Young Souls

The developers have abandoned this game. There's a nasty bug really early on in the game that was reported 3 years ago by several players and it still hasn't been fixed. I played maybe 10% of this game and now I can't progress because I'm stuck at a black loading screen. I can't even refund this game since I bought it and didn't play it until this week. Do yourself a favor and avoid this game.

Great game. I played solo, so can't speak to co-op. Pros and Cons below: Pros - Combat is fun, simple and addictive - Loop is also quite addictive once you get into it - Narrative is well thought out and executed - Absolutely gorgeous visuals and the cinematics are great - Mostly bug free. I did get one UI bug that blocked some functionality, but it only happened the once and it fixed itself by continuing to play. Had a few camera issues too, but purely visual and resolved themselves instantly - You are constantly getting cool new armour and weapons with actual notable abilities beyond just raw stats (but yeah, they've got those too) Cons - There's one section near the end of the game that forces you to use preset weapons and have 1 health. This feels awful if you don't like those weapons' attacks or you've been putting extra points into health - Maybe it's just me (I'm not usually a Beat 'Em Up player), but there's a bit too much reliance in combat on hiding "under" enemy sprites - The start of the game is brutally difficult until you break through the wall and "get it". It clicked for me when I stopped treating it like a Beat 'Em Up and started treating it like a Soulslike - After the brutal difficulty up front (the very first boss has heatseeking missiles, hits through your dodges, can infinitely stun lock you, can't be parried and can 2 hit you) it peters out into baby-easy fights towards the end (except for the actual final boss, which is suitably difficult). It fits the narrative's tempo (mostly), but feels a bit stilted - Lots of repetitive fast travel cinematics that don't actually seem to cover load times. These are awesome details the first few times, but very quickly graaaaaate on your nerves while finishing things up - For 100%ers, there are difficulty achievements. I played on the 3rd of 4 difficulties and the beginning was brutal. I don't know that I have the desire to play the whole game again with an even harder start - A lot of the equipment is meh. I love the equipment design over all, but nothing felt as good to me as the sword 'n' board. I didn't find much use for elemental stuff outside of one freeze ability

Paused the game just to leave this review, after my nth time fighting a specific boss where everything is a one-hit kill and you can't use any of your kit. Maybe it wouldn't annoy me so much if I hadn't spent all my fitness tickets boosting defense. Pretty big oversight. I started with a thumbs-down, but there were some things I enjoyed so this is a very tentative thumbs up. Combat was varied enough but wide swinging weapons have a clear advantage by allowing you to stay vertically safe and still hit enemies. I love parry/riposte combat but daggers never really came into their own; it felt like the reward never outweighed the risk. Sword and shield was safer and still did just fine parrying, plus swords have overall better benefits. I usually felt that when I died, it was my own fault, or it was learning enemy patterns, for the most part. Except being forced to use two specific weapons for the previously mentioned one-hit kill boss, which is itself just a slog. I challenge you to find someone who thought that fight was fun or had interesting mechanics. The idea behind cosmetics is great! But you can only see them in town, because armor overrides all cosmetic stuff. And you spend the overwhelming majority of your time in dungeons, only exiting for minor story advancements, upgrades, and sleep (level-up.) I am so curious as to why the sleep-to-level-up system was implemented. The dialogue was fun, especially with the receptionist and mayor. So yeah, I did enjoy the game but with some major caveats and QoL oddities.