Category: IGN

Warning: Minor spoilers for Hollow Knight: Silksong follow.

At some point in your journey through Pharloom, the setting of Hollow Knight: Silksong, you may have the misfortune of running into a shrouded, wormlike bug called Greyroot. Hiding in a hole in Shellwood, an area located above The Marrow, she asks you to bring her a Twisted Bud – a “contorted mass of ashen vine” that “cries out incessantly,” as per its item description. When you give it to her, she tells you it’s weak, that it “must be nourished” before “the time of birth approaches.” Although she never mentioned a reward, previous fetch quests taught you to expect one. But to your surprise, Greyroot doesn’t hand you shards or rosaries. Instead, she wraps her body around you like an anaconda, pressing harder and harder until your neck snaps and everything goes dark. When you awake, you find yourself stuck inside a mysterious cave, only to learn you’ve been infected by a parasite that limits your moveset and prevents you from healing.

Does any of this sound vaguely familiar? If you’ve played Bloodborne, it should. In that game, tall, hooded enemies called Snatchers roam the streets of Yharnam carrying large bags. If they defeat you – which they will, especially on your first encounter – you don’t get the usual “You Died” screen, but are teleported to a dungeon in another, difficult-to-access part of the world. There are other déjà vu moments, too. The cries of the Twisted Bud evoke memories of Mergo, the invisible, infant Great One whose wailing can be heard throughout the Nightmare of Mensis, and Greyroot’s dialogue resembles that of Healing Church officials who – like her – anticipate the messy births of eldritch babies.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Echoes of Bloodborne can be found throughout “Silksong”, from the game’s opening level to its secret endings. Team Cherry’s long-awaited follow-up to 2017’s Hollow Knight not only resembles FromSoftware’s gothic horror masterpiece in theming and visuals, but also in the way it shakes up gameplay mechanics introduced by its predecessor. By giving players control of a more agile character, and tweaking combat to favor bolder, more aggressive playstyles, Silksong builds on Hollow Knight in much the same way that Bloodborne built on Dark Souls, perfecting a blueprint its developers have stuck to ever since.

Connecting Silksong to Bloodborne is not as crazy as it sounds. Although Team Cherry has cited The Legend of Zelda as their primary source of inspiration, the original Hollow Knight shares a lot of its DNA with the Dark Souls games, from its corps run mechanic and oasis-like checkpoint system to its expansive roster of crushingly difficult boss fights, branching level layouts, emphasis on environmental storytelling, and narrative centered around gods, curses, and some kind of all-consuming abyss. Intentional or not, these features helped breathe new life into the tried and tested Metroidvania formula, turning Hollow Knight into an instant classic and Silksong, initially conceived as DLC, into one of the most anticipated games in recent memory.

Just as fans compared the original Hollow Knight to Dark Souls, so too are they comparing Silksong to other games in FromSoftware’s catalogue. Already, Reddit pages like this one display a variety of opinions. Some argue the game is like Dark Souls II – “much harder and more divisive.” Others say Hornet’s new running ability (more on that in a moment) reminds them of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, while others still see the sequel’s explosion in popularity as analogous to the mainstream success of Elden Ring. While all of these arguments are valid, comparisons to Bloodborne – both in terms of surface-level presentation and underlying design philosophy – cut closest to the bone.

Visually, several levels in Silksong bear an uncanny resemblance to levels from Bloodborne. Shellwood, a booby-trapped forest filled with suspended cages, brings to mind the Forbidden Woods. Greymoor, a sprawling township whose inhabitants dress in ragged brown robes and wander the streets carrying lanterns and pointy objects, evokes Central Yharnam or the Fishing Hamlet. The Citadel, Pharloom’s beating heart and the destination of Hornet’s journey, is Team Cherry’s answer to the Healing Church: a labyrinthine headquarters of a mysterious religious and political order that attracts pilgrims from insect kingdoms far and wide.

Although the game’s story has yet to be fully digested by dedicated lore masters, it appears that Silksong explores many of the same themes Bloodborne did. Just as Yharnam is consumed by a beastly scourge, so are Pharloom’s denizens afflicted by a “thread sickness” that turns them into mindless monsters. In both games, these afflictions are tied to sources of great power, with the scourge originating from the Healing Church’s use of blood, and the sickness being somehow related to the Citadel’s silk production. Both games treat might as treacherous and corruptive – something you wield at the cost of losing yourself. “What’s this twitching inside of you?” an NPC called the Hermit says to Hornet after she’s been infected with Greyroot’s parasite. “A slave within a slave! Given over your shell to something greater?”

Silksong and Bloodborne also share similar level designs, especially in the opening hours. While Hollow Knight, similar to Demon’s Souls and the first two Dark Souls games, eases players into the experience with relatively slow-paced opening levels before gradually ramping up the difficulty curve, Silksong and Bloodborne hit the ground running. Compared to the beginner-friendly Forgotten Crossroads, the Marrow – much like Central Yharnam – is a trial by fire, confronting the player with platforming and combat challenges that pick up right where the end of the previous game left off.

Speaking of challenges, both games make small yet meaningful tweaks to the iconic healing systems of their predecessors. While Silksong doesn’t shake things up to the extent that Bloodborne did by replacing the Estus flask with blood vials, the changes Team Cherry did push through end up having a similar effect on how people play. Where the Knight could only regenerate one mask at a time, Hornet – who can heal both on the ground and in the air – is initially able to regenerate a maximum of three. The catch: you can only heal once your meter is completely full. Like Bloodborne’s rallying mechanic, which lets players recover health if they retaliate immediately after getting hit, Silksong’s new system encourages an offensive as opposed to a defensive playstyle. Due to the new rules, the player can no longer afford to play it safe and heal incrementally. If you want to win, you’ll have to go about it differently than you did in the original. As one Redditor put it:

“I find myself playing like in [Hollow Knight], but it doesn’t work as well. Getting hurt matters a lot more in [Silksong], since Hornet can only heal at full meter. In that regard, it’s a lot like Bloodborne, in that always attacking results in healing being online more frequently. That’s not at all how I play in [Hollow Knight], and I’m struggling to retrain myself. I wonder if players new to the series are actually having an easier time, since they don’t have to unlearn the muscle memory from Hollow Knight.”

All that said, Silksong is most similar to Bloodborne in how it cranks up the speed. Even by the standards of their time, the early Souls games were slow. Player characters moved as if they were stuck in mud, attacked with windup animations that are long enough to rival those of certain Elden Ring bosses, and seemed to fat roll regardless of their equip load. Sure, the slower pace gave you ample time to react to your opponents, but there was also something frustrating about it. Often, deaths weren’t due to lack of skill so much as the fact that your character couldn’t do what you wanted them to.

By introducing faster attack animations and replacing the dreaded roll with a consistently snappy sidestep, Bloodborne got rid of that frustration. In Yharnam, players have no one to blame for their deaths except themselves, as the game gives them all the tools they need to take on even the game’s toughest enemies. But that’s not all. By changing the speed, FromSoft also changed the game’s appeal. Previously, combat had been like games of chess – methodical, requiring players to think ahead. Now, it was more like – well – combat: scrappy, chaotic, with decisions made on the fly rather than in advance. From Bloodborne onwards, Soulsborne titles were no longer tests of patience, but tests of reflexes – and they’re more popular (and, dare one say, enjoyable) for it.

Just as the hunters of Yharnam outpace the undead knights of Lordran and Drangleic, so does Hornet run circles around the Knight. Right out of the gate, she can walk faster, jump higher, and attack with greater range. These baseline qualities are enhanced by her new abilities, the most versatile of which are acquired comparatively early on in the campaign. Like the Knight, Hornet acquires a quickstep ability. But unlike the Knight, this ability can be extended into a run, which can itself be chained into a super jump and – finally – another, mid-air dash. She also learns to grapple, slow her descent with her cloak, and fly up air vents like a tiny, pointy rocket.

These abilities are not only used for traversal; they also come in handy during combat. Hornet’s downward thrust or “pogo jump” can be used to strike and bounce off enemies, just like in the original, but – because its direction is diagonal as opposed to vertical – it’s also a great way to quickly reposition yourself on the ground after a jump. Meanwhile, her run can be chained into a super jump to get over large enemies, or chained into a long-range special attack. These new abilities alter gameplay to such an extent that Team Cherry designed several early-game bosses that become a cakewalk when they are put to use, but a nightmare when you control Hornet the way you would the Knight. (If you’re stuck at that purple, hulking, club-wielding, Skull Ant mini-boss in the Marrow, now you know why).

That’s not to say Hornet’s greater speed makes the game any easier. For one, her new abilities come with significant drawbacks: the diagonal pogo requires strategic positioning, while the super jump locks you into an inescapable arc. More importantly, as in Bloodborne, you’re not the only one who becomes faster, stronger, and more aggressive. Enemies in Silksong have more health, bigger move pools, and often deal two masks of damage as opposed to one. The difficulty hasn’t changed – on the contrary, the game has only gotten more difficult. But because you’re faster and stronger, it’s also more enjoyable and replayable. I’ve beaten Gwin and Nashandra, yet I haven’t picked up Dark Souls or Dark Souls II in ages. Meanwhile, I’ve never defeated Gehrman and the Moon Presence, yet I still play through Bloodborne every Christmas. I suspect the same will be true for Silksong.

Years before Animal Crossing became a global success, Nintendo warned its localisation team how “difficult” it would be to make the game work outside of its native Japan.

Speaking to Time Extension, Nintendo localization manager Leslie Swann said bosses cautioned that the English-language launch of Animal Crossing, then titled Animal Forest, would be a huge job due to the sheer amount of in-game text within the title, as well as its numerous Japan-specific cultural references and items.

Indeed, Swan remembered then-Nintendo president Satoru Iwata discovering her team was working on bringing the notoriously odd and text-heavy game would be launched outside of Japan — something that left him in disbelief.

“We knew of Animal Forest, but we hadn’t really dinked around with it — we usually would get the Japanese versions of games and play through them,” Swann recalled. “But we hadn’t really messed around with that one very much. So, anyway, [Takashi Tezuka, Nintendo executive officer] basically said to me, ‘We’d like to have you localize it’ and I said, ‘Sure.’

“But then he said, ‘No, Leslie, I’m not sure you understand, it’s going to be difficult.’ And I kept having to assure him that we would make it happen.”

Animal Crossing’s earliest incarnation, known as Animal Forest, launched for N64 in April 2001 and never made it outside of Japan. It was only when the game was given an expanded GameCube launch that the decision was made to localise the title elsewhere — and even then, its arrival around the world took years.

“A month or two later, I was in a meeting with Mr. Iwata and some other heads of the development group,” Swan recalled, “and we were just kind of going around saying, ‘Here’s what we’re going to be working on,’ and I just said, ‘Well, Mr. Tezuka is asking us to work on Animal Forest’ and he just burst out in laughter. He just laughed and said, ‘I don’t know how you’re going to do this.’ And it’s true, just everything in that game was so specific to Japan.”

Okami and Bayonetta creator Hideki Kamiya recently weighed in on Hideo Kojima’s “lost” horror game demo P.T., and its lasting legacy.

A collaboration between Hideo Kojima and film director Guillermo del Toro, P.T. was released in 2014 on the PS4 as a free demo for their upcoming game Silent Hills. However, when series publisher Konami cancelled the game in 2015, they also delisted the demo from the PlayStation Store, making it impossible to redownload. This led to second-hand PS4 consoles with the critically acclaimed demo commanding high prices on auction sites like Ebay.

On X, where he regularly responds to (and blocks/unblocks) fans, Hideki Kamiya recently talked about P.T in response to a user expressing hope that either Kamiya or Kojima would try making another P.T.-style game. On September 5, Kamiya tweeted, “if it’s impossible to resurrect P.T., Kojima should make a new game in the same style,” adding: “if Kojima doesn’t do it, maybe I’ll give it a go. I hate horror though, so it wouldn’t be horror… plus, I have no ideas.”

It seems that Kojima’s upcoming experimental horror game OD might go some way to plugging the P.T.-shaped hole. First teased back in 2023 via a mysterious trailer, OD promises to “explore the concept of testing your fear threshold, and what it means to overdose on fear.”

Like P.T., OD is also a collaboration with a filmmaker, this time with Jordan Peele of Get Out fame. Hideo Kojima previously promised that OD will be something that “no one has seen before,” although details still remain scarce. Kojima will be holding a special event in Tokyo later this month to celebrate 10 years since his break with Konami, where he is likely to reveal more info about future projects (possibly including more about OD).

Although Devil May Cry and Bayonetta creator Hideki Kamiya kicked off his career at Capcom working on the original Resident Evil and its sequel, he has never made a modern, photorealistic horror game akin to P.T. In a series of tweets last October, Kamiya observed that P.T.’s delisting left a gap in the market, which Japanese indie hit The Exit 8 stepped into. “The Exit 8 went viral, but it’s basically just a watered-down P.T.,” Kamiya opined.

The Exit 8 is far less gory and objectively less scary than P.T., however it does share the delisted demo’s looping corridor mechanic, building a sense of dread in the player as they try to spot anomalies in its subway passage. Selling fast on Steam upon its release in November 2023, The Exit 8 has grown into such a phenomenon that it has even spawned a film adaptation (which recently generated some controversy in Japan).

Despite saying that he can’t play P.T. alone because it is “too scary,” Hideki Kamiya is full of praise for Kojima and del Toro’s demo. He even went so far as to say that the ‘8-like’ sub-genre (games with similar settings and mechanics to The Exit 8, which proliferated in the wake of its meteoric success) should really be called ‘P.T.-like.’ “P.T. was really that revolutionary – with an unparalleled uniqueness, and I think it has strongly influenced subsequent game creators,” said Kamiya.

Speaking of Kamiya, he’s busy working on Okami 2 for Capcom with his new development studio, Clovers. Kamiya left PlatinumGames in 2023 under something of a cloud.

Verity Townsend is a Japan-based freelance writer who previously served as editor, contributor and translator for the game news site Automaton West. She has also written about Japanese culture and movies for various publications.

Hollow Knight: Silksong developer Team Cherry has revealed details on the game’s first post-release patch, which it said mostly makes bug fixes and “slight” balance adjustments in the early game.

In a post on Steam, the developer said patch 1.0.28470 is set for all players mid-next week, so around September 17. However, PC players can access this version right now via the public-beta branch on Steam or GOG.

In terms of balance changes, it looks like the patch makes Silksong slightly easier, which will be welcome news to those who are struggling with the game. Silksong is one of the biggest launches of the year, hitting huge player concurrent numbers on Steam alongside a positive reception from critics. But amid the excitement over Team Cherry’s long awaited sequel is a debate within the community about whether the game is too hard — perhaps even unfairly so. It comes as no surprise to see Silksong’s early days mods dominated by those which make the game easier.

Over the weekend, we reported on how some Silksong players were expressing criticism across social media, subreddits, Discords, and Steam reviews about the game’s difficulty scaling and brutal runbacks. There’s even one very early miniboss causing a lot of players a whole heap of trouble, too.

“Is it just me, or are some of the things that make Silksong ‘difficult’ just cruel?” wondered redditor Machi-Ato. “The game has artificially inflated difficulty and playtime due to overtuned numbers and menial tasks/runback,” reads a post on Steam.

Thankfully, IGN is here to help. Here’s how to unlock and use the map, how to get Rosary Beads, Achievements and Trophies list, and our ever expanding Silksong Interactive Map. Also, you may need the Bell Beast boss fight guide. It’s a hard one!

Hollow Knight: Silksong update 1.0.28470 patch notes:

• Fixed situation where players could remain cloakless after Slab escape sequence.
• Fixed wish Infestation Operation often not being completable during the late game.
• Fixed wish Beast in the Bells not being completable when Bell Beast is summoned at the Bilewater Bellway during the late game.
• Fixed getting stuck floating after down-bouncing on certain projectiles.
• Fixed courier deliveries sometimes being inaccessible in Act 3.
• Fixed craft bind behaving incorrectly when in memories.
• Fixed Lace tool deflect soft-lock at start of battle in Deep Docks.
• Fixed Silk Snippers in Chapel of the Reaper sometimes getting stuck out of bounds.
• Fixed Claw Mirrors leaving Hornet inverted if taking damage during a specific moment while binding.
• Fixed Snitch Pick not giving rosaries and shell shards as intended.
• Removed float override input (down + jump, after player has Faydown Cloak).
• Slight difficulty reduction in early game bosses Moorwing and Sister Splinter.
• Reduction in damage from Sandcarvers.
• Slight increase in pea pod collider scale.
• Slight reduction in mid-game Bellway and Bell Bench prices.
• Slight increase in rosary rewards from relics and psalm cylinders.
• Increase in rosary rewards for courier deliveries.
• Various additional fixes and tweaks.

All fixes will apply retroactively, so players who’ve hit a significant bug that prevents progress may want to switch over to public-beta to receive the fix, Team Cherry said.

“Further fixes are already being worked on for a second patch. If you have an issue and you don’t see the solution in the list above, we may be working on it.”

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Single-player, story-based DLC that gives me an excuse to return to an impeccable single-player, story-based adventure that I adored the first time around? Unlike an out-of-his-depth Marcus Brody, MachineGames really knows how to speak my language. The Order of Giants is a roughly four-hour side quest for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle that’s heavy on puzzles and features a string of tremendously atmospheric caves, catacombs, and canals to explore through the belly of Rome. After not having visited The Great Circle for many months, I was quickly hooked all over again. Even if it’s just for an afternoon, The Order of Giants is an effective refresher on most of the things I love about MachineGames’ take on the finest fascist-hater to ever find himself under a fedora. However, I have to concede that its presentation as a belated quest from early in The Great Circle’s story does make it feel noticeably less special and crucial to play than a more overtly separate adventure could have been, and the final fight falls a little flat.

Slipping The Order of Giants directly into what’s basically the first act of The Great Circle’s story obviously spoke to the MachineGames team in an irresistible way and, to a degree, I can see the elegance of blending it into the existing game in this fashion. Accessing the mission actually happens from within the Vatican level itself – it isn’t an individual mode or level you can directly hop into via the main menu. It’s an interesting approach, since it makes The Order of Giants feel like a segment that was left on the cutting room floor. If you’re playing for the first time it’ll just be there from the outset, and for returning players it’s a little like watching a familiar film with a lengthy deleted scene re-inserted. It’s a neat and tidy solution, but it does have the unfortunate side effect of making the DLC feel a little inessential overall. That is, it wasn’t here initially, and it doesn’t change anything now that it is – whether you play it or not.

While The Order of Giants kicks off within the existing Vatican level, the mission quickly distinguishes itself by placing Indy into a previously unseen interior – and subsequently whisking him out of the Vatican entirely, and into Rome. Troy Baker’s performance as Indy remains hard to fault, and the music is again outstandingly faithful to the films. There are some really stunning underground locations throughout The Order of Giants, and I regularly found myself poring over the details of its crusty catacombs.

The action, meanwhile, is typical of The Great Circle itself: a mix of light first-person platforming, some puzzle solving, and some scattered stealth and brawling against Italian soldiers and a group of mysterious and violent red-robed cult members. This isn’t the sort of DLC that adds a radically different new layer of combat, so don’t expect them to display any new tricks.

The puzzles, though, are absolutely the highlight. I liked two of them in particular more than any in The Great Circle itself. One is a well-crafted water puzzle, and the other is essentially a giant marble maze you need to solve without losing your flaming ball and starting over. There is one particular text-based brainteaser where the link to the physical puzzle pieces seemed a little obtuse initially, but shortly afterwards made me feel like a mild idiot for not figuring it out sooner. Sometimes that’s the best kind of puzzle.

There aren’t any dramatic action sequences in The Order of Giants akin to the fighter plane skyjack in The Great Circle – or tobogganing down the Himalayas on a huge, Nazi battleship. It’s a slower-paced affair overall, but I don’t mind this since it’s seemed to have resulted in a pumped-up amount of puzzles to mull over. It does crescendo to a slightly unexpected miniboss fight in a very neat location, but it’s not a particularly inventive battle – it’s just run, ranged attack, run, ranged attack, run, etcetera. It probably went on a little long considering how repetitive it ended up being, wrapping up just as I’d started wondering whether what I was doing was even the right thing.

Square Enix has announced Octopath Traveler 0 will have town building placement limitations for some consoles when it launches for PC, Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X | S this December.

Details about hardware restrictions were revealed alongside full platform specifications for the Octopath Traveler prequel. It comes with information about what resolution and FPS PC and consoles can achieve, while warning players with older hardware that their HD-2D RPG experience may come with a few noticeable differences.

PS5, Xbox Series X | S, and up-to-date PCs will support a maximum Town Building Placement Limit of 500. Those who play on Switch 2 and PS4, however, will see that building placement decreased to 400.

Town sizes in Octopath Traveler 0 shrink even more if you play on the original Switch, with Square Enix sharing that Nintendo’s first hybrid console will feature a maximum of just 250. That’s just half of what players on PS5 and Xbox Series X | S will see. It’s unclear how noticeable these town size differences will be for players when they play for themselves.

Octopath Traveler 0 platform specs pic.twitter.com/2jhpK7osy6

— Wario64 (@Wario64) September 5, 2025

In terms of resolution and FPS, PS5 and Xbox Series X, of course, lead the pack with support for up to 3840 x 2160 and 120 FPS, with PC players able to select their preferred performance settings depending on their setup. Xbox Series S supports 120 FPS at 1920 x 1080, with PS4 and Switch 2 both featuring up to 1920 x 1080 at 60 FPS. Finally, Octopath Traveler 0 played on the original Switch will have a maximum resolution of 1280 x 720 with support of up to 30 FPS.

While Switch 2 players will have the option to play the Octopath Traveler prequel on the go, they should know Square Enix recently revealed the physical version of the experience will only be available as a Game-Key Card. Switch 1 owners, on the other hand, can pick up an actual physical card but will not have an option to upgrade to a Switch 2 version.

Octopath Traveler 0 was announced for Switch and Switch 2 in July and will launch for all platforms December 4, 2025. For more on Square Enix’s latest, you can see what is included in its Standard, Deluxe, and Collector’s Editions.

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

Amazon outlet Woot is offering a bunch of video games on sale right now, with some of 2025’s biggest releases on sale.

Arguably, the biggest is Monster Hunter Wilds, which sees more than half of its MSRP sliced off with an Insect Glaive, bringing Capcom’s creature-slaying title down to just $29.99 on Xbox Series X.

This Woot Deal Is Great for 2025 Game Releases

Aside from a confused, misguided mish-mash of different and poorly executed ideas that take turns setting up rakes for itself to step on, Lost Soul Aside is an enjoyable character action game. I’ve had a blast in battles and boss fights, but too often in between them I had to slog through a repetitive story plagued with unmemorable characters, levels peppered with awkward platforming, and puzzles that would make the shape-matching challenges you’d give to a toddler look like rocket science, all disguised in a deceptively flashy package.

Originality is fleeting in games, a medium where ideas and innovations blur the line between craft, technology, business, and art. That’s especially true in the ever-wider tent of high-budget fantasy action games with flashy combos and light RPG elements. And normally, that’s not an issue; even a competent take on a character action game inspired by the likes of Bayonetta or Devil May Cry is probably going to provide some fluffy, inoffensive fun – and to its credit, Lost Soul Aside is more than competent as an action game. But in clearly borrowing and worsening ideas from multiple recent Final Fantasy games in particular, it’s not attempting an idea of its own that didn’t work out; it’s doing something badly that begs comparison to games that got the same ideas right, some of them nearly a decade ago.

That’s what drove me up the wall during my playthrough. I feel like I’ve been playing the product of boardroom meetings held a week after Final Fantasy XV or VII Remake came out where the discussion was on how to capitalize on their success, rather than a passion project made by a team paying homage to those games. From a we-have-Noctis-at-home main character (named Kaser), to the story’s setup feeling awfully familiar, to the structure and scale of each level resembling a pared-down Final Fantasy VII Remake, with all of it peppered with uninteresting extra puzzles and platforming challenges, I found something new to sigh at around every corner – and trust me, that’s not because I was swooning over the bad-boy protagonist.

Set in a sci-fi/fantasy world where a mysterious alien energy has been harnessed to fuel an all-powerful empire, Lost Soul Aside opens with a premonition that humanity is soon to face its darkest days and that a savior will rise to the occasion. Then, you’re thrust into an opening segment where you’re introduced to an underground resistance organization run from a poor neighborhood in the capital city as they carry out an open act of defiance against the empire – sound familiar? If it doesn’t you should play Final Fantasy 7 instead, because it’s done better there and this retelling doesn’t do anything interesting or original with it.

Doled out through occasionally dazzling, action-packed cutscenes but mostly in significantly less impressive, awkward dialogue sequences, the story is highly repetitive. Every opportunity for a twist or tonal shift is squandered in favor of a straightforward, black-and-white tale that doesn’t feel like it’s about anything other than wanting to be like other RPGs. Lost Soul Aside doesn’t use its roughly 16-hour runtime efficiently enough for any characters to grow. Instead, it flings proper noun after proper noun at you, hoping that one of its many side characters will make an impression. But this story’s rhythm moves too quickly for anybody to exist beyond cartoonish caricature at best. Being generous, maybe their memorable characteristics were lost in the English translation, but maybe they were never there to begin with.

Its individual story moments come in a similarly offbeat meter, with awkward animations and mostly flat voice acting filling in its hours’ worth of basic, over-the-shoulder dialogue segments. All of it is delivered by characters who often fall into unflattering RPG cliches (like a scantily clad woman who looks and acts like a teenager but is actually hundreds of years old or a gruff, emo protagonist who’d fit in with a boyband and has a mysterious backstory and a penchant for kicking ass) without playing with or evolving these ideas in any discernible way.

With a better localization, more lively voice direction, or a stronger commitment to the bit, Lost Soul Aside could perhaps have nailed the same B-movie-like campy charm worn so well by the action games that so clearly inspired its better parts. Instead, it’s somehow both half-hearted and overserious. Kaser and his dragon-like sidekick Lord Arena eventually share a few moments that bent the edges of my lips into a smirk, but it takes so long for the pair to hit their stride that I was mostly checked out from the story and there only for the action by the time their dynamic clicked.

Combat in Lost Soul Aside acts as a palette cleanser for the uninteresting story. Kaser hacks and slashes through enemies with stylish flair, using the genre-standard light and heavy attack buttons. Mixing the two together with different timing and order will open up new combos, and you can unlock even more using skill points to fill out branches on a skill tree. With a choice between four different weapons – sword, greatsword, poleblade, and scythe – each has its own skill path and playstyle. And switching them on the fly mid-combo opens up an expressive, varied tree of attacks catered to a range of playstyles. The polearm, for example, works well at long range, where the greatsword is best for dealing satisfying, heavy blows. My favorite was the standard sword, though; an all-around, quick, agile weapon with solid ranged and melee attacks, it’s remained my go-to for cutting up legions of invading Voidrax beings during the duration of my playthrough.

Supplemented by additional mechanics like the combo-extending Burst Pursuit that allows you to throw out big finishers after a combo or the Witch Time-like perfect dodge that nets you a different, powerful attack for each weapon, requisite – though cleverly restrained – parry, and the Arena powers that let you throw out big, area-of-effect attacks that work well for resetting the battlefield, Lost Soul Aside’s combat system is the star of the show. Even against largely unmemorable enemies, I’m really enjoying experimenting with new combinations and powers as Kaser and Arena’s flashy animations dazzled during longer sequences.

The boss fights that cap off parts of each level make for even more stylish encounters. While bigger opponents play with scale, throwing out massive, arena-sweeping attacks, others are more nimble duels to the finish against human-sized opponents. Nearly every fight culminates in an exciting finale. Dosed with just the right amount of toothy challenge, each battle provided the right kind of brain-tickling, thrilling showdown as I dodged and weaved between attacks before wailing on their stagger meter to deal a special Sync Finisher on my dazed opponent.

I did find an odd pain point in some of these fights, though: There’s not enough feedback when Kaser takes damage from some smaller swings. So as I’m wailing away at a bad guy seemingly doing well, I’ll glance down at my health bar and it’s significantly lower than I thought it would be because I didn’t know that I’d taken any damage in the first place. Thankfully, Kaser and Arena are talky enough that you’ll hear about it once your health is really low, and those barks stand out against the otherwise-repetitive battle chatter.

Unfortunately, Lost Soul Aside isn’t a pure boss-rush combat gauntlet, and the rest of the gameplay between each fight isn’t nearly as compelling. Most of the levels are made up of a linear, boring series of corridors with occasional “open” areas that add an extra platforming “challenge” or two to the mix. Sure, there might be a basic puzzle or treasure chest around a corner (though I used almost none of the crafting materials accumulated during my playthrough because the rewards didn’t improve my stats enough to bother with), but nothing I’ve seen so far has really come close to justifying its existence beyond drab padding between battles. Its high-fidelity, visually detailed spaces mask simple, homogenous non-combat challenges and empty chambers that toss a few unrewarding pickups your way, seemingly just to break things up.

That makes sense, considering most of the level progression and exploration is marked by boring and simple paths where you mostly just walk forward until the next fight, broken up with a simple puzzle here or there. It was nothing offensive…. until the platforming reared its ugly head. At multiple points during Lost Soul Aside I found myself jumping through platforming segments that could make even the Plinko and Chuckster levels that make up the dregs of Super Mario Sunshine look like a blast. Plagued with imprecise running and walking, floaty jumps with laggy-feeling animations, poor feedback, a claustrophobic field of view, and a barely visible shadow, I am truly shocked at the low-quality platforming I endured to get from fight to fight. Some of it was optional, but I still had to do a lot to complete any given level. Thankfully, I could find ways to cheese certain annoying segments, but don’t expect to see anyone at GDQ showing off Lost Soul Aside speedrunning techniques; these are tourniquets used to slow fatal bleeding, not expressive tools indicative of a mechanically deep platformer.

It’s another week, and that means it’s time to take a look at the Magic: The Gathering Crashers and Climbers as we close in on the release of Spider-Man less than two months since Edge of Eternities.

This time around, our climbers are a nice eclectic mix of cards from sets from 2024 and 2025, as well as a rapidly climbing space dragon. Intrigued? You should be. Let’s go!

Climbing

Let’s start with the space dragon, then, with Nova Hellkite available for just a few cents the other day and now reaching almost $3 in market value in climbing.

Fans of the Pokémon Trading Card Game once again have a new reason to keep an eye on Amazon and Walmart, with it being the best place to score packs of White Flare and Black Bolt.

The Booster Bundles have been trending slightly downward in price, likely with attention being turned to the upcoming Mega Evolution set & the recently announced Phantasml Flames, offering collectors and players an opportunity to pick them up for less than at most other retailers.