This post is by guest writer Hyung Lee.
Short and Semi-sweet
Titan Souls is a short cute “8-bit” game that mixes parts of old school The Legend of Zelda and parts of Shadow of the Colossus to bring back a sense of nostalgia for the classics. The game is a series of boss fights with minimal exploration, and the key to success is pattern-recognition and timing. While Acid Nerve does a great job of invoking the lost arts and making a fun game, it also overlooks key design elements that plague the majority of the game experience and turns it into a frustrating and unfulfilling ordeal.
The 1 Hour Review
The game starts with a little guy who walks around, rolls around, shoots an arrow and uses Magneto-like powers to retrieve the arrow. You are free to explore the world that smells of Hyrule with the visuals, catchy tunes, and simple controls. The scene begins in a garden that teaches you everything you need to know about the controls in two screens, and the feel changes drastically as you start to discover an army of giant monsters which you must slay.
The very first boss you encounter sets the tone for the game. It is a giant blob with a core that tries to crush you with its bouncy body, and spews slime that slows you down. As you try to kill it with your arrow, it splits into two with the core being retained in only one of the splits. You are unable to kill the slimes no matter how small they get (more enemies to dodge!), so the mission then quickly becomes making sure to only hit the half with the core both through the arrow hit as well as the arrow retrieval. Of course all this information comes to you in bits and pieces as you continuously die in a fit of trial-and-error, and eventually you land the killing blow on the exposed core.
Each monster has obvious weak points, often in glowing pink which I loved. The challenge comes not in identifying them but pattern recognition, timing, and movement to get that killing hit. You have one life — any hit from the monster’s bodies, their projectiles, or stage-driven pitfalls all lead to instant death. Each time you die, it increases your death count (which is only visible through the save file), and you will respawn at the latest checkpoint which sometimes can be a few screens away. When you do finally hit that sweet spot it results in a satisfying display of sound and graphics, and as you pull your arrow from the monster you release and absorb their soul.
There’s an issue with the ratio of time spent commuting versus fighting.
After slaying the first few monsters in the first hour, a couple of major issues arose for me. The first one was foreshadowed in the opening screen where Acid Nerve strongly recommends a gamepad. Unfortunately, with how the game is designed this is a requirement for the proper gaming experience, not a recommendation. Using the keyboard controls, you only have access to 8-axis of movement. It means not only your movements and rolls are confined to these directions, but your arrows are also confined to these angles. It adds a layer of complexity for keyboard players as it forces a very specific shot to make it work on top of the tight timing and patterns. The other issue is regarding the respawn points and the ratio of time spent commuting versus fighting. We will get to that in more detail in the next hour.
The 2 Hour Review
I love the humor that is sprinkled throughout the game
The bosses you encounter are unique, and I love the humor that is sprinkled throughout the game such as having to knock out teeth on a robot or shooting a yeti’s exposed butt. The boss fights are the main attraction of the game, and while it’s fun to discover and solve the different types of battles, it all ends too quickly. Like yourself, the bosses will also die to a single hit of your arrow. As mentioned before, it’s often quite obvious what you need to do since the goal is highlighted. You then spend so much time trying to figure out the boss patterns by dying over and over which ends anticlimactically in the blink of an eye when you finally perfect the course of action. The game does try to showcase the significance of the kill and I’ve done more than one fist pump when I finally sucked the pesky boss’ soul after many, many attempts. Still, the buildup of tension was not the result of satisfying difficulty or complex patterns, but the continuous deaths in a frustrating manner.
Worse yet, as you face more and more deaths the respawns start to grind at your sanity. Sure, it might “only” take ten seconds to reach the fight again, but multiply that by 30 and you just spent five-ten minutes (including loading and transitions) for maybe a couple of minutes of boss fight time at best. When the entire game revolves around the boss fights, the majority of time spent playing should be on these boss fights, not walking the same path over and over and over again.
These issues are exaggerated because the controls are awful for how simple they seem. The game only requires six keys — four for cardinal directions, one for roll (hold to run), and one for an arrow (hold to aim/retrieve). In reality, there are zero seconds of game time where you would not want to run. You are forced to hold down a button for the entire duration of the game, and then release-press-hold again for the roll which is a key action needed for positioning and evasion. At the very least it would have been helpful if I could remap the keys so that the movements and actions could be dictated by where it was most comfortable to me, rather than being stuck with the default settings.
The 4 Hour Review
I have slain many more foes since hour two. I also have died over 300 times. The experience though did not vary much throughout the game. The maps started getting bigger, the respawn points further, and enemies harder, all while facing the same issues from earlier. It got to the point where it seemed like the effort to beat the game was not worth it, and it happened at the final boss. Getting through all the different bosses was surely a challenge, but the final boss seemed near impossible to beat with the number of attempts required to get that one insanely perfect shot. This was also when I was hoping there was a mode to replay the bosses I had encountered previously — kind of like Mega Man where you just select the boss and instead of going through the stage, you just go straight to the battle.
The experience was like walking around the beach with a metal detector.
With an entire hour of game time spent solely on trying to beat the final boss, I finally succeeded! But I must have not done everything because all it did was open up three new play modes — yet another anticlimactic outcome lacking the sense of gratification that I should have for conquering such a challenge. I assume I have to go kill all the side quest bosses I had ignored up until this point, but I just started a new game in the “real challenge” mode instead. It is basically the same game, but much, much harder. For example, the initial boss splits into three instead of two. The other two modes that were unlocked are geared for the even more hardcore (like no dodging/running), and I can appreciate the amount of perfection the game requires to beat those modes. But without a gamepad I can’t find myself willing to go through the intense frustration that is all but guaranteed without a proper control setup. It saddens me that I am not doing this game justice, that it’s like writing a food review after having the meal blindfolded. Nevertheless, I would say the experience was like walking around the beach with a metal detector. Sure, you might find a gem here and there in search for the nugget of fun, but for the most part it’s just a lot of walking and a whole lot of disappointment.