Simon LeonardI’ve been looking forward to playing this for a while, and I finally got my hands on a copy on the other day. The intro of the game is a bit dark, but it does a great job of setting up the story.
We just got a new game from a small indie team called Tormented Souls. It’s a 2D action RPG that looks a little bit like Hellblade and a little bit like Dark Souls. The game is slow and methodical, very much in the vein of Hellblade, as well as punishing as Hellblade is. In fact, Tormented Souls is so Hellblade-esque that it’s difficult to find any glaring differences between the two games. But I’ve been playing Hellblade for a few days now, so I’m allowed to have the opinion that Tormented Souls is Hellblade-esque. I’ll be honest though, I’m a little disappointed that the game doesn’t stand on its own two feet.
After trying out the earlier-released “Tormented Souls” which was a frustrated-hack-that-became-a-somewhat-polished-hack-distinctly-in-between-hack-and-not-hack, I decided to try out this new, polished version. If you’ve played the original Tormented Souls, you’ll know that it was a game that went through many stages of development, and was later intended to be a full-fledged game, but it ended up being more of an experiment that was later released in its current state.
Tormented Souls is a new survival horror game that borrows from the appropriate sources. It’s a creepy game in which you explore an abandoned house that was once a hospital, and nothing is as it seems. While it may seem to be a bad rip-off of Resident Evil or Silent Hill, it really combines the best of both worlds to produce something that every survival horror enthusiast would love.
What’s the good news?
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There’s a lot in Tormented Souls that we like, but only from the perspective of a survival horror enthusiast. This is probably not for you if you don’t like getting frightened by games or completing difficult riddles. The narrative isn’t great, but it serves as a nice backdrop to the game’s actual meat: fighting, puzzle-solving, and inventory management.
Enemies are sluggish and loud, and you must determine whether it is worth your time to destroy them or attempt to avoid them in virtually every area. Fixed camera angles are a great touch, but they’re still as uncomfortable as they’ve always been. The environment, on the other hand, looks fantastic from all angles thanks to some lovely pre-rendered backdrops, even while you’re dashing about aimlessly.
The clumsy inventory system adds to the tension of each battle. You’ll have to click a few buttons before you discover what you’re looking for, and even then, you may miss a shot. Furthermore, opponents are cunning and will attempt to fool you into believing they’re dead before slashing you. It adds an additional element of dread, but it becomes old after a time.
The puzzle-solving and atmosphere are undoubtedly the stars of the show. The game maintains a high degree of fear to the point that entering any door is a traumatic experience. There’s no point at which you feel safe stopping, whether you’re inspecting corners for adversaries or collecting odd objects that you’re sure will come in useful later for a puzzle. This is a game you’ll want to play all in one sitting, which doesn’t happen very often.
What isn’t so great?
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Tormented Souls is great in part because it relies on traditional survival horror tropes, yet it suffers as a result of them. The fixed camera angles, for example, don’t account for the controls, so you may wind up rotating and moving between perspectives without realizing it. The inventory management system has the same clunkiness, which is probably intended and adds to its charm.
You may die from standing in the dark for too long. The game never explains this, and the first time it occurs, it’s very irritating. We also had an encounter where an opponent pinned us against an item and killed us, causing us to lose almost an hour of progress.
While we like the save mechanism, which necessitates the usage of tape reels located around the house, we know that many others will not. There’s a reason this method isn’t widely used, and it’ll be one of the most difficult hurdles to overcome for new players.
Finally, the voice acting and visuals in the game aren’t very polished or hyper-realistic. The creators were aiming for a very particular look, which included a certain amount of fluidity in the character models and purposefully bad narration. It works well as long as you are aware of this, which you are unlikely to be.
As soon as Bethesdia Games’ SotS was announced, I knew I had to get my hands on it. I had heard many good things about it during its beta phase, but this was my first time actually playing with it. Let’s find out if there is any truth to the hype!. Read more about tormented souls platforms and let us know what you think.
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Simon Leonard