Titan Souls is a game developed by Acid Nerve for the PC and PS4 in 2015. It’s a game that combines the boss battle progression of Shadow of the Colossus, and the crushing difficulty of Dark Souls. The main challenge comes from the player only having one hit point, meaning a perfect fight is required to proceed. This concept seems really cool, and seeing as how I’m always up for a challenge I figured I’d play it and let you know what I thought in my mighty review of… Titan Souls.

    First off, just look at this game. LOOK AT IT! This is how you do pixel art right. Simple, but detailed. And absolutely gorgeous in motion. In this game you play as a boy who’s given a bow and arrow to go and slay titans scattered throughout the world. That’s it. No story, not much of an ending, just go out and kill stuff. I understand that the game wants people to focus on gameplay, but this is a bit too minimal for me. I need some motivation to play. Still, it works as a throwback to classic Atari games and the soundtrack is so beautiful it practically tells a story all its own.

    The world itself is connected enough to feel like a real place. It has 7 zones: the starting ascension, ruins, forest, ice, lava, graveyard, and final peak. In each of these zones you’ll find titans, giant bosses that need to be defeated to finish the game. Each boss is different in design and mechanics, but they all have one thing in common: they, like the main character, can only take one hit before being killed. After killing the first four in the introductory area, the game opens up and most of the remaining 19 titans can be fought in any order, with the exception of the final bosses.

    The player can move in all directions as well as roll around and run in order to avoid attacks. This is nice, but I do wish the player could run without having to roll first. There were a lot of times I needed to get some distance from a boss before rolling and couldn’t because of the cooldown. To fight the player is given an arrow that can be fired in any direction and held to fire with more power. Once thrown, the arrow can be retrieved with telekinesis, but the boy has to be standing still both while firing and retrieving. Movement and combat are both fast and fluid, although there were a few times I swear I hit a target and the game seemed to disagree with me.

    Most of the boss fights involve seeing an obvious weak point to hit, with the challenge being figuring out how to hit it. This can involve tricking the boss into turning away from you, hitting them with their own attacks, or just getting the arrow behind them and pulling it back to hit them from behind. Either way, almost every fight in this game is fun and memorable. Although I’m not sure if the fights are memorable because they’re fun or because I had to retry them so many times that they’re burned in my memory. 

Seriously, if you’re easily frustrated when you’re unable to beat a boss in a game and having to try over and over, this is not the game for you. You will die a lot in the 3 or so hours it takes to play through this game. Not all of the bosses need to be defeated to fight the final boss, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t need to take a mental health break a few times while playing. Still, that feeling goes away completely when a really tough boss is finally defeated. It gives a real sense of accomplishment that most games only wish for. Except when the game froze after beating one of the bosses. That was anxiety inducing. Luckily the kill did register and I didn’t have to fight the guy again.

Also fortunate are the save points located in each area. It’s nice to be sent back near the boss’s domain, but it would have been much better to put save points right outside the boss rooms so the player doesn’t have to deal with walking to the boss after every death. You could say it’s the developers’ way of punishing the player for death, but I think it has more to do with padding out the time in an already short game. Not to mention the fact that the overkill you face from the bosses after dying tends to be punishment enough.

Overall, Titan Souls is a really fun game. Its mechanics may be simple, but the ways the developers find to have you use those mechanics are top notch. There are a few issues, but the minimalistic style and unique concept are why I’m giving Titan Souls an 8 out of 10. If you’re looking for an old school throwback that’ll kick your ass just like those games did then this is exactly what you’re looking for. That being said I hope you enjoyed this review. If you did, be sure to like and subscribe to see more mighty reviews, dissections, and other gaming content. And as always, have a mighty nifty day today!