konflakes
Well-Known Member
Herp Horp Derp Dorp, its time for me to review this game! To kick things off, let me first explain what this game is all about.
Soul Sacrifice is a Playstation Vita exclusive game that was released first in Japan on March 7th then released for N. America and Europe on April 30th and May 1st respectively. It was a hot seller on its release day and I was lucky to pre-order it minutes/hours before it sold out. It cost me 54 bucks and came with some in-game swag that they called an "initial release bonus" or some shit along those lines.
Here is the link to the Official Site
and here we have the Wikipedia link
And a trailer:
The game is focused on the choices that the player makes whether to, duh, sacrifice, or to save a soul. Each soul you save or sacrifice affects the state of your right arm. The more you sacrifice, the more evil your arm becomes. The more you save, the more divine your arm becomes. The level system works through having levels in the divine part and evil part of your arm, with the minimum level in each side being 1 and the maximum combined level being 100.
The game is about you, a nameless character who wakes up one day in a cage where you see a talking book. This book looks like some weird ass picasso painting but as you go deeper into the game, approaching the climax, the truth is revealed and your judgements and feelings about that book changes. You being to learn magic by re-living the memories of the book's author. These memories come in the form of quests, which you need to unlock in the order they come in to reveal more of the story.
I'll try to avoid spoilers although I don't think many, if anyone at all here, owns a PSVita. The basic game play is a 3rd person type hack/slash/magic casting/projectile hurling game. What you use to fight are called offerings, and the player is able to equip up to 6 offerings. There is also an element circle to the offerings and monsters that you fight in this game.
The chain goes:
Fire is strong against Poison.
Poison is strong against Rock.
Rock is strong against Lightning.
Lightning is strong against Ice.
Ice is strong against Fire.
This creates a complete weakness/strength circle. There is also a non-element which has neither weakness nor strength.
The storyline proceeds chapter by chapter in the weird ass book I mentioned earlier on. To unlock the next chapter, simply complete the latest chapter. But of course, if you just try to blitz through the story by playing the story quests, you are bound to run into a dead end sooner or later since your offerings will not be a high enough level to fight the monsters comfortably.
This brings up the grinding part of the game. You are also given a set of quests which provide offerings as a reward for completion. The tier and amount of offerings you get are dependent on the difficulty of the quest itself, as well as the score you get upon completion of the quest. For example, getting ranked as a "Third rate Sorcerer" will probably only net you 1 offering as a reward, while getting ranked 1st rate will get you 3 rewards. The maximum number of offerings you can get is 4, which requires the rank "Legendary Sorcerer".
During your battles, you may also activate a spell called a "Dark Rite". The basic dark rite is called "Infernus". When you activate this spell, you engulf your body in flames and summon a giant flame creature that smites everything around you with flames. This spell sacrifices your very skin, decreasing your defense and making you more vulnerable to damage. As with the main theme of the game, everything comes at a price. For power, something must be sacrificed. This weakness from your burnt skin that you get from using this spell will persist throughout all future quests... unless you undo it using the book's "tears" called lacrima, which accumulate on the book every time you complete a quest.
To skip out more on the tedious description of this game, I'll go ahead and just review it.
First off, the gameplay. The fighting and movement are very similar to Monster Hunter, even the 3rd person view reminds me of Monster Hunter. The main difference in movement and combat is that you can easily lock on the monsters in Soul Sacrifice, unlike MH, which actually requires you to rotate and angle your character to face the monsters. Overall the controls were not hard to figure and quite user friendly.
Next, the graphics. Being a more powerful device than other handheld consoles, the PSVita is able to support higher definition graphics.
The art was also very nicely done. The monsters were made terribly. And that's good. Because they're terrible creatures and the horrific nature of their appearances were awfully fantastic. They looked like how they should look; deformed, depraved, and tormented.
Audio. The soundtrack was great and fit the game's theme well. It was haunting, beautiful, melancholic, filled you with... feels, and shit, I dunno. It was great until my friends and I who were playing multiplayer found something funny about the main menu theme music that we kept hearing over and over again in the lobby as we were selecting offerings and changin quests.
Between 1:25 to 1:45. Blah blah blah bleh, bleh bleh blah, SAHYAMBAH!!
The story was also a masterpiece of unexpected twists and has 2 different endings, depending on whether you choose to sacrifice or save the final boss. It was a giant mindfuck and I would not be exaggerating if I said that it deserved a book just for its story. Well, I do admit that I've played enough games and read enough books to have seen most of the things that were coming from pretty far away.
Overall I give this game a 9.0/10 for its masterpiece storyline and addictive game play! If you have a PSVita and did not grab this, then get it. Its a good game.
Well that's all for this review. Thanks for reading to the end and feel free to leave any suggestions or criticisms as to the format/content of my review.
Next game up for review: Bioshock Infinite
And after that, after I receive my shipped copy and finish playing it, the most hyped game of the year, branded the game of the year, yes, The Last of Us.
Soul Sacrifice is a Playstation Vita exclusive game that was released first in Japan on March 7th then released for N. America and Europe on April 30th and May 1st respectively. It was a hot seller on its release day and I was lucky to pre-order it minutes/hours before it sold out. It cost me 54 bucks and came with some in-game swag that they called an "initial release bonus" or some shit along those lines.
Here is the link to the Official Site
and here we have the Wikipedia link
And a trailer:
The game is focused on the choices that the player makes whether to, duh, sacrifice, or to save a soul. Each soul you save or sacrifice affects the state of your right arm. The more you sacrifice, the more evil your arm becomes. The more you save, the more divine your arm becomes. The level system works through having levels in the divine part and evil part of your arm, with the minimum level in each side being 1 and the maximum combined level being 100.
The game is about you, a nameless character who wakes up one day in a cage where you see a talking book. This book looks like some weird ass picasso painting but as you go deeper into the game, approaching the climax, the truth is revealed and your judgements and feelings about that book changes. You being to learn magic by re-living the memories of the book's author. These memories come in the form of quests, which you need to unlock in the order they come in to reveal more of the story.
I'll try to avoid spoilers although I don't think many, if anyone at all here, owns a PSVita. The basic game play is a 3rd person type hack/slash/magic casting/projectile hurling game. What you use to fight are called offerings, and the player is able to equip up to 6 offerings. There is also an element circle to the offerings and monsters that you fight in this game.
The chain goes:
Fire is strong against Poison.
Poison is strong against Rock.
Rock is strong against Lightning.
Lightning is strong against Ice.
Ice is strong against Fire.
This creates a complete weakness/strength circle. There is also a non-element which has neither weakness nor strength.
The storyline proceeds chapter by chapter in the weird ass book I mentioned earlier on. To unlock the next chapter, simply complete the latest chapter. But of course, if you just try to blitz through the story by playing the story quests, you are bound to run into a dead end sooner or later since your offerings will not be a high enough level to fight the monsters comfortably.
This brings up the grinding part of the game. You are also given a set of quests which provide offerings as a reward for completion. The tier and amount of offerings you get are dependent on the difficulty of the quest itself, as well as the score you get upon completion of the quest. For example, getting ranked as a "Third rate Sorcerer" will probably only net you 1 offering as a reward, while getting ranked 1st rate will get you 3 rewards. The maximum number of offerings you can get is 4, which requires the rank "Legendary Sorcerer".
During your battles, you may also activate a spell called a "Dark Rite". The basic dark rite is called "Infernus". When you activate this spell, you engulf your body in flames and summon a giant flame creature that smites everything around you with flames. This spell sacrifices your very skin, decreasing your defense and making you more vulnerable to damage. As with the main theme of the game, everything comes at a price. For power, something must be sacrificed. This weakness from your burnt skin that you get from using this spell will persist throughout all future quests... unless you undo it using the book's "tears" called lacrima, which accumulate on the book every time you complete a quest.
To skip out more on the tedious description of this game, I'll go ahead and just review it.
Review
First off, the gameplay. The fighting and movement are very similar to Monster Hunter, even the 3rd person view reminds me of Monster Hunter. The main difference in movement and combat is that you can easily lock on the monsters in Soul Sacrifice, unlike MH, which actually requires you to rotate and angle your character to face the monsters. Overall the controls were not hard to figure and quite user friendly.
Next, the graphics. Being a more powerful device than other handheld consoles, the PSVita is able to support higher definition graphics.
The art was also very nicely done. The monsters were made terribly. And that's good. Because they're terrible creatures and the horrific nature of their appearances were awfully fantastic. They looked like how they should look; deformed, depraved, and tormented.
Audio. The soundtrack was great and fit the game's theme well. It was haunting, beautiful, melancholic, filled you with... feels, and shit, I dunno. It was great until my friends and I who were playing multiplayer found something funny about the main menu theme music that we kept hearing over and over again in the lobby as we were selecting offerings and changin quests.
The story was also a masterpiece of unexpected twists and has 2 different endings, depending on whether you choose to sacrifice or save the final boss. It was a giant mindfuck and I would not be exaggerating if I said that it deserved a book just for its story. Well, I do admit that I've played enough games and read enough books to have seen most of the things that were coming from pretty far away.
Overall I give this game a 9.0/10 for its masterpiece storyline and addictive game play! If you have a PSVita and did not grab this, then get it. Its a good game.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well that's all for this review. Thanks for reading to the end and feel free to leave any suggestions or criticisms as to the format/content of my review.
Next game up for review: Bioshock Infinite
And after that, after I receive my shipped copy and finish playing it, the most hyped game of the year, branded the game of the year, yes, The Last of Us.