1. I couldn't beat this game and I am reviewing it anyway. I know, I'm terrible.
2. Titan Souls does retro right. It combines elements from a few classics and molds them into something new. If you could disassemble The Legend of Zelda into little Lego bricks and put them back together as Shadow of the Colossus, you'd wind up w/ something pretty close.
3. The gist of it is,you gotta seek out and kill the titans, which are big and need to die for some reason. You spend a moderate amount time exploring the otherwise tranquil overworld and then face any titans you can find until you can move on to the next area and repeat the process.
4. The simple control scheme in this has me enamored. Two buttons plus the
stick. One button let's you dash and run. The other shoots your
arrow--you only have one--and draws it back to you. The stick lets you
move and aim. This is all you need and it's great.
5. Despite the simplistic controls, Titan Souls really pushes the amount of things you can pay attention to at one moment. You've got to dodge multiple attack types from each boss and additionally need to pay attention to its weak spot, where you are aiming and where your arrow lands. It feels almost bullet-hellish at some points. It's easy to lose track of one or more of these things and find yourself dead in a hurry--esp. since you can't move when you are shooting or retrieving your arrow.
6. After you die--which you will do a lot--you have to walk a few seconds back to the boss and fight it again. I have mixed feelings about this.When you get stuck on a tough boss, it can really get on your nerves but I feel like overall it helps to put you into the game world. It makes it feel more like an adventure and less like an arcade game.
7. It helps that the overworld is gorgeous, done in the game's retro hi-bit pixel art style. It's here that you get just that little bit of pull on your Zelda heart-strings. It is honestly a minor aspect from a gameplay perspective--it's all about those boss battles--but enough to give you a sense of being in a different world. There's a bit to explore, some minor puzzles to solve. It adds a lot w/o being the main focus of the game.
8. The sound is anything but retro. A fully orchestrated soundtrack is punctuated by clear sound effects. Even more so than the graphics, this soundtrack seems to emphasize the size and power of the bosses and contrast it w/ the relative tranquility of the overworld.
9. It's important the presentation gives such a sense of the world as the story is pretty sparse. There's a plot hinted at but it's intentionally opaque, leaving you to fill in the blanks w/ whatever you might chose to glean from what happens while you're playing.
10. The first handful of bosses are great. Tough at first but then they seem
almost easy when you beat them. Killing them is as much about figuring
out how to kill them as it is mustering up the needed dexterity. You feel like you've solved them as much as you've beaten them.
11. By the midway point though, the strategy starts boiling
down to just trying to shoot each boss really fast before it can kill
you and hoping you get lucky.
12. I stopped playing after I beat a couple bosses in a row this way and got stuck on the third. I kept trying to find a new pattern and eventually resorted to looking up a video of how it was done. Turns out I was doing the right thing, I am just too enfeebled as a gamer to pull it of w/ any sort of consistency. I said to myself, "Okay, I am going to try this boss ten more times and after that I am never playing this game ever again." I did and... Well, maybe I'll pick this up again in a couple years.
13. In the end, it wasn't so much that I couldn't beat Titan Souls, it's that I didn't want to. I am perfectly capable of sitting there for an hour and grinding to get just the right shot but I've got limited time on this earth--or so I'm told. I do very much admire this game's presentation and core concept so I will eagerly pick up any sequel if ever one is made. I actually even recommend people to go ahead and play this because the good outweighs the bad if you don't let yourself get frustrated. Have at it, folks. Let me know how it ends.
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