I am not very far into the game at this writing, but I look forward to enjoying it thoroughly. There is much that I already like about the combat, character development, and exploration. It’s a great feeling to see the boss defeated screen, no matter how many times it happens. I know the challenge will put some off, but if you are up for it, this little darling of an action RPG seems poised to take you to pixelated heaven. For now, know the first few hours of Eldest Souls deliver a lot of what I believe fans of the genre want from a stamina-based melee action title. I have so much to learn and discover that I am quite excited to see just how cool I can make my character. I want to be clear, I’m just scratching the surface of the combat and character development. You can respect on the fly if your old build isn’t suitable for the next challenge. You will be able to customize your character to the playstyle that suits you the most for any given boss. Well it’s a good thing I like this mechanic because there is no other way to heal at first.īut that’s one of the cool things about Eldest Souls: you can respec at any time and different boss souls allow you to customize your moves with different effects, buffs, debuffs, combo moves, extra heals, etc.
This is one of my favorite risk/reward mechanics in a melee action game: attack instead of dropping back to and you don’t need to heal anymore if you pull it off. I particularly enjoyed the fact that fully charged swings of your obsidian sword will put you into a bloodlust state that means attacks leech life back. Now for the good stuff: the combat in Eldest Souls is intuitive and has lots of nice touches anyone familiar with the genre will appreciate. This is the part of the story where the player comes in, arriving as one lone soul who represents a last hope for humanity to overcome the horrors of the cathedral. Eventually, this fallen cathedral became such a source of evil that humanity rallied together and attempted a great (and failed) crusade to infiltrate and abolish it. Then imagine one of the gods – a malevolent one at that – took over the cathedral where the gods were imprisoned in and started subjecting them to twisted experiments. I’m going to leave out a few of Eldest Souls’ significant plot points so I don’t spoil too much, but imagine a world where long ago the gods were conquered and locked away. This is the game’s second boss, and his second phase is pretty cool!