the destruction, Kaser is sent underground, where he meets a mysterious dragon that grants him fantastical powers. He rushes to find his sister, only to see her soul being drained by one of those monsters that appeared all across the Imperial City, thus setting Kaser on a journey to save his sister and, perhaps in the process, the world as well.
Each scene’s transition is so dry and abrupt that I often wondered if I had accidentally skipped one.
After the first couple of hours, whatever you imagine might happen in the story, it does. And everything unfolds without any additional seasoning. It’s painfully obvious and doesn’t bring anything new to the table. Worse still, the presentation is poor, with awkward English voice acting (some are good), non-existent facial expressions, and the repeated use of the default character animations ad nauseam.
A cliché plot sometimes holds up with distinctive characters, whose worldview and perspective differ from anything we’ve seen before. Yet again, Lost Soul Aside failed to deliver. Every character is one-dimensional and has no development whatsoever. Their biggest interaction occurs in the aforementioned walk-and-talk sequences, because cutscenes appear to be allergic to dialogue.
I mildly enjoyed the banter between Kaser and Arena, his dragon companion, but that was it. At some point, I stopped caring about the story beats. It’s a pity, really, because the prologue initially set the story up for something novel, but it quickly became dull. Everything surrounding Lost Soul Aside’s story is half-baked, from the choppy narrative and dry transitions to the awkward dialogue and forgettable characters.
Play For The Gameplay
Suppose you’ll skip every cutscene because all you want is to smash buttons and kick some Voidrax backside. Will you still get that long-sought enjoyment? Yeah, probably.
From the get-go, the combat won me over. Lost Soul Aside’s battle system is slick, responsive, and highly versatile. I never had any egregious performance issues during my playthrough, and when I did, it was at opportune times, such as when a boss was charging up a flashy attack, for instance.
Overall, the RPG’s combat works really well. We’ve got four weapons and can switch between them on the fly. I could start a combo on the ground, then toss the enemy up, switch weapons while chaining an aerial combo, slam the enemy back to the ground, switch again, and chain yet another combo. The transition is seamless.
Honestly, I didn’t have the technical skills to pull all that off. At most, I switched between the scythe, throwing it at the enemy, and while it dealt continuous damage, I switched to my poleblade to attack from a distance. But I can imagine more proficient hack and slash players sweeping the floor with the most challenging bosses.
The gameplay loop of Lost Soul Aside is what you’d expect from any action RPG. Each new stage introduces new enemies, from common ones to more powerful foes. You fight the grunts first, then an elite, then a combination of those two, and finally a boss. Rinse and repeat until the end.
Lost Soul Aside’s battle system is slick, responsive, and highly versatile.
I get why some might feel the loop gets repetitive fast, but that’s why I was constantly switching weapons and testing new combos. The game doesn’t have a leveling system; instead, we gain experience to acquire skill points and learn new moves tied to each weapon. Since there’s no respec, I chose to diversify my progression, switching weapons and refreshing my experience with each new stage.
There’s also a weapon accessory system, where you can equip attachments to weapons – and even customize their appearance – for bonuses in damage, crit, or stamina regeneration. The UI is a bit clunky because every time I got a new weapon, I had to re-equip everything instead of simply having a preset.
We also have elemental weapons, adding a strategic ingredient to the frantic combat. While you can beat a fire golem with a flaming sword, it’ll be a lot easier if you go for an ice one. You can even freeze an enemy and then apply a thunder debuff, empowering both effects.
Boss Fights Are The Highlights
As expected, moving through the stage and killing common enemies in an action game is nothing more than a warm-up for the boss fights. For the most part, the bosses in Lost Soul Aside present an enjoyable challenge.
The game features a perfect dodge and block system, making it rewarding to execute both perfectly. Perfect dodge allows new skills with the weapons, while perfect block, in specific enemies’ attacks, deals hefty damage to their break bar. Once it’s depleted, they get stunned.
Most bosses have two to three phases, where their skillset changes a lot or even the way you interact with them. For instance, one of the bosses started to charge a one-hit KO attack, and I had to interact with the environment to raise a barrier. Another vanished in the white fog, and if I missed a dodge or block, I’d die. Boss fights are when everything I learned through the stages was put to the test.
By finishing the game, I unlocked a Boss Rush mode, where I had to face 2 to 3 bosses in a row, without using recovery items. I managed to clear them all on normal difficulty, and it was a blast. I genuinely had fun and cheered loudly on my victories. It was incredible pleasing to see my strategies paying off, whether through a mix of Arena Powers – the game’s magic system – or the use of accessories that healed HP on criticals.
Overall, the combat in Lost Soul Aside is glorious, but getting to it can be a hassle. For some reason, the game has a ton of platforming segments. A lot. Initially, it was fun and inventive. However, after 20 hours, each pit I saw gradually drained my excitement.
There are also puzzles that most boil down to using a weapon here or there to interact with the environment, and, yeah, you guessed it, hopping around on more platforming. There was a jumping section where I fell into the water so many times that I nearly gave up on the game.
All in all, if I were to sum up Lost Soul Aside’s gameplay, the combat is truly amazing and has depth for veterans. I never got tired of facing the repetitive enemies because I was always challenging myself to test new weapons and combos. The boss battles are the highlight, and they’re all pretty unique, with some being visually impressive.
Regarding platforming, puzzles, and exploration in general, they’re all extremely basic and generic. Not only is Lost Soul Aside aggressively linear, but I was rarely rewarded for going off the beaten path. I often found a chest with the same old potion, money, or crafting materials. Once in a while, I got a trinket – the game’s equipment system – but that was it. It makes one wonder if it’s indeed an RPG.
An Uneven Presentation
Lost Soul Aside boasts beautiful graphics, but nothing particularly outstanding. The biggest standout is the character design, especially their costumes. I’d love to see a Kazer cosplay because his fashion designer nailed it. The environments are also diverse and varied, accurately representing the plurality of the world’s ecosystems and biomes.
I played on PS5 and didn’t face major performance issues. I experienced stuttering in the city and occasional FPS drops during exploration. My biggest problem was that the game nearly froze whenever the auto-save kicked in – a not-so-ideal moment to have performance issues. Honestly, my game crashed three times during those moments, but at least the autosave managed to do its work.
The cutscenes do sometimes shine, but with such awkward storytelling and transitions, it’s hard to grasp their purpose. Still, I have to praise the boss-ending cutscenes. Upon defeating a boss, Kazer stylishly finished it with a flawless move, which was a spectacle to behold. When they ended, I’d let out a loud “freaking cool.”
As for the soundtrack, Lost Soul Aside doesn’t fall short either. It has a mix of modern and epic vibes that perfectly match the setting, whether it’s a classical chorus or an electric guitar. As usual, the boss’s themes were bangers. The problem, yet again during cutscenes, is that the music was abruptly cut alongside the transitions, giving me a strange feeling and distracting me from what was happening onscreen.
Also, it’s the first time I’ll complain about this in a review, but the game’s sound design is really subpar. During battles, I didn’t feel the impact of my weapons’ strike. There was no weight behind each attack. Instead of that rewarding auditory feedback when I blocked or pummeled an enemy, it was all a dry thump, like I was hitting foes with the Smash Bros. fan.
As I was writing my review, I couldn’t shake off a bittersweet feeling. I really wanted to like Lost Soul Aside and hoped Yang Bing’s project would capture people’s hearts. But what I found instead was an unpolished, thoughtless, and surprisingly, a game still in need of more development time. You know when you come across a game where you can feel the craft in every little detail, whether it’s a bullet shattering a glass or a hidden NPC interaction barely anyone will ever notice?
Lost Soul Aside feels like the opposite of that. The game shows no care even for its most crucial aspect. There’s no way the abrupt transitions, the awkward narrative, or the stiff character expressions went unnoticed. It feels like UltiZero dismissed everything outside of combat and shipped the game by going all-in solely on its hack and slash action.
Lost Soul Aside left a bitter aftertaste of hype seasoned with unmet expectations. It’s one of the few RPGs that made me care less about its characters and story the more I played, due to its shoddy narrative and half-baked cutscenes. The gameplay is excellent, offering plenty of versatility for everyone and depth. The post-game challenges will undoubtedly please those wanting to test their hack and slash proficiency. That is, however, if they have the grit and tolerance to see the game through to the end.
