Soul Sacrifice has been called “The Vita’s answer to Monster Hunter” on more than one occasion, so naturally I was excited to get into the game with hopes of another epic monster game with expansive exploration and a fun multiplayer mode.

The story, in a nutshell, is that you have been imprisoned by an evil wizard. As you are about to be sacrificed a talking book named Librom appears before you. The book has the ability to let you relive the battles and memories of the sorcerer who previously owned the book. The reliving of another sorcerer’s memories is how you train up to fight the main villain in the game, Magusar, who is sacrificing innocent people so he can drain their life force to sustain his immortality.

The character customization in the Soul Sacrifice is impressive for a hand-held game, but has been done better in other action-RPGs. There are a wide selection of features to choose from; Hair, face, gender, clothing and even the character’s voice can be altered. The only problem is that due to the game being a hand-held it is limited to what it can cope with, so customization is just selecting which bits you like the most. Do you like Nose A or nose F? The customization looks good, but only really gives you a choice of pre-set features. 

Soul Sacrifice’s combat is all about magic. You have a selection of spells you can choose between and you can gain new spells, improve the spells you already have and use different combinations to make yourself a tank, healer, dps or all-rounder. You can use up to six spells at any one time, and the animations for these spells are fantastic and sometimes terrifying as your character has to channel his magic through one arm at all times. The combat is completely real time meaning you have to think on your feat and plan out your attacks quickly. As you defeat enemies you can choose whether to sacrifice them to become more powerful or save them to restore some of your health. The combat system is very fun to play and suits this style of game. The real time combat lends itself to an action-RPG more than a turn based style would. The small maps make the action feel more fast-paced as there is little time to move and react giving the game a very quick and fun feel. 

The uses of a spell are called ‘offerings’ and these are recharged partially by sacrificing enemies. This element of moral choice really brings a great spin to the game. Your character and the characters around you will react depending on your choice to save/sacrifice and it gives the game a very ‘Knights of the Old Republic’ feel to it, as there is an obvious evil and good side to the choices you make. This is a great mechanic that needs to be in more RPG games. Morale choices are things we have to face every day so putting them into a game like this increases the player’s involvement and really brings them into the world of Soul Sacrifice.

The point of offerings are that when you cast a spell, you offer small items as sacrifices to use that spell. If you use a spell too many times the offering will break and you will have to recharge it using Lacrima, which are like tears you collect from Librom’s eyes (although he comically refuses to call them tears). Once you have un-broken the spell it will be able to be used again. Spells can also be combined to make them much more powerful. For example, combining 2 offerings that are the same will increase the quality of that offering, making the spell more powerful. The fact that spells break is actually to the game’s credit, the spell breaking system prevents you from spamming the most powerful spells with a consequence. Punishing players for over using the most powerful spells is a welcome addition to this kind of game. Too many games before Soul Sacrifice has the ‘ultimate combo’ which could win you any fight and made the game pointless after working out what the combo is. This game makes you really think strategically about how you’re going to approach a fight, which many games lack.

The save/sacrifice mechanic also transfers over to the online play, in a strange but intriguing way. When a party member dies online the other players actually have a choice on whether to save him/her and let them carrying on fighting, or if they want to sacrifice them to become more powerful to defeat the enemy they’re fighting. Saving an ally will transfer half the saving player’s current health to the fallen ally and allows them to carry on fighting. Sacrificing an ally will cast a huge AOE spell that damages all enemies on the map and causes the fallen player to enter their ghost mode, it also partially recharges the sacrificing player’s offerings. The multi-player in Soul Sacrifice can really make and break friendships. This mechanic is actually a very clever idea. You may be at a point where saving a friend will actually do worse for your party as a whole. The choice is important as it can effect the outcome of the fight entirely. Again putting a morale choice into the multi-player is a bold but brilliant move. In most games it’s obvious that reviving a fallen team mate is the best thing for the team, but making a game where doing that could actually lose you the fight is something many games don’t do.

The visuals on the VITA are stunning, especially for a hand-held console. The GPU power of the VITA really does blow its rivals out of the water and it’s very easy to see how it will cope with streaming PlayStation 4 games on the go. Everything in Soul Sacrifice looks impressive, from the environments to the characters, you can really tell a lot of work went into the visual design. Soul Sacrifice’s voice acting is top notch too, which makes a nice change from the usual text-based dialogue you find in most handheld titles. Whilst your character is a silent protagonist, everyone around you talks, even the Librom’s stories which are narrated by the previous owners. The sound in the game is okay, nothing spectacular as the game is either playing through headphones or the VITA’s small speakers. When fighting a boss with an ally and casting your own spells too the sound count become a huge cluster of noise as it tries to process the sounds of everything.

The AI allies are pretty useful, right up until something important is happening. They have no issue helping you fight off the basic hordes of unimpressive foot soldiers but as soon a big boss is ready to rumble, your AI buddy suddenly forgets which arm is their casting arm. The AI character seems to be the main reason for there being a co-op mode implemented into the story line, which will actually save your progress in single player when you beat quests in the co-op mode. This is a great feature as it encourages players to play with friends and others online and helps to expand the game’s community while rewarding the gamers.

What’s been uncovered?

Soul Sacrifice is an action-RPG with a huge side helping of strategy. The game will reward the player for thinking about what they are doing in the long run rather than spamming loads of powerful spells. The game’s difficulty level starts at challenging and pretty much stays there. The game gives you very little leeway for mistake and forces the player to learn and adapt, which is a which is rare in the genre. Completionists will get at least 100 hours out of the game for 100% completion, for those only wanting to complete the story you’ll get about 30-40 hours of gameplay, which is very good for a hand-held title.