How Lost Soul Aside Combines Devil May Cry Combat And Final
Fantasy Style Characters Into A Tremendous Hybrid
If, when you hear ‘Lost Soul Aside’, your ears prick up and
something akin to a pinging sound rings in the back of your mind, I wouldn’t
blame you. Originally announced all the way back in 2016(!), with development
kicking off two years prior, Lost Soul Aside has for the longest time been a
labour of love from just a single Chinese developer, Yang Bing, who had his
debut title picked up as part of Sony’s China Hero Initiative before being
published by Sony Interactive Entertainment itself. With more than eleven years
of development time on the clock and with a fleshed-out development team behind
the wheel, here’s how Lost Soul Aside looks to meld Devil May Cry-style combat
and Final Fantasy-style characters into a delectable genre hybrid.
A Kaleidoscope Of Final Fantasy Flavoured Influences
It only takes the most fleeting of glances at any footage
from Lost Soul Aside before your brain tells your eyes ‘Oh yep, that definitely
looks like Final Fantasy.’ As it turns out, though, creator Yang Bing has made
no secret that elements of Square-Enix’s cornerstone JRPG franchise have been
explicitly threaded through Lost Soul Aside’s visual makeup (specifically Final
Fantasy XV), with its exceedingly photogenic cast of heroes and villains
looking like they’ve stepped straight out of Eos.
It’s not just the slender, gothically garbed and relatively
androgynous look of the main protagonist, Kaser, that Lost Soul Aside lovingly
echoes from Final Fantasy XV and more broadly, the designs of the legendary
Tetsuya Nomura, since the various monsters in Lost Soul Aside also draw from a
similar pool of inspiration. Often screen-filling creations with spectacle and
extravagance to spare, the numerous bad beasties of Lost Soul Aside are blessed
with equally retina-stroking presentation as the heroes that seek to lay them
low.
Of course, writing a love letter to the vainglorious veneer
of the recent entries in the Final Fantasy series is one thing, but Lost Soul
Aside also takes ample inspiration from the narrative stakes as well. Casting
players as Kaser, a warrior of immense power, Lost Soul Aside sees his world
invaded by interdimensional creatures known as the Voidrax that are hellbent on
erasing all life in the universe by sucking out the souls of their intended
victims. As it turns out one of these victims is Kaser’s sister Louisa and so
an epic odyssey begins where our main protagonist, aided by an enigmatic,
symbiotic-like companion named Arena that can shapeshift into different
weapons, cuts a swathe across a devastated world to get her back, whilst an
authoritarian organisation known as the Church attempts to stop Kaser in his
tracks.
Compellingly Acrobatic Combat Dante Would Be Proud Of
In addition to delving into the depths of the Final Fantasy
series for its visual style and narrative flavour, Lost Soul Aside also takes
cues from another legendary Japanese-developed franchise. With more than a nod
in the direction of Capcom’s Devil May Cry titles, Lost Soul Aside fully
embraces the sort of hyperkinetic and blisteringly fast combat that is so
readily associated with the house that Dante built. Such inspirations are felt
as soon as combat begins, as the music swells with a thrumming operatic
nu-metal style soundtrack that settles into the sort of foot-tapping pulsating
beat that fans of Devil May Cry will be more than a little familiar with.
Broadly speaking, Kaser engages his opponents with his
trusty sword and, as well as stringing together all manner of neat-looking
combinations, can also swiftly parry and evade incoming strikes, not to mention
launch enemies in the air for some eye-opening juggle combinations. Further
into the game, Kaser can also unlock additional abilities that allow him to
cast out waves of energy and elemental magic to hit enemies at a distance as
well. So far, so Devil May Cry then. Where Lost Soul Aside seeks to separate
itself somewhat, however, is in how Kaser’s erstwhile companion, Arena, figures
into the combat side of things.
Always following Kaser around the battlefield, Arena can
augment itself with our hero, providing him with access to all manner of
weapons on the fly, including massive tentacled whips, thudding hammers,
smashing maces, and so much more. Think of a more calm, less chaotic version of
Marvel’s Venom that can be bonded and unbonded at will, and you’re basically
there. Of course the upshot of Arena’s modular and flexible approach to combat
is that it dovetails directly into the functional design of the various enemies
and bosses you’ll face, meaning that some foes will be more susceptible to the
use of particular Arena weapon configurations, whereas others (and particularly
bosses), will require a creatively broader approach that necessitates switching
between all of these weapon types at a moment’s notice.
As an aside (no pun intended), it’s also worth noting that
beyond just Kaser’s choice of wardrobe, the combat in Lost Soul Aside also
draws from Final Fantasy XV’s main protagonist, Noctis, a touch too, since
Kaser can generously teleport around the battlefield to either engage enemies
quickly, or evade incoming attacks.
Arguably, though, the biggest way in which the combat of
Lost Soul Aside pays homage to the Devil May Cry titles is in its rapidity.
Blisteringly fast, Kaser’s many combat encounters play out in balletic fashion.
Enabled by an ultra-responsive level of command input, players can dash,
teleport, evade, leap, strike and morph their armaments during battle in a
split second, lending Lost Soul Aside the sort of nerve-fraying and frenetic
combat beats that Capcom’s Devil May Cry series has embodied for decades.
Ultimately, the end result is that not only do you end up
with combat that looks flashy on the surface and lovingly echoes that of
Capcom’s legendary Devil May Cry franchise, but so too do we get a deeply
mechanical system of high-octane violence that is surprisingly layered and
agile, too. Put simply, if you happen to exist in that Venn diagram overlap of
Final Fantasy and Devil May Cry fandom, then Lost Soul Aside is shaping up to
be achingly essential.
If your curiosity is piqued and your fingers are itching to
dive into a world where fantasy flair meets frenetic combat, then now’s the
perfect time to see what all the buzz is about. Head over to the Green Man
Gaming store to pick up your copy of lost Soul Aside – a striking fusion of style and
substance that’s been more than a decade in the making, and might just be your
next obsession.
.jpeg)
0 Comments