Eldest Souls Preview

Eldest Souls is a boss rush-style game in a similar vein to Titan Souls, albeit not as traumatising with having only one arrow. Taking inspiration from Bloodborne, there’s a lot to like about this game and if you’re someone who likes a challenging but methodical boss killing game. This is the one for you.

Visually, the game is impressive. The art style really blends fantastical elements in a somewhat Dark Souls-esque style crossed with Bloodborne with more eye popping colours. The general animations feel responsive even when playing with keyboard and mouse. A minor nitpick would be how the sword and cloak is rendered on screen, not quite matching the similar fixed pixel aspect ratio of everything else. The squash and stretch almost feels out of place. But really, the only thing that’s truly worth caring about is how meaty and visceral the sword feels when you swing it. And boy, does it swing.

There’s a certain ebb and flow of the initial three boss fights that were available at the preview. This is something you’ll need to adapt and get used to with the requirement of learning when you can empower your sword. Once empowered, the charge will start depleting and will disempower after hitting a threshold. This becomes a micro management of risk vs reward where you want to fully capitalise on the meter by using a flurry of small hits into a heavy vs just using the heavy attack, at the expense of your meter. There is no “you must fight like this to win”, and thanks to that there almost always feels like room for improvement.

If that's not an Anti-Moon Cannon, I'm gonna be disappointed.

In terms of playstyle flexibility though you are locked to that one sword. with the main style differences coming from killing bosses and augmenting your attacks with the shards gained from killing bosses. As you level up, you’re also able to choose between speed, attack, or counter style of gameplay. With each one rewarding you greater based on your knowledge of the fight, there’s an element of mastery that can be tested against in the arena mode: fight previously defeated bosses to truly test your mettle in a time attack setting.

The demo itself is short, and to avoid spoilers on the bosses, the game is definitely worth exploring. Beyond the visual appeal, the game, whilst punishing, definitely has room to improve. If the initial three bosses are any indication of the developer’s prowess for designing challenging but fair fights, this’ll be a banger of a game. That said, if you aren’t in tune with the timing of your charge attack, you will die very quickly and very often. Fortunately, death is only temporary and you’re quickly dropped back into the fray.