I can imagine there’s plenty of wiggle room to customize your playstyle at the higher levels once you memorize the combos for each of Briar and Lute’s many abilities, including the very cool Synergy abilities, which are some of the most powerful attacks you can unleash – but only after you sufficiently pull off enough smaller combos to power up something called the Unity bar, which is basically a resource pool tied to Soulstice’s internal scoring system which gauges how well you’re doing. Take, for example, the Piercing Lunge move which you can pop off by gently tapping your left stick forward twice and then hitting the Y button. There’s the sense that each of Briar and Lute’s special abilities are easy to learn but difficult to master, in that they’re all activated by some pretty simple button combinations.
And if you don’t like a certain ability, this is where you can respec your build. If you don’t want to wait that long, you might just run into the Observer, a mysterious NPC who shows up every so often to cheekily taunt you before explaining the background lore of a certain area and then offer you his wares. It’s also convenient that once you’re finished with a mission, you can power up your abilities in the way mentioned previously or purchase items like health kits and revives, in addition to more substantial stat boost items which cost a higher sum of points. Granted, you’ll need to carefully choose where to allot your points as you progress.
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Granted, this ability system seems incredibly dynamic as you progress, you gain access to a full set of diverse upgrades that include passive stat bonuses as well as entirely new abilities like Ferocious Assault or Thundering Advance, both of which happen to be activated by combos of basic quick and heavy attacks, and are all pretty bombastic in their own way.
Starting out, Briar only uses two of seven different weapons – the hefty albeit swift Ashen Vindicator sword which is great for light attacks, and the rather painful-looking Ashen Enforcer warhammer that unleashes much heavier strikes. This level design is linear, but it seems like there are just enough secrets hidden in the nooks and crannies of this sacred city to keep explorers satisfied. Soulstice keeps a steady pace from the beginning, gradually ramping up the difficulty and showing you the ropes through tutorials which intermittently pop up to explain a new mechanic – of which there are surprisingly quite a few, even in the first few chapters.
This gives Soulstice a strategic element that feels especially satisfying when you’re managing your resources and firing off combos in rapid succession. Lute will eventually run out of energy if you keep any field up for too long, making her disappear for a few seconds. What’s especially interesting about this, though, is that multiple types of enemies will attack you at once, meaning you may need to make quick decisions to address each enemy type at the right moment. It’s a pretty simple mechanic: your red field corresponds to red monsters and objects, making them corporeal so you can bash them to pieces, while your blue field does the same thing for blue objects and monsters. Making things more interesting, some of these monsters are incorporeal until you activate one of two different “fields” by pressing the left or right triggers. This dynamism is deepened through the design of the world as well as its demonic inhabitants.
The interplay between Briar and Lute is definitely worth calling out as a clear positive, notably the fact that Lute has the ability to pacify Soulstice’s many, many enemies mid-attack so you can leap in (as Briar) to deal serious damage. You’ll spend quite a large chunk of time in Soulstice playing as Briar, who is followed around by Lute in her ghostly form as you hack and slash your way through hordes of foes as you move from mission to mission in a linear fashion, though at times you may also find yourself playing as Lute during key story sequences.
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