Sprinkled throughout Soulstice’s stages are the far more compelling combat encounters. And while these linear stages hide collectibles, upgrade points in small detours and unchallenging platforming segments off the beaten path, I wasn’t very motivated to explore these largely underwhelming locations, especially if breaking even more crystals could potentially be involved. I hated every single repetitive second of these sections between fights – and there were a lot of them. It evolves to sending you to backtrack through stages to break smaller nodes in order for their connected walls to shatter, and eventually puts time limits on how many you need to break in succession. Most involve some form of breaking color-coded crystals to progress, which is just another face on the old-school keycard hunt. Even Briar and Lute, who constantly are attempting to avoid succumbing to corruption and transforming into monsters themselves, look super cool when they occasionally lose that battle.Īctually navigating through these stages is a chore as well. Bosses have a wide range of attacks and patterns that can be easy to identify but hard to master, on top of being visually expressive and cool. These freaks take all manner of shape and size, with the most eccentric having glowing prisms where their heads should be, or literally being a giant head that opens up to reveal a pulsating colossus within like the world’s most grotesque Matryoshka doll. Contrast that with the exceptional monsters populating the place, which are hit after hit of truly twisted and creative creature design worthy of being mentioned alongside the genre’s finest, and the environmental design seems especially lackluster. If I saw screenshots from each of those missions, I’d have a hard time telling the difference between them as they all feature the same dingy stone walls, dilapidated gates, and firey ramparts. Yet the many of these locations are dull and unappealing, and with the exception the last few locations in the end game, barely look any different than one another. Your journey to the ominous storm in the center of the fortified city takes you from the sprawling slums, into the castle walls, through the dank sewers, and into the reality-bent heart of the city itself. The city of Illdan, under attack by otherworldly forces, is a bland place populated with eccentric monsters.
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