14 DAY TRIAL // 
Titan Souls is an unforgiving game, the kind which will certainly generate a lot of frustration, but also one that allows players to celebrate some impressive and unlikely victories over enemies that seemed initially impossible to take out.
At the same time, the title created by Acid Nerve and Devolver is a meditation on how important it is to be in the right place at the right time in order to be able to take advantage of opportunities that would otherwise never appear.
In Titan Souls, one good hit kills, efficiently and definitively, anything that moves, and that's both the great strength and the major weakness of the game.
There's almost no narrative to speak of, although gamers are free to create their narratives about the bosses, their powers, and the way the fights evolve.
The world created by Acid Nerve is interesting and engaging, with exploration offering some much-needed calm after the ferocious combat moments.
But the studio is clearly not interested in telling a story about the bosses, and the violent encounters are mainly ways to show how simple mechanics can deliver some superb results.
Over the course of the game, players will explore a range of new environments and will battle enemies ranging from vaguely Aztec statues that use lasers to attack to crazy fantasy creatures and plants with tendrils.
I guess the team is aiming to explore the idea of how a worthy adversary makes life worth living for the main character, but the death sequences for the various beasts do not manage to generate too much emotion.
Titan Souls has players moving through a variety of interesting landscapes, looking for a powerful creature that needs to be killed after it reveals its weak spot in battle.
The game is deceptively simple in terms of mechanics but exceedingly difficult when it comes to achieving the end goal of taking out all bosses.
“The character Titan Souls players control is able to shoot a bow, equipped with just one arrow, and also has the power to recall it after it lands and move it back to the quiver for future use.”
A good shot is guaranteed to take out an enemy, and there's no way to upgrade equipment or to get access to new abilities.
The problem is that both firing and recalling can only happen when the character is standing still, which makes him vulnerable to attacks from his foes.
The creatures in Titan Souls tend to move fast and have spectacular attacks, so a gamer needs to move around constantly in order to stay out of their attack range, while also searching for the position that allows them to unleash that killing arrow.
I died about 20 times while fighting the first monster in the title before I understood that making plans and trying to execute them was not the best way to approach the game.
Titan Souls is not a twitch-based title, but it encourages players to shift plans quickly and to evaluate tactical situations to come up with solutions on the spot.
Lessons that I learned while playing include the fact that arrows hurt when recalled as much as when they are shot, and that moving slowly can be as useful at times as dodging out of the way of an attack.
Titan Souls is a hard game, one which makes dying part of the experience, but there are moments when the developers fail to offer any clear rewards when the player takes out a creature.
The game has a success sequence, filled with beams of white light and soaring music, but it does not mean anything for the character or the gamer.
Titan Souls is played from a top-down perspective and can be a very lovely game at times, with screens filled with complex and interesting areas to explore.
Even the beasts that the gamer faces are interesting to look at, although starring is a quick and simple way of getting killed.
There are moments when I wanted the experience to be a little less spartan, but the general simplicity of its looks is well suited to the stripped-down gameplay.
The sound design of Titan Souls matches its aesthetics and the music, but although initially pleasing, it can become a little annoying in the long term.
The Good
- Clear mechanics
- Boss battle variety
The Bad
- Limited story
- Can become frustrating
Conclusion
Players who want to progress through the game need to banish the idea that variety is a good thing, which leads to attempts to juggle more than one enemy boss at a time.
Playing against the same beast all the time can be annoying, but it allows the player to learn patterns, sometimes at a subconscious level, and victory is often a matter of mixing luck and fast planning.
Titan Souls lacks the world building of something like Bloodborne, but it does offer a very pure take on the idea of boss fight, with some unique mechanics for both the player character and the enemies he faces.
