If, when you hear ‘Lost Soul Aside’, your ears prick up and something akin to a pinging sound rings in the back of your mind, I wouldn’t blame you. Originally announced all the way back in 2016(!), with development kicking off two years prior, Lost Soul Aside has for the longest time been a labour of love from just a single Chinese developer, Yang Bing, who had his debut title picked up as part of Sony’s China Hero Initiative before being published by Sony Interactive Entertainment itself. With more than eleven years of development time on the clock and with a fleshed-out development team behind the wheel, here’s how Lost Soul Aside looks to meld Devil May Cry-style combat and Final Fantasy-style characters into a delectable genre hybrid.
A Kaleidoscope Of Final Fantasy Flavoured Influences
It only takes the most fleeting of glances at any footage from Lost Soul Aside before your brain tells your eyes ‘Oh yep, that definitely looks like Final Fantasy.’ As it turns out, though, creator Yang Bing has made no secret that elements of Square-Enix’s cornerstone JRPG franchise have been explicitly threaded through Lost Soul Aside’s visual makeup (specifically Final Fantasy XV), with its exceedingly photogenic cast of heroes and villains looking like they’ve stepped straight out of Eos.
It’s not just the slender, gothically garbed and relatively androgynous look of the main protagonist, Kaser, that Lost Soul Aside lovingly echoes from Final Fantasy XV and more broadly, the designs of the legendary Tetsuya Nomura, since the various monsters in Lost Soul Aside also draw from a similar pool of inspiration. Often screen-filling creations with spectacle and extravagance to spare, the numerous bad beasties of Lost Soul Aside are blessed with equally retina-stroking presentation as the heroes that seek to lay them low.
Of course, writing a love letter to the vainglorious veneer of the recent entries in the Final Fantasy series is one thing, but Lost Soul Aside also takes ample inspiration from the narrative stakes as well. Casting players as Kaser, a warrior of immense power, Lost Soul Aside sees his world invaded by interdimensional creatures known as the Voidrax that are hellbent on erasing all life in the universe by sucking out the souls of their intended victims. As it turns out one of these victims is Kaser’s sister Louisa and so an epic odyssey begins where our main protagonist, aided by an enigmatic, symbiotic-like companion named Arena that can shapeshift into different weapons, cuts a swathe across a devastated world to get her back, whilst an authoritarian organisation known as the Church attempts to stop Kaser in his tracks.
Compellingly Acrobatic Combat Dante Would Be Proud Of
In addition to delving into the depths of the Final Fantasy series for its visual style and narrative flavour, Lost Soul Aside also takes cues from another legendary Japanese-developed franchise. With more than a nod in the direction of Capcom’s Devil May Cry titles, Lost Soul Aside fully embraces the sort of hyperkinetic and blisteringly fast combat that is so readily associated with the house that Dante built. Such inspirations are felt as soon as combat begins, as the music swells with a thrumming operatic nu-metal style soundtrack that settles into the sort of foot-tapping pulsating beat that fans of Devil May Cry will be more than a little familiar with.
Broadly speaking, Kaser engages his opponents with his trusty sword and, as well as stringing together all manner of neat-looking combinations, can also swiftly parry and evade incoming strikes, not to mention launch enemies in the air for some eye-opening juggle combinations. Further into the game, Kaser can also unlock additional abilities that allow him to cast out waves of energy and elemental magic to hit enemies at a distance as well. So far, so Devil May Cry then. Where Lost Soul Aside seeks to separate itself somewhat, however, is in how Kaser’s erstwhile companion, Arena, figures into the combat side of things.
Always following Kaser around the battlefield, Arena can augment itself with our hero, providing him with access to all manner of weapons on the fly, including massive tentacled whips, thudding hammers, smashing maces, and so much more. Think of a more calm, less chaotic version of Marvel’s Venom that can be bonded and unbonded at will, and you’re basically there. Of course the upshot of Arena’s modular and flexible approach to combat is that it dovetails directly into the functional design of the various enemies and bosses you’ll face, meaning that some foes will be more susceptible to the use of particular Arena weapon configurations, whereas others (and particularly bosses), will require a creatively broader approach that necessitates switching between all of these weapon types at a moment’s notice.
As an aside (no pun intended), it’s also worth noting that beyond just Kaser’s choice of wardrobe, the combat in Lost Soul Aside also draws from Final Fantasy XV’s main protagonist, Noctis, a touch too, since Kaser can generously teleport around the battlefield to either engage enemies quickly, or evade incoming attacks.
Arguably, though, the biggest way in which the combat of Lost Soul Aside pays homage to the Devil May Cry titles is in its rapidity. Blisteringly fast, Kaser’s many combat encounters play out in balletic fashion. Enabled by an ultra-responsive level of command input, players can dash, teleport, evade, leap, strike and morph their armaments during battle in a split second, lending Lost Soul Aside the sort of nerve-fraying and frenetic combat beats that Capcom’s Devil May Cry series has embodied for decades.
Ultimately, the end result is that not only do you end up with combat that looks flashy on the surface and lovingly echoes that of Capcom’s legendary Devil May Cry franchise, but so too do we get a deeply mechanical system of high-octane violence that is surprisingly layered and agile, too. Put simply, if you happen to exist in that Venn diagram overlap of Final Fantasy and Devil May Cry fandom, then Lost Soul Aside is shaping up to be achingly essential.
If your curiosity is piqued and your fingers are itching to dive into a world where fantasy flair meets frenetic combat, then now’s the perfect time to see what all the buzz is about. Head over to the Green Man Gaming store to pick up your copy of Lost Soul Aside – a striking fusion of style and substance that’s been more than a decade in the making, and might just be your next obsession.
