Chaos Souls

It may be barebones and a good bit janky, but Chaos Souls still has its moments where it's actually quite enjoyable, and given that it's made by a single developer is actually pretty impressive as far as "one of the first games I made" goes. Plus it's base price is $5 and it's currently on a soon-to-be-retired-sale for $1.25 so like, c'mon, you're getting what you paid for.

Its sidescrolling beat-em-up gameplay is reminiscent of games like Fairy Bloom or ICEY, though the far more restrained budget leaves it lacking for variety. You have a decent amount of moves in your arsenal (a light and heavy combo, a ranged attack, an evasive dash, a double jump, a damage buff, a heal, and a shield that you can cancel any action into that acts as a sort of parry), but they lack any sort of evolution over the course of the game. There's no mixing of light/heavy/ranged attacks nor any alternate weapons to alter up your moveset, so while your options for maneuvering are quite good, expect a lot of the same 4-hit light combo rather than anything intuitive for the actual combat. It gets the job of "how do I damage the enemies" done, but lacks any sort of variety, comboing, or flair that this genre is normally known for.

While you get some upgrade points after each boss, these also largely end up inconsequential. Raise any given passive such as attack power or health to max and you'll only be seeing what seems like a 25% or so improvement. It's nice that it -has- some form of progression, but the impact of it is ultimately minimal.

While the core combat mechanics are pretty lacking (albeit functional), the enemy design is actually pretty nice. It starts off with a simple melee and ranged enemy in the first area, but as soon as you get past the first boss the regular enemy design opens up quite a bit. Most enemy types have 3 or so different attacks, ranging from basic melee swipes, to summoning projectiles down from above, firing a tracking shot, or creating a damaging AoE on a spot of ground. The different enemies are used in a wide variety of combinations, even throwing in additional arena-based hazards such as spikes or fire traps from time-to-time, so you actually get a wide variety of different encounters.

You'll actually have to make full use of your abilities to clear each encounter, with well-timed dashes and shields being especially rewarded. Enemy attacks all have intuitive and easy-to-learn tells, and if you pay attention to them you can significantly speed up the pace of the combat by using your shield to avoid damage without stopping your attacks. With the spellcaster-type enemies sporting a wide variety of ranged attacks you'll actually have to pay mind to target prioritization as well, so even though the act of actually hurting the enemies is mostly just mashing X, there's a good amount of enjoyment to be had in zipping around each battleground as you dodge attacks and weather down the enemy forces.

If the enemy design has one main issue, it's that each of the three zones pulls from its own enemy pool. While each area having a distinct theme is nice, as a result they can get a tad repetitive. You're just dealing with various formations of ~5 enemy types per zone, rather than seeing the more varied combinations that could've been achieved if they kept mixing in enemies from previous zones.

The boss fights are definitely the highest points of the game. Each of the six bosses has a wide variety of moves, all of which once again have fairly telegraphed windups that reward attentive timing on the shield button, and it's a ton of fun learning all of their patterns and behaviours. A couple of the bosses likewise make nice use of some environmental hazards,via attacks that last longer than your shield and require you to get in specific positioning to avoid, adding an extra layer of strategy beyond just timing your blocks and dodges well.

On the story end of things, while it's simple and the twist quickly becomes obvious, the character-to-character action is quite nice and does a good job of actually reading like people having conversations, rather than an awkward exchange of plot exposition as so many low-budget games tend to fall into.

The protagonist and her sister both get a nice amount of screen time together, and the care they hold for one another is made clear, so you actually feel motivation towards moving the story forward. Likewise, all of the interactions the protag has with the main bosses are well written, with some pretty humerous back-and-forth banter on occasions. There's some nice heartstring moments about the ideas of family and home during the closing dialogue, and overall looking forward to the next bit of dialogue acts as a nice driving force for the player.

Of course it's by no means perfect. Some main plot points, such as the (minor early-game spoilers) protagonist basically having the Satsui No Hado get touched on a bit awkwardly due to there only being one CG per boss and no cutscene sound effects, leading to in-cutscene actions just sort of happening with the player not seeing, hearing, or reading any of it. In the case of the above spoiler, it literally transitions from one character saying "I'll use X!" to another character going "I can't believe you used X!" with no description or CG or otherwise of the actual event happening. Thankfully this only happens like twice, and while it's a bit jarring each time it doesn't get too much in the way of enjoying the story.

On the graphical end, while some enemy melee animations suffer from "my first Unity game" jank & awkward hitboxing, overall everything is nice to look at. Sound design is more than passable, and the soundtrack is nice to listen to.

Overall, while it's by no means going to hold up against any of the popular games of the genre, Chaos Souls is an impressive first attempt and still manages to offer a decent amount of fun. You can really tell the dev poured their heart and soul into it, and even if it didn't turn out the best that's still more than commendable. I find it a shame that they felt dissatisfied enough to remove it from the steam store, as in spite of its flaws I'm still happy I got a chance to buy and play it. If you're in the mood to provide some support to a small dev who's trying their hardest to learn and improve with each new game, then definitely consider tossing a few dolleroos Visualnoveler's way.

7.3/10

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Chaos Souls is really such a disappointing game it has some good ideas and looks but masses it up, now then it’s story time.

You play as a young cat girl named Eris who lives with her sister Petra who once lived happily in the forest but soon that happiness is over when a demon kidnaps Petra. So Now Eris must pick up her sword and save her sister.

Okay what’s good about this, the anime art style was nice and cute, liked the backgrounds for the levels very nice to look at, the emeries were cool looking, and the music was very nice. And story was okay.

Now for the bad, first there is an upgrading system like in the rpgs but its poorly used here like the monsters doesn't give any exp you can only get them by killing bosses.

Then there is no items or materials to use to make weapons or other more powerful items. Then there is no gold and no merchants at all, hell there is no npc’s to talk too if you want.

Then there are no towns to go to/see or side quests to do. This game is very, very bare bones. Then there is the battling system, it’s just very poor and dull there are no other weapons or cool attacks to kill them with just your sword and even that does not have that many attacks.

Then there is the flying emeries witch are so annoying to kill. Then there are the bugs one of which is when I was in this room I could to leave it no matter what I did.

But the worst is you can really see this game becoming very good, if the maker of this game took his time and added a lot of things this game could have been some good something fun.

So now that’s out of the way this game is really such a disappointment and I can’t recommend this game even if it was on sale.

A brilliant blend between visual novel and 2.5d action platformer. Highly recommend.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIdeN2jh8Fo