Let me just say right from the get-go that I’m getting some Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends vibes from Young Souls. It looks like the show, it acts like the show, and it just is as badass as that show was back in the day. What more could you want out of a brawler? Oh, there is more.
Before the next line break, let me just note that we dove into this demo for a short period of time. We got the gist of what the game was selling, but not the whole meal. It’s due out in Q4 of this year, so we can’t wait to see what the whole is all about.
Onward to the impressions!
What the heck is this about?
Young Souls is a 2D brawler that has some fantastic story attached to it, mainly surrounding a pair of orphans named Jenn and Tristan that can go back and forth between worlds that are occupied by some medieval-looking mothers that are straight from a nightmare. Also, what appears to be a gym. Anyhoo, the duo’s father figure goes missing and they are sent on a self-driven quest to see what happened to him. They arrive between worlds to dispatch the baddies and move on to clean house. It truly is a straight-up brawler backed up by a wonderful storyline starter.
The uniqueness of this game lies in a few areas. First, its animation style and personality. It seems to know it’s raw and tough inside and emits that every chance it can get. As mentioned above, the animation style is right out of a series from Cartoon Network’s early years, where it’s caught between being cool and stylish, but also a bit ‘new’ and different from other cartoons. The style absolutely works for this type of game and almost visually encourages you to keep pushing forward, even when the chips are down. There are a lot of nice ray tracing moments if you have the hardware to handle them, and you’ll see some bosses and enemies that will just wow you. It’s a gorgeous game that is confident in what it wants to be and doesn’t hold up on proving it.
Brawling RPG
The other neat part about this demo are the RPG elements included. While I didn’t get too deep into this category to give you a decisive opinion about it, I can say that it appears that you’ll be able to upgrade appearances, weaponry, and a few attributes (assumed). It looks to be far deeper than Scott Pilgrim’s brawler, which is a good thing because while I enjoyed Scott Pilgrim, I still wanted more from the game. This appears to be going down that path.
Brawling games can be a dime a dozen, but truly good ones add some backend depth to the process, which allows for replayability, which Young Souls looks to contain. There’s nothing quite like going back and doing things differently and finding what makes the experience even better.
Again, anything to make a brawler deeper and more than a hack/slash experience is fine by me. Unless it is done poorly. Then I’m not fine with that at all.
Co-op or single-player? Why not both?
While I couldn’t get my kids to join me in this foray, they are still stuck on FNAF (why?) I could see the potential of the co-op mode. For the record, my kids are traitors for not helping me out. I’m on the record for that one. They don’t read my stuff. Anyway, co-op! I think the mere idea of having a co-op option for a game like this will attract many types of gamers to it. Having a spouse or a friend play (or someone in between) to get through this brawler will make for a good time. It looks like it could be co-op heaven with duo power-up moves and just having a best friend kick the crap out of an oversized goblin. I mean, why wouldn’t you want that?
Should you live a lonely life, like yours truly, then you have the fighting duo structure of Marvel Super Heroes versus Street Fighter import on the Saturn to look forward to with Young Souls. You can switch back and forth with your characters, bring them in for special moves, and recover one character while the other is fighting for you. All of this in a single-player option, which is brilliant. It’s like having an extra life to play in the game.
Anyway, co-op looks to be a strong and welcomed mode for this game.
What we think now
As Young Souls stands, the game demo was a small taste of what’s to come. It has all the right parts to be memorable, fun, and replayable. That’s only if it can deliver on its promises and magnify what the demo showed off. Only Q4 will tell.
We will keep you in the loop.
