Soulstice review: an enjoyable AA throwback with one fatal flaw

digitaltrends.com:

I often see people lament that the AA mid-budget games that dominated the PlayStation 2 and original Xbox era no longer exist, but that couldn’t be further from the truth in the 2020s. Publishers like THQ Nordic, Focus Entertainment, Nacon, and Modus Games are giving small- to medium-size studios the budgets to make ambitious, if not highly polished, games. As such, I find the games from these publishers to be some of the most interesting on the market, so I was particularly intrigued by Modus Games and Reply Game Studios’ fantasy action game Soulstice.

An Italian game studio developed Soulstice, but it feels like something that would’ve come from a Japanese developer on the PS2 or PS3 in the 2000s. While its title and setting might lead you to believe it’s a Soulslike, in reality, this game plays like Devil May Cry and many of PlatinumGames’ action titles. Soulstice is far from perfect because of its terrible camera and lack of diverse environments, but it is so earnestly inspired and creative that I recommend those intrigued still check it out.

From the start, Soulstice doesn’t hide its inspiration. Like the beginning of Bayonetta, players fight hordes of enemies while fully powered up on a platform that appears to be infinitely falling. After a climactic confrontation against a mighty enemy though, things slow down as the game flashes back to the protagonists Briar and Lute slowly rowing their way into Ilden, a city completely destroyed by a tear in the sky.

In this world, people pass “beyond the veil” when they die, but something caused this veil to tier over the city, killing or corrupting everyone within it. Briar and Lute are a Chimera, a superpowered warrior created after they almost died and were fused against