One Shot, One Kill
Review
Titan
Souls, Acid Nerve (PS Vita)
Abstract: Titan Souls is a game that was tailor made to appeal to me. In this
2D pixel art mash-up of Shadow of the
Colossus and Dark Souls, players
much face a punishing series of fantastic and diverse bosses. Titan Souls offers players challenge,
awe, and frustration in nearly equal measure. An exceptional design sense
permeates the game’s puzzling titan fights and rewards player with nearly
unparalleled elation when you down the game’s mighty foes. Design
incompatibilities in this mash-up and load time issues detract from the final
experience, but in the end, Titan Souls
is a game worth playing.
Titan Souls is a game that seemed pulled from a
wonderful fever dream of mine. Titan
Souls is a game that was tailor made, or at the very least tailor
advertised, to perfectly fit my interests. A pixel art indie 2D mash-up of Dark Souls and Shadow of the Colossus? I couldn’t have had my interest more piqued. Titan Souls emerged from a game jam gone right, in which the team
of folks that put together a quick prototype found success in their premise,
went and got PlayStation funding, and brought a more fully fleshed out
experience to the PS4 and PSVita. The game was on my radar since I first
learned about it. After getting a brief hands on at GDC, I knew I would be on
board once the game launched. I purchased my copy just before my summer travels.
It was my priority numero uno to play on my Vita while flying.
You play as
a lone warrior in Titan Souls who
looks to be no older than his teens. You’re tasked to explore a huge forgotten
land, devoid of human life but filled to the brim with color and vibrancy and beauty.
The gorgeous pixel art gives hints at a land lost to time, where crumbling stone
pillars and vine-tangled altars are brilliantly realized within Titan Souls’s powerful aesthetic. Your
hero isn’t simply there to explore, however.
You have a job to do. And that job is slaying titans. The plot behind
your protagonist’s motivations is kept vague, but at no detriment to the final
experience. Subtle cues and one isolated moment of dialogue hint at your hero’s
desire to obtain the powerful souls of titans (hence the title) by killing the
game’s powerful bosses. To accomplish this, your character uses a cursed (?)
magical bow and arrow he acquired by perhaps less-than-heroic means. In Titan Souls your objective is simple:
kill the game’s 19 titans.
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| In a land forgotten by time you must battle alone against ancient and powerful titans. |
While
exploration is certainly a part of the gameplay, your main task is to get from
point A to point B, from one titan to the next. Titan Souls does have a beautifully realized and diverse map to
explore, but a lack of anything substantive to do while roaming diminished my
desire to scour the world’s nooks any crannies. Aside from the admittedly
gorgeous views, there’s not much to do when you’re not killing giant monsters.
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| Getting from point A to B is pretty darn good looking, at least. |
Killing the
game’s many and diverse bosses is kept as simple as possible—one hit, one kill.
And you have one (retrievable) arrow at your disposal. That’s right. Even your
mightiest of foes die with one well-placed arrow strike (a few notable
exceptions aside). The same is true for your intrepid protagonist, however.
Even the most glancing of blows results in instant death. Because of this, Titan Souls is more puzzle than action.
Each new titan you face is another brutally punishing puzzle. Fights start as a
precarious dance, trying to learn the boss’s attacks, movement, and weak point.
You can beat a titan once you’ve solved it. The low threshold for death and use
of a single arrow creates a stressful balance of risk and reward. Make one
mistake and you’re dead. Don’t fully understand all the titan’s attacks? You’re
dead. This intense punishment comes with parallel rewards. It feels phenomenal to
down one of the game’s more trying bosses, when you finally and perfectly
execute a series of movements and attacks to kill the jerk that’s been killing
you for the past 20 minutes.
Titan Souls is a game that’s all about a
feeling. Every single thing you do in the game has an uncanny weight to it. The
vibrancy of the world and titans transports the players to a certain time and
space fully owned by Titan Souls.
You’re there killing titans. Immersive. Nothing you do in that world is earned
without struggle. Titan Souls is a
tough game, there’s no getting around it. And I feel like I need to make a
clear distinction here. Dark Souls is
a hard game because it is punishing: one or two mistakes means death. The same
is true for Titan Souls. The former,
however, has systems in place that allow for player growth, meaning that after
a good bit of time, you know your mistakes before you even get punished. That
is not as true in Titan Souls.
Everything is so fast and brutal, that Titan
Souls is both punishing and
hard. Miss your half-second or less window to react to an attack? It’s back to
your spawn point. You do learn the more you play, and dying is certainly a part
of learning. Just be prepared to learn a
lot on each boss.
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| Death is a part of life in Titan Souls. A big part. |
Let’s take
a moment to talk about Titan Souls
bosses in a bit more detail. You know, because that is the game. They’re fantastic. They’re diverse. On every level,
the game’s many bosses keep you guessing. Aesthetically, thematically, and
visually interesting throughout, titans offer up a lot to the player. Unlike
other similar games, each and every titan has a notably distinct way to be
defeated. No two titans are at all similar when it comes down to landing the
killing strike. I’m honestly still impressed at the wealth of ideas on display
here—creating 19 conceptually unique bosses is no joke, and the skill with
which they are designed in incredible. This smart design gives way to immense
satisfaction when you’re finally able to down one. A certain Yeti titan had me
fuming on the airplane, only to melt into pure elation when I finally sank my
arrow deep into his radiant pink buttocks.
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| The ever-frustrating Yeti titan. Pink butt not pictured. |
While my
satisfaction at defeating bosses was far more than I expected, my level of
frustration while playing was even greater. For a puzzle game, the punishment
for discovering the solutions is severe. You die fast, so inevitably it will
take at least a decent handful of attempts to “solve” the titan. Death as a
learning is an innately powerful tool when handled properly. It’s not handled
so great in Titan Souls. After each
death you’re returned to a spawn node, generally close to the last titan you
faced. You have no option to try the titan fight again immediately. This may be
a Vita exclusive problem, but the load time was far too long. For a game that
is only boss fights and where you can die in second, it feels terrible to die,
wait several long seconds to respawn, spend more time making your way back to
the boss, only to die within a few seconds due to one split-second mistake and
then have to go back through the long load loop. This is where I saw the game’s
design inspirations do a disservice to the game Acid Nerve created. Here’s where
the mash-up fails. In Shadow of the
Colossus you hardly die; it’s more about solving the boss puzzle. In Dark Souls, the trek from spawn point to
boss makes sense, as it gets you extra experience points and reinforces the
combat systems you need to use to defeat your next boss. In Titan Souls, it’s just tedious. There is
nothing to do between boss attempts. Not being able to instantly retry the boss
serves no gameplay purpose, other than to further punish players for their
mistakes. But, since it’s a puzzle game at heart, players are going to make mistakes. If loads were
(much) faster or you could instantly retry a boss this issue would have been ameliorated.
As is, it just adds a layer of unwanted frustration to an already purposefully
punishing and frustrating experience.
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| Have fun seeing these spawn points. Over and over and over again. |
In the end,
Titan Souls does speak to me, just
less so than I initially expected. For me, it still exists in this perfect mind
space—just thinking about it brings me back to its verdant pixel forest,
crystalline waterfalls, and to my amazing tropical vacation. I felt a
connection to the world and that’s not insignificant. Titan Souls has a lot going for it, but frustrations are around
every corner. Titan Souls is
certainly worth trying and is at home (load times aside) on a handheld console.
Ready your bows. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
Titan Souls
4/5
