It just didnвЂ™t feel consistent, and therefore felt frustrating to die to something unexpected. Many enemy attacks only go left or right, as do most of yours, but some AOE effects, some tools, and some enemy attacks could track diagonally, and sometimes enemies would move vertically to track you in the middle of an attack. One other issue I had with the combat was that the beat-em-up style of combat вЂ“ where you can only attack left or right, but can move up and down вЂ“ didnвЂ™t always feel intuitive. But the weapons still end up kind of samey because the movesets, although they look different, function just like fast or slow versions of the same thing (except for the weapons with AOE, that was about the only real difference).Д: ThatвЂ™s true. S:To be fair, there were a lot of different weapons that all felt pretty different, and the special attacks are everything from a spinning move to summoning spiders or throwing fireballs. One aspect of Young Souls our conversation didnвЂ™t touch on was the wide variety of fashion choices, both purely aesthetic and functional I guess you could block though, right?Д: Right, but the enemies later in the game break it fairly quickly. Also, all the attack combos are short: every weapon has only 2 or 3 hit combos, and thereвЂ™s only one attack besides the special attack, which costs mana. S:I think it was overall repetitiveness, because of the aforementioned parrying reliance. What do you think it was exactly that made us change our minds? IвЂ™m surprised how we both felt at the end of the game, since when we tried the preview, I recall us both enjoying the combat. The upgrades for them also felt meaningful, which is always nice.Д: LetвЂ™s dig more into the combat, since thatвЂ™s really the main gameplay loop. They were impactful enough to be worth using and relying on.

It added variety to the combat that was sorely lacking otherwise. S:Yeah, you could run around and use your bow and gadgets, but that playstyle isnвЂ™t exactly fun.Д: LetвЂ™s talk about the gadgets though вЂ“ I thought they were neat, and I liked the way they had a cooldown so you couldnвЂ™t exactly abuse them. I guess you could theoretically kill them without parrying, but it would take you a long time.

The parrying is super forced вЂ“ if you donвЂ™t parry, youвЂ™re going to have a bad time basically.Д: I agree, I thought a lot of the mini-boss fights ended up feeling kind of repetitive вЂ“ not just because many were reskins, but because you had to parry to remove their resistance and do any meaningful damage to them. Even in the moments where you felt like you were doing a good job, it didnвЂ™t feel super satisfying. The way the combat flows, the difficulty it was either way too hard or too easy. But the combat was the issue in the game for me. The story is вЂ“ I guess it was OK, there was some nuance with вЂњmaybe killing goblins is actually badвЂќ вЂ“ the humans were morally grey, instead of just being the good guys. Spannah: So, the art style is cool, great really. We talked about Young Souls for quite a while after we finished it what follows is a transcript - edited for readability and to remove the uhhs and most of the bad jokes - of that conversation.ДanielD: LetвЂ™s start with overall impressions, now that weвЂ™ve beaten the game. Since we played the game together, it only made sense to also review the game together. The game encourages co-op - and I donвЂ™t have a twin - so I had my fellow EIP writer Spannah play with me. The game features two twins leveling up and collecting cool new armor, weapons, and sneakers as they attempt to rescue their adoptive father and save their town. TodayвЂ™s impressively long list of adjectives comes courtesy of Young Souls, a co-op side-scrolling beat-em-up dungeon-crawler RPG developed by 1P2P and published by The Arcade Crew. It seems like every new game that comes out requires more hyphenated descriptors than the last one.

Steam young souls