Jumping around in my list now for stuff like this that seems particularly interesting at the moment. I may return to this one in the future, but I'm going to move on from it for now. It's alright but not grabbing me strongly enough to finish it.

Soulstice feels partly like a character action game that's notably inspired by PS2-era Devil May Cry (i.e. 1-3), which is how it got pitched to me originally. But it also feels just as influenced by Bayonetta (i.e. being scored after every fight based on combos, speed, and avoiding damage; the dodge system), and has a little bit of God of War going on as well (i.e. it takes a bit too long to kill enemies/groups sometimes; using repetitive simple combos is often rewarded).

I like the attempt at some of the Devil May Cry DNA, which manifests through much of the game being framed via fixed camera angles, the weapon swapping system (complete with imitation versions of DMC weapons like Ifrit/Beowulf, Rebellion, and possibly even Vendetta from DMC2<!> but it's probably closer to Arbiter from Ninja Theory's DmC), the combo system, and the attempt to establish an interesting setting and character lore (two sisters in a loving but dependent relationship versus two brothers in a love/antagonistic relationship like DMC). Not everything works as well as it should, though, and I think the Bayonetta and slight God of War stuff is to blame.

A lot of what I just wrote about as being DMC DNA can also be treated as Bayonetta DNA, which is kind of an issue because the two aren't as similar as they may seem from a distance. Yeah, Bayonetta also has a weapon swapping system (and Soulstice has versions of some of its weapons, too, like the whip), a similar combo system, and takes pains to establish its own interesting setting and character lore. However, Devil May Cry (the older ones in particular) has a lot of weight and impact to your melee attacks that gives it a slower pace than typical action games, but enemies tend to die quickly, too. You maintain combos through improvisation and constant attention to spacing and movement through a given space, but you're forced to commit to those attacks and movements due to the weightiness of your character. Some people think of DMC as being "clunky" partly for this reason, but I think the combat is more about being precise and not attacking thoughtlessly while maintaining a lot of awareness about your immediate surroundings. You have to keep changing up your combos to satisfy the combo scoring system, but intelligently so.

Bayonetta is about constantly and smoothly transitioning into combos with built-in stylish finishers. It's not really necessary to change up your combos too much, but you have many to choose from and doing so is easy. Spectacle is more of the point than precision. When you do a successful dodge (and it's a generous window as I recall), time gets slowed down to a crawl temporarily for everybody but you. In some ways, Bayonetta makes me think of a beat-em-up more than the type of character action game that DMC is. It's always about the ease and grace of movement and avoiding trouble, so ironically you can actually be pretty spammy and unfocused with your inputs and combos at times as long as you dodge frequently. You don't have to be that aware of your surroundings, just push the dodge button any time you see a little flash of light from an enemy or if something looks like it might kinda sorta hit you, even (Bayonetta's higher difficulties demand better, but my point stands for the typical experience).

Briar, our main protagonist while playing Soulstice, has like half the weight of Dante in all senses. Her combos resemble the basics of DMC on the surface but lack the full commitment to positioning and attacks. She doesn't get Bayonetta's magical time-slowing hacks when dodging enemies, but she does get constant alerts for dodge suggestions via even more obvious animations that are mostly HUD indicators as opposed to the subtler approach Bayonetta often did. It's easy to build combos in this game a la Bayonetta, but it takes longer to kill than I'd like, to the extent that Soulstice feels a bit like the hack-and-slash of old God of War at times during fights. This creates a weird dissonance for me where half of my attacks look like they ought to carry a lot of weight and force, but even standard enemies survive like 3-5 of them and sometimes will just attack through them unless a combo ender strikes them. The other half are quicker attacks that take twice as many or more to kill, but then the enemies usually behave like I'm not hitting them at all.

Briar can build distance and dodge away pretty easily (she has a triple dash, an air dash, and a double jump), but the flow of battle is kind of stop and go. Constantly attacking and dodging only when an enemy is about to attack you, but having to back off and wait a couple of seconds before reengaging because of uninterruptable attacks or not having a combo ender ready that will knock the enemy back. Later, when fights get larger and I'm regularly getting surrounded by about a dozen enemies at once, most combos go out the window because there's not enough time to execute them before an enemy interrupts you. So I'm falling back on simple Square, Square, Square, Triangle stuff (or Triangle, Triangle, Triangle, Square if you prefer) because it works better, but this is also repetitive and starts reminding me of playing GoW when enemies/fights get drawn out for too long. I'd like to say Soulstice plays like a good PS2 game, but it feels more like a hybrid of a PS2 and Xbox 360/PS3 game that could've benefited from committing more to one era's design sensibilities or the other. I'd prefer PS2-era and the classic DMC stuff myself, but an off-brand Bayonetta/7th-gen hack-and-slash could be good, too.

There's a major mechanic reminiscent of Ikaruga here where Briar's spectral sister Lute can create a force field surrounding the pair that can be swapped between blue or red. Some enemies can only be harmed while you're rocking one color or the other, but if you hold the field for too long Lute will get burned out and be unavailable for a while. Not every enemy is tied to this red/blue field system, so you'll get combinations of various types as part of the game's approach to encounter design and challenge. Lute also contributes various attacks and effects during battle, most of which are tied back into the Bayonetta-inspired defense system. If you push her assist/parry button at the right time when an enemy attacks, Lute can paralyze them temporarily, deflect their attack, shoot them, etc. It won't necessarily allow you to avoid dodging as Briar, though, just give you a bit more time/advantage, so I often do both inputs together. {Edit: I originally mistakenly wrote that Lute's assist functions were tied to dodging attacks successfully, so I've corrected that above and in a reply comment to this review.} There's a whole skill tree for upgrading and messing with this stuff, which is kind of cool. The force field system seems like Soulstice's most distinguishing mechanic to give its gameplay an identity separate from its inspirations. It's alright, but placed on top of the DMC, Bayonetta, and GoW stuff, the whole combat system is very jack-of-all-trades. It'd be better served by choosing just one main inspiration to follow.

The lore and story are making an effort to give significance to the setting, which is some legendary city that's fallen into decay due to an invasion by the forces of chaos. However, these environments seem pretty generic to me. It's not ugly but it lacks visual variety and there are too few colors being utilized. If we're being generous we could say this is a stylistic choice, but it comes off as lower budget to me (and Soulstice is a AA game, so the shoe fits there). There are plenty of rooms and sections of completely different areas that might as well be interchangeable because not enough is being done to distinguish them aesthetically.

It's a consciously derivative game, which isn't automatically bad. Soulstice has affection for its inspiration games, but I'm not sure if the developers fully understand what they're mixing and matching here. Games like DMC and Bayonetta don't entirely gel with each other mechanically because of their underlying design differences. Soulstice trying to (primarily) execute parts of both games at once kind of feels like its taking various pieces from two different types of bicycle to combine into a new, third type of bicycle. The borrowed pieces don't all work together ideally because they were intended for designs that are only occasionally similar and just as often in opposition. The resulting bicycle seems fine, but it ought to be good if not great.