Rating: 6/10

I'm a little disappointed by Young Souls. I was really looking forward to it and waited anxiously for it to leave Stadia and come to something that I had. I wanted to play it co-op but didn't get the chance.

There's a very cool opening here full of style, great music, attitude and mystery. Upon seeing it I thought that this would live up to my expectations. But the game ended up losing some of what made it special once it really got going.

The music stays great. I think it's even a little underrated because it does a wonderful job of building the atmosphere but also presenting its own brand of badass. The visuals also stay great. It's a seriously beautiful game. The animations are nice, the character designs are pleasant/inspired/not generic. The environments have life even if they can get a little samey.

They say this is narrative driven and that's a lie. The gameplay loop gets in the way of that, and this is the first aspect that began to lose me. I stopped caring about the story because it was almost non-existent after a while. Sure, the two twins are pretty funny and have some personality--and some of the other monsters you meet are neat--but that's about it. That it wasted the excellent opening is especially disappointing.

I also ended up just not finding the combat fun after a while. Normal enemies are fine because they don't often fall victim to what I'm about to say, but the bosses aren't entertaining, they're frustrating. They're boring. They parry everything and don't let you get many hits in, and you can't get momentum going so it's like a war of attrition. It's not that the game is hard (it can be challenging, I ain't gonna lie), it's that it has no flow in the boss battles. And there's a fair few of them so that's a serious issue.

So all in all, I like the game. I don't love it. I should have loved it.