Titan Souls Review

One arrow, one hit point, all bosses. That's the soul of Titan Souls, a game that a few will really love and more will absolutely hate. Let's see if we can figure out which group that you belong in.

You start the game in the ruins of an ancient temple complex, both its existence and your reason for being there left as a mystery. Behind its doors lie dormant titans, locked in some eternal sleep until you reawaken them with a shot from your bow. When you do, cryptic runic text appears at the bottom of the screen, perhaps telling you something about the titan that you've just awoken, or about the room or the temple itself, or ... who knows? Some things will be revealed as you near the end of the game, but some things won't, and you'll just have to leave the whole thing as something to be pondered, an exercise in imagination. Those of you looking for a complete story or who require narrative-driven motivation before you can slay a pixel-based foe can now start heading for the exit. For me, story in a game only really impacts me if it is either very good or exceptionally bad, and the absence of a detailed narrative is OK if a game can engage my imagination, and the world of Titan Souls certainly did that.

The game's controls are very simple - one button will let you dodge-roll and run at a faster pace and the other will shoot your arrow. Holding down the arrow button will allow you to charge your shot which will send it faster and farther, although you won't be able to move while shooting so taking the time to charge the shot will leave you vulnerable. Since that's your one and only arrow you'll have to retrieve it, though. You can either chase it down and pick it up yourself or use the fire button to "Force pull" it back to you, again taking a risk doing so since you can't move while bringing your arrow back to you. On the other hand, an arrow flying back to your hands is just as deadly as one leaving your bow...

The titan battles all take place in single rooms and the only two ways for you to leave are to defeat the titan or to die trying. When you awaken a new titan for the first time you'll more than likely die very shortly after that. And by "shortly" I mean within a couple of seconds. There's always a deadly learning curve involved in simply seeing how a titan moves and attacks, and with each death you'll be transported to a nearby checkpoint ready to do battle again, hopefully a little smarter and not too much more frustrated than the time before.

You'll then have to figure out the new titan's weakness, sometimes it will be obvious and at others it will be something that will only reveal itself after a little clever thinking and a lot of deaths on your part. Like you, each titan has a single hit point (although sometimes they cheat a bit with some sort of protective shielding), but the trick is staying alive long enough to exploit that weak spot. Luckily the game lets you take on any titan in the area in any order that you would like, so if you find yourself having a lot of trouble with a particular titan, you'll be able to move on to another for a bit rather than finding your progress in the game coming to a complete standstill.

If you haven't picked up on it so far, you will die a lot in this game, so the impatient, easily frustrated, and frequent rage quitters can leave at this point. The rest of you can expect to find yourselves spending an hour trying to take out a titan only to find that with the next one it may just take you five minutes to figure out how both to take it out and accomplish the deed. In any case, each individual battle will be measured in seconds before someone dies, but you're the type that won't take death for an answer and will immediately throw yourself back into the breach time and time again, right? The doors are still open...

And if you're still with me at this point, then you're going to love Titan Souls. I know that I do. But before I send you off to go forth and slay titans, I should let you know that I played this Cross Buy title extensively on both the PS4 and Vita. Cross-saving is simple to do and I got in the habit of taking the extra step of committing the save data to the cloud before ending a play session. Given the choice between the two versions my platform of preference is the PS4 for two reasons, the minor issue of tiny font size on the Vita screen and the more important one of control. I found it easier to dodge-roll my way around a room and aim arrows using the longer stick of the PS4 controller than the nubby one found on the Vita. Still, it was nice to have the game available on the go because you'll never know when you'll be hit with some random inspiration on how to beat that titan that's been giving you so much trouble lately...