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People you followTaggedGeneral - Opinion/EditorialCommunity ReviewsOff-topicCommunity PodcastersBloggers Wanted ResponseLetters to Dtoids EditorsGet InvolvedGeneral BadassnessJoin a Live Stream EventListen to CommunitoidJoin a Playdate EventCompete in a ContestTGS: It's all about Soul (Sacrifice, that is)
[With apologies to Billy Joel] Soul Sacrifice was certainly one of the biggest games at this year's Tokyo Game Show. I had a chance to play it on the show floor and, well, I'm confused. Demos are always a little bit confusing because you're often going in cold on a game. Then, add the language barrier by playing a Japanese demo and it gets a little trickier, and I know that I've missed (or misunderstood) a lot of things by playing it. Standing in Sony's booth, I was teamed up with two other attendees and a company representative to take down demons in the title's cooperative multiplayer match.
The hook of Soul Sacrifice is that the player has to be judicious in how they apply the use of magic to the defeating of demons. This is because magic is powered by sacrifice, an offering of a soul for power. That can be your soul, the souls of your enemies, even the souls of your teammates. Should one of your partners go down, you can opt to give them some of your health and pick them up. Alternately, you can kill them to cast a powerful spell, leaving them as a spirit which haunts the battlefield and becomes little more than a nuisance to enemies. The dynamic is kind of interesting, but this demo wasn't a particularly good example of it. The arena we were in was lousy with respawning enemies, so there weren't much in the way of hard choices that I had to make. I never ran out of sacrifices, despite pretty much spamming magics the entire battle. When it comes to magic, there's a solid range of about 30 spells available for the player to take into battle. You can select six before heading off to die, split into two groups of three that you switch between with a tap of a shoulder button. The spells are quite fun. My loadout featured a spell which would lock on to three targets and shoot darts of flame, as well as a grenade-like fireball, and a short-ranged electrical attack. Healing spells are available as well, along with other support magic.
Some spells are activated with a tap, while others need a little more time to charge up. My favorite spell had my character lifting stones from the Earth and using them to encase himself in a ball of solid rock. In this state, I could roll around the battlefield and do light damage to whatever I bumped into or spin myself like Sonic the Hedgehog and dash off for a harder hit. The game looks great in a graphical sense. Gnarled, dead trees surrounded the battlefield, structures lay in ruins; it's a dark world out there. The character designs are complex as well. All of the playable characters featured beautifully detailed models, scarred and battle worn. It's interesting, conceptually speaking, and I like the premise of the player's actions coming at a personal cost, having to weigh the benefits of using a powerful spell (perhaps even one which nearly kills the player themselves) against the immediate danger posed by enemies around you. This should make for a difficult and rewarding balancing act. That's not really what I got to see in this demo, though. Cool as it was, this was built for people to be able to complete it, not necessarily to challenge them, and it's hard to get a real sense of what the final product will be like with such a tiny sliver of gameplay. But for a growing platform like the Vita, it represents an opportunity to put something unique on a handheld plagued by ports. And that is something to celebrate. Did you know? You can now get daily or weekly email notifications when humans reply to your comments.
Legacy Comments (will be imported soon)It looks like it could be pretty fun and I look forward to seeing more of it. That monster in screenshot 3 is freaky creepy, though. Also here is a 7 minutes video for the multiplayer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_5NmeN_Jc8 No company can make a game with "Soul" in the title without me getting excited, frantically looking to see if it's From Software, and getting disappointed. 3:00 AM on 04.30.2013 Soul Sacrifice tips and starter guideSoul Sacrifice can be a pretty deep, rewarding experience, but it can also be a bit difficult to learn at first. The confusing menu system and large variety of spells can be extremely overwhelming. But once you've bested a fe...
2:01 AM on 04.30.2013 Review: Soul SacrificePlayStation Vita owners know a lot about compromise. One has to wait an excruciatingly long time between remarkable, must-have releases, but when those releases come, many would agree the wait was worth it. It's fitting then,...
7:00 PM on 04.26.2013 More free Soul Sacrifice DLC details emergeWe knew that DLC was coming for Soul Sacrifice, but today we're getting a better look at two more of the ten free new bosses that will be offered up, in addition to a new forbidden art. Ghost and Ouroboros (which, as a side ...
7:30 PM on 04.25.2013 Talks are ongoing for Soul Sacrifice sequel, says InafuneSpeaking to IGN, Soul Sacrifice designer Keiji Inafune shared his interest in working on a sequel to the upcoming PlayStation Vita game, which shouldn't come up as much of a surprise. The same could be said of countless ...
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12:15 PM on 04.12.2013 A Soul Sacrifice demo is coming next weekSoul Sacrifice is nearly here, and on April 16, you'll be able to test the game out for yourself in demo form on the PlayStation Network. The demo seems to start near or at the beginning of the narrative, as you are awaiting...
9:30 AM on 04.04.2013 Inafune: Japanese game industry is not fineSome argue the Japanese game industry is doing just fine, but long-standing critic Keiji Inafune has declared such arguments are rooted in little more than wishful thinking. The former Capcom man believes the industry needs t...
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4:00 PM on 03.08.2013 Level-5 files trademark for Guild02 3DS games in USAIt looks like Level-5's Guild02 compilation might be headed for western shores. Siliconera has reportedly uncovered US trademarks for Bugs vs. Tanks! and The Starship Damrey, indicating a po...
8:30 PM on 02.22.2013 New Soul Sacrifice footage now available to consumeThe Japanese PlayStation channel on YouTube has posted a new gameplay trailer for Soul Sacrifice, coming to PS Vita in that country on March 7, followed by North America and Europe nearly two months later. Though the languag...
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