Lost Soul Aside – Game Review

Lost Soul Aside – Recently, Chinese games have increasingly created more “seismic movements” in the global market with a series of famous names such as Black Myth: Wukong, Wuchang, NARAKA: BLADEPOINT or soon to be Phantom Blade Zero.

However, unlike the above projects, which are backed by a studio and huge resources, Lost Soul Aside It’s a completely different story when it started with the efforts of… a single individual – Yang Bing, a self-taught programmer, who started developing the game in 2014, with the initial purpose simply to… “try out” Unreal Engine 4.

However, the development life cycle of this game then lasted for more than… a decade, many times falling silent, causing the community to worry that it would never see the “light”, but then Sony officially set the release date for August 2025.

So is it? Lost Soul Aside After an arduous journey of “pregnancy”, is it enough to meet the expectations and desires of domestic and foreign fans, or is the mere fact that it has overcome many doubts to reach its launch date “a success”?

Let’s find out with Vietgame.asia through the following article.

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Flashy combat mechanics!

According to Yang Bing, Lost Soul Aside strongly influenced by Final Fantasyone of his favorite game series. He is passionate about the way this game series blends the two elements of fantasy and reality, creating a world that is both romantic, magical and realistic enough.

That spirit is evident in the game, from the costume of the main character – Kaser, which was cooperated with Japanese fashion brand Roen to sew into a real product in real life, then recreated in the game to the smooth combat mechanism, combining two basic attack buttons (Light and Heavy Attack) in a beautiful way, extremely fast attack speed.

Players start with just a standard sword, but as they progress through the journey, their arsenal will gradually expand to include greatswords, spears, and scythes. Each item has its own branch of skills, opening up new combo chains and also upgrading internal character building stats, making each battle richer and more powerful.

Not only stopping at continuous “fast” slashing attacks, when the energy bar is fully charged, Kaser can also use the power of the supporting character – Than Long Arena to perform special techniques such as Mountain Break or Thach Ice with the range and destructive power even more promoted when upgraded, reminiscent of Kratos’ epic Runic Attack moves in God of War: Ragnarok.

Each weapon has its own combat feel and allows switching back and forth in the air, with a bold style Devil May Cry. Kaser even “transformed into a demon”, his hair was silver like Dante or Vergil, his speed and attack power skyrocketed, his finishing moves were therefore more epic and “bloody”.

Sometimes the writer knocks the monsters into the air and slashes continuously, other times he holds the triangle button to brace and then unleashes Shadow Rend, a rushing attack that rains slashes on the target, fast and decisive like Ryu Hayabusa in Ninja Gaidenthen flashed back and forth like Zenitsu in the anime Demon Slayer. It all blends into explosive combat moments that are hard to describe!

Each weapon has its own combat feel and allows switching back and forth in the air, with a bold style Devil May Cry

Later, some enemies will be affected by elements such as Ice or Fire, forcing players to take advantage of many weapon versions and combine them with amulets (Trinkers) to increase stats or internal effects, exploiting this advantage, while adding a bit of role-playing (RPG) nuance even though it is still not as sophisticated as the game. Nier: Automata.

In the graphics department, although the quality between areas is not very uniform, overall Lost Soul Aside is still at an acceptable level. On PS5 Pro in performance priority mode, the frame rate remains stable, but the game sometimes overuses “slow motion”, causing the screen to be filled with flickering effects and making it difficult to fully follow the action.

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Full of chaos

To be fair, amid the wave of Chinese games heavily influenced by Soulslike styles such as Wukong nice Wuchanga flashy hack-and-slash-style action game Devil May Cry like Lost Soul Aside It’s truly a “breath of fresh air” for the writer, but the Ultizero Game development team is still too inexperienced, combined with the too long “soaked” development time, causing the game to reveal a series of “bugs” and feel as old as a product… from a decade ago.

This is clearly shown in the feeling of impact: the character Kaser hardly reacts when being hit, as if wearing an “invisible armor”, while the bosses cannot be “staggered” (stunned, unbalanced), hitting them is just like hitting a “meat” with two or three health bars overlapping each other without the slightest movement.

As a result, many times the writer fought bosses or monsters without even realizing that the health bar had… dropped. Only when he glanced down and saw that he was almost reaching the alarming level were he startled because he had been hit by a series of attacks without knowing it.

The game also suffers from the same “disease” as the game Forspoken: the supporting character keeps talking until he gets tired. If the other side is the talkative bracelet, then here is the divine dragon named Arena following Kaser throughout the journey. Every time he uses a move, he screams “Witness my power!” (“Watch me show off my strength!”), after getting hit a few times, he teased, “You can handle this, right?” (“Can you take care of yourself?) – repeated over and over until it was deafening, and there was no way to turn him off!

The opening two hours of the game are also very slow and sluggish, at this time many attacks are not unlocked, there is not even a blocking function, plus opponents appear over and over again, repeating very easily causing a feeling of boredom. Many times during the “noisy fight” there will be a mechanism… popping up that requires you to run and find an energy shield to activate within a few seconds otherwise it will be… green grass! It is not until the player receives the first Greatsword that the combo attack chains begin to become more diverse, attractive and colorful.

However, the game lacks an element that motivates players to create moves. There is no scoring chart at the end of the stage Ninja Gaidennor does it have a flaming combo progress bar Devil May Crythe monster slashes thus lose their motivation to show off, because just holding down a button or two will cause the enemy to “fall” clean, leaving no reason to string together beautiful moves!

To change the pace, the game occasionally sprinkles in a few puzzles and climbing levels, but mostly just stops at… “just for show”. Kaser landed limply, with almost no edge grip, causing many climbing and platforming sections to turn into unpleasant challenges, breaking the “bloody” excitement of the previous action scenes.

Not to mention, Lost Soul Aside also possesses a weapon customization system that must be said to be… the strangest that the writer has ever seen.

Players can collect and attach all kinds of accessories (Accessories) to weapons that bring different internal “buffs” such as increased damage and critical strike rate, but instead of dropping them into each box like usual action games, you have to zoom in and out, manage to arrange each of these items as if decorating toys on… a Christmas tree.

Although it is possible to hide all the Accessories to make the weapons look more neat, the game does not have a button to quickly turn them off, so even if you want to change to another sword, the writer has to take the trouble to disassemble and hide each accessory from the beginning, which is confusing!

The game reveals a series of “bugs” and feels as old as a product… from a decade ago

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There are too many limitations

Except for the combat mechanism that is strong enough to hold players back, most of the remaining aspects of the game Lost Soul Aside all slipped below average.

First, the game’s plot is not new but also reveals a lot of potential. Unfortunately, the fragmented script and lackluster cast of characters make the entire journey pass without leaving any mark.

Players follow Kaser as he searches for the soul of his sister Louisa after the city is suddenly destroyed by Voidrax, interdimensional entities specializing in soul stealing. To be strong enough to resist, Kaser merged with another Voidrax in the form of an ancient dragon named Arena, who had been imprisoned underground for experimentation, thereby exploiting its power.

However, since the story switched to jumping through multiple dimensions to hunt for Soul Crystals, free souls and stop the evil Aramon, all the excitement gradually… dropped, and by the halfway point, the writer almost didn’t care about what was going on anymore.

The cast of characters is no better when they are shaped as if they came out of a traditional anime: the main character with spiky hair, quiet and “cool”, accompanied by a group of genuine “waifu”, all types from gothic girls, elegant but reserved ladies or “loli-looking but thousand years old” girl. They are all sleekly designed in the style of Korean MMORPG games, with doll faces but stiff, bodies with “long legs up to the armpits” but personalities of only one color.

To put it bluntly, Lost Soul Aside owning a simple story but deliberately making it complicated, cramming in a series of “high-sounding” concepts that are ultimately unnecessary, characters talking a lot but rarely getting to the right point, making the entire story line both rambling and stereotypical.

Next, the quality of animation and voice acting is also very erratic, sometimes it’s okay, sometimes it’s… so bad that it’s as if the voice actors weren’t even given enough context when they went into the recording studio.

Overall, if Lost Soul Aside is classified as an AA game, similar to some titles the writer has played and reviewed such as Soulstice It’s still acceptable, but Sony sells the game at a price of 60 USD (even higher in some areas), more expensive than recent blockbusters like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Hollow Knight: Silksong but also being heavily promoted as if this were a “blockbuster” is something that’s hard to swallow…

Except for the combat mechanism that is strong enough to hold players back, most of the remaining aspects of the game Lost Soul Aside all slipped below average