Developed/Published by: Marvelous AQL, SCE Japan Studio, Comcept / Sony Computer Entertainment
Released: May 13th, 2013
Completed: 20th May, 2014
Completion: Completed the main story mode, four of the Fellow Sorcerers chapters, and five and a bit of the Inside Avalon chapters.
Trophies / Achievements: 51%
If you’ve been wondering where I’ve been for a month, well, it’s because of this bloody slog.
A slog that fooled me into thinking it wasn’t going to be a slog. You see, several months ago I played through the demo of Soul Sacrifice (I’d probably just got the Vita, or something, and wanted to see some stuff on it) and I was pleasantly surprised to see how extensive the demo was, consisting of the entire first chapter. I thought it had a pretty compelling story-me-do, too—a student sorcerer is paired with another and grows closer to their partner as they realise that, due to the sacrificial nature of their magic, one must sacrifice the other to graduate.
It was silly, very much Hot Topic teenager pathos and angst, but it passed a few hours pleasantly and I thought “you know, I’d probably continue to play this if I had the whole thing.”
Later, I did! That’s PlayStation Plus for you.
To step back a bit, here’s the deets: Soul Sacrifice is a Monster Hunter-a-like. By which I mean it’s a game where you kill giant monsters repeatedly to gain stuff you can craft, so you can kill bigger giant monsters… repeatedly. In fact, the reason I decided to go back and finish Soul Sacrifice was that I’d randomly got in the mood for a Monster Hunter, and after playing Monster Hunter Freedom Unite briefly I was reminded of all the things that were annoying about the series (mostly: the incredible awkwardness of almost everything, and boring padding like collection missions). So I thought maybe Soul Sacrifice was going to be a bit better than an old PSP game at scratching the itch.
I suppose it did scratch that itch? In a flesh-tearing sorta way.
You see, in Monster Hunter, you (on average) pick up a decent amount of stuff for crafting. And you generally have one weapon that you’ve got the hots for. in Soul Sacrifice, it’s a bit more complex. You have six spaces for spells in a mission, every single spell has a limited number of uses per mission (which can be topped up by sacrificing some grunts) and for every mission you complete you get handed somewhere between one or two new spells.
Doesn’t sound so bad, but to properly upgrade a spell? you need sixteen copies. Beat a mission and of an individual spell you might get one or two copies. So your options are: grind, or piggyback on to some multiplayer games where the other players are much higher level (to be honest, I didn’t even work out how to play online until about half-way through, as you have to quit out to a menu I forgot all about.)
Basically, Soul Sacrifice takes the grinding element of Monster Hunter to an extreme. To make things worse, I thought it was going to avoid all those boring “collect X macguffins” missions, but it’s got those, so…
It’s all a bit badly explained, too. I didn’t work out until about the last chapter that one of the main ideas is to use one elemental attack on an enemy until it affects them, then use another elemental attack to knock them down for big damage (so, you know, freeze them, then hit them with lighting.) Doing that kind of thing is actually super satisfying (even if it does, unlike Monster Hunter, turn most battles into just running up to the enemy and spamming attacks in the hope they never get their shit together enough to respond) though I probably enjoyed punching monsters with a huge elemental fist best—if you’ve ever hit a monster in Monster Hunter with a Great Sword, you know what I’m talking about.
Cannae say that it was good enough feeling to make the time spent grinding worth it, mind.
Look, point being: the whole thing was a chore, and to add insult to injury the story stops being even vaguely interesting after the first chapter (realistically, the tone just massively outstays its welcome.) Learn from my mistakes, people.
Will I ever play it again? Nope!
Final Thought: It’s got the absolute best thing in it too: a final boss that’s ridiculously hard, has multiple stages (with unskippable cut-scenes) and if you die you have to go through a bunch of menus and cut-scenes to have another go. It’s 2014, people. If you do this kind of thing you should be strapped to some kind of a machine that kicks you in the balls every five minutes for eternity.
