Lost Soul Aside, the debut action title from Ultizero Games and published by Sony, takes a bit to get going. The opening hours can be unintentionally hilarious, with the story just thrown at the player with little to no explanation.
It’s a master of telling but not showing, with a mediocre story, paper-thin characters, and bad voice acting. The thing is, despite all of that, it’s also really fun. The action combat gets better as upgrades and new weapons roll in, offering some genuinely great set pieces. It’s not perfect, but it is enjoyable.
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Lost Soul Aside kicks things off with Kaser, who’s definitely not a mix of Noctis from Final Fantasy XV and Cloud from the Final Fantasy VII series, returning home. Joining up with a few other rebels, including his sister, they hatch a plan to disrupt the Emperor’s grand parade.
Things go awry quickly with the invasion of the Voidrax, a mysterious alien species. Kaser quickly gains the powers of Lord Arena, a giant dragon, as they set out to stop the Voidrax, Kaser’s sister, who lost her soul in the attack, and save the world.
The story in Lost Soul Aside isn’t so bad, but the flat characters don’t help it.
The story isn’t that bad. It feels like an average shonen anime, filled with tropes and reveals that you see coming a mile away. It’s serviceable at its best, more of a reason for Kaser to fight a host of bosses, like slamming two action figures together rather than developing a narrative. It’s enough to provide shallow reasoning for them to fight, but that’s about it.
The characters, similarly, are one-note and uninteresting. Kaser has about as much enthusiasm as dry cardboard. He’s an attempt at a stoic character, but he’s nothing more than that. The surrounding cast is fine, but again, they serve more as plot devices to move the story along or solve problems Kaser can’t fix alone.
Gethya, the mage, for example, joins you for sections that need portals to move across gaps. There are attempts to give these characters interesting stories. Still, they’re almost entirely told while running around, making it hard to focus on what they’re saying in favor of whatever’s happening in the world.
Their performances are similarly not great, with Kaser specifically being quite poor. The delivery is always flat and uninterested, making it hard to care about him at all. Lord Arena is fine, but falls victim to the same handful of voice lines being repeated ad nauseum in combat, making him much more annoying than anything else. The rest of the side characters around them are generally okay, but ultimately forgettable.
Fun combat only gets more fun as the game goes on.
Where Lost Soul Aside does shine, though, is in its combat. Fast and flashy, it’s a spectacle in every fight. It starts out a bit uninteresting, but as you unlock new abilities and gain new weapons, it quickly becomes much more fun. There are four weapon types, including the Sword, Greatsword, Poleblades, and Sythes. You can switch between them freely in combat, each with different strengths and weaknesses. Swords are fast but deal less damage than the bigger and slower Greatsword, for example.
Each has its own upgrade tree that introduces new moves, combos, and general player unlocks, including more attack or health potions. There’s a lot of depth here, as you learn new moves at a constant pace, introducing new moves or combos just as you learn the old ones. This can lead to some awesome-looking sequences, a dance of light and sound as you cut through enemies. It constantly makes you feel cool, cutting through enemies with style.
Kaser also has access to a host of special moves, with more unlocked as you take down bosses. From projectiles that do a ton of damage to landmines that explode in giant electric waves, each one has different variations that fundamentally change how you use them. They always feel awesome to use, upping the spectacle with each use. You start off with one slot, but can unlock more through upgrades.
Boss battles are a highlight in Lost Soul Aside.
Another huge highlight in Lost Soul Aside is the boss battles. Each one is full of badass moments that make each encounter memorable. Every fight feels different, from Rose Queen, who lashes out lines of sharply pointed rose thorns, to the holy knight Victor, whose unending sword onslaught felt straight out of the Fate series. Each encounter has something that makes it feel unlike any other fight before it, with later fights really testing the player. These set-piece fights are just so much fun to play through.
Level design and exploration, on the other hand, are just fine. The levels are largely linear with little exploration, with a few exceptions that are a bit bigger, but not by much. There isn’t much to do in them, aside from the occasional platforming challenge.
The platforming doesn’t feel great, simultaneously feeling floaty and heavy. Kaser rises quickly but lacks momentum, dropping just as fast. Some of the platforming challenges need you to be incredibly accurate, leading to moments of frustration as you miss jumps.
The character models are stiff, but the art design looks great.
The art design and graphics, especially playing on PS5 Pro, looked great. The character models do look stiff in cutscenes, and the lip syncing isn’t great, but with most cutscenes being action-heavy, it fades into the background in the noise.
While it mostly runs at 60fps, some technical issues arose along the way, such as frame drops, but they were never enough to be a significant issue. There was a weird run animation that’s thankfully already been patched. The original animation seemed to rubber band the environment, shooting the background forward with each step. It was genuinely nauseating, but thankfully, it’s already a thing of the past.
Lost Soul Aside is flawed, but it’s also really fun. While the story, performances, and characters aren’t great, the combat is highly engaging, only getting better as the combat arena gets expanded with new moves and upgrades.
The game is the equivalent of a kids’ cartoon or an average shonen anime, taking two characters and throwing them at each other in bursts of light and noise. Lost Soul Aside is an action-heavy, flashy adventure with fun combat but a forgettable story.
Lost Soul Aside is available now on PlayStation 5 and Steam.
