The original Devil May Cry is one of the stranger developments in games. It started life as a Resident Evil title, but morphed into a pseudo-fighting-game complete with combos and flashy aerial attacks – and yet it kept the horror setting and fixed camera angles. Recent entries take place in fully 3D worlds, and have downplayed the horror element – but what if they hadn’t? Scrappy DMC-like Soulstice is here to answer that question.
Where Devil May Cry has become more OTT and comedic over the years, Soulstice is dark, dour, and drenched in a grim, medieval atmosphere. In terms of aesthetic it resembles a less cheery Dark Souls, without even the fleeting glimpse of an onion knight or an incandescent sun to offer moments of warmth and beauty. What’s left is a ruinous settlement – the towering city of Ilden – filled with transformed citizens and monsters from the void. Playing as Briar the Ashen Knight, and her spectral sister Lute, you have to enter the city and close the breach, to save the world.
’s story lives in an awkward place, sprinkling moments of melodrama atop a
