Lost Soul Aside- Byte Size Review

Guest writer and resident ‘weeb’, Nina, drops in to give us the low down on this action title straight out of China

As far as Devil May Cry clones go, Lost Soul Aside isn’t bad. I wouldn’t call it “great” though; the story is fine, the world building is barebones and the writing is distractingly average. But, its graphics are pretty and its gameplay is deep enough that, if this genre is your jam, you’ll probably get a few hours of enjoyment out of it. 

Lost Soul Aside follows Kaser, a generically edgy, broody, sword-wielding anime man whose only defining character trait is “must protect kid sister.” After said kid sister is kidnapped by aliens, he teams up with a dragon god called Lord Arena, who aids Kaser by giving him superpowers. There are several other characters in the story, of note Lord Arena is easily the standout. His voice actor actually seems to be putting some soul into his performance, which makes Arena’s story the most engaging and his dialogue the least cringe-worthy.

Technically, this game is fairly impressive. On PS5 it ran consistently at 60fps without any frame drops, crashes or glitch outs. Its graphics are very pretty and its fight animations are smooth and interesting. Which leads to the best part of the whole game…. its combat. Which, for someone who doesn’t usually dig japanese action-rpgs very much, I had quite a lot of fun with it.

Dodge, Strike, Parry….Button Mash!!

I was surprised by the depth of the combat systems. There’re dozens of combos, chain attacks and special moves to discover and a skill tree which, instead of giving you small buffs to damage, movement etc, unlocks brand new abilities that can totally switch up the way you play. Boss fights are challenging on harder difficulties, but not overly annoying. The game suffers a little in its lack of variety of enemy types, but it’s fun enough already that hacking away at the same few kinds of monsters all the time doesn’t get boring. 

When compared to other new kids on the block in the genre, like Stellar Blade, this is a tough game to recommend outright. But if you enjoy games like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta and you have some tolerance for some pretty stock standard characters and narrative, then maybe pick it up and give it a go.