Young Souls

At first look, Young Souls may look like another Indie brawler beat-em-up and is easy enough to ignore it but its combat mechanic is inspired by Dark Souls, and the dungeon design inspired by Persona 5 makes it different from other brawlers beat-em-up. On Steam, Young Souls is described as a 2D brawler meets story-rich action RPG. But is it more than the sum of its parts? Let’s find out.

Young Souls is a 2D Brawler developed by 1P2P, DotEmu and published by The Arcade Crew, DotEmu. The game was released for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, Google Stadia on the 10th Of March 2022.

Dynamic Duo

Its story is nothing that will leave you thinking for days but its boss fights do help in making it a memorable experience. The plot of Young Souls is simple you play as orphan twins Jenn and Tristan (depending on your choice) who live with their foster father the Professor who is indulged in shady experiments and one day he disappears which leads twins to find an underworld inhabited by goblins and where they realize that their father might be held captive by the king of the goblins.Young Souls does a tremendous job of showing the chemistry between twins during conversations they have during that period. Despite having some differences they always have each other’s back.

Cometh The RPG, Cometh The Grind…

The game features a local co-op so if you have a friend or a sibling you can connect another controller to your system and play together on the same couch. As of writing this review Young Souls does not feature any online co-op. So it may turn out to be disappointing for some players out there. Nonetheless, Young Souls provides enough content to satisfy the thirst of a single-player lover. In fact even in single player mode, characters can be switched anytime during the playthrough and if one of the twins dies during a battle you can use another remaining twin to fight enemies or use another twin to revive the fallen twin.

Young Souls also features deep character customization with the variety of weapon and armor sets with all armor sets having different perks for example, if you are exploring an ice dungeon with enemies that can freeze you in one hit you would most likely go with an armor which is ice-resistant and sword which has fire attack and will be more useful against ice type enemies. You can use the option in main menu to fast travel in-between the levels or leave a dungeon at any point if you feel you are being overpowered by the enemies which acts as a good quality of life feature in the game which can sure be challenging at times.

Young Souls features weapons design quite similar to Dark Souls with some weapon you can carry both a melee weapon and a shield or a big large weapon which does not allow you to carry a shield. There is one shield which I liked in particular which had a large size while using the shield to block your guard can’t be broken but you can’t parry using shield and enemies can damage you from behind this points out the fact that developers want to create a fair and challenging experience.

Every weapon and armor can be also be upgraded to unlock certain new perks like more attack power and more health points. Young Souls is a challenging game no doubt and developers want you to play the game on their recommended hard difficulty but they have also kept in mind not everyone is a fan of challenging souls like games so with that in mind they have given a difficulty accessibility option for those players so that players can adjust the difficulty to their own preference and create a sort of custom difficulty. Young Souls also features a quite a lot of cursing so if you are a parent gamer and want your kids to try it game also features a profanity filter which filters out every curse word from the game.

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Looking OK?

Young Souls may not be a photorealistic looking game but its gorgeous art style with great color palette are pleasing to eyes character designs  are nothing crazy and are simple which is a good thing as it suits the rebellious nature of twins and due to its 2D artistic style it is quite easy to run and can run even run on a potato PC. The audio design in Young Souls is nothing special soundtrack is quite forgetful but the weapon clashing sound is good and the impact of parrying a goblin can be felt along with the vibration of controller.

Sibling Rivalry

Although despite having good character customization Young Souls features a weird levelling up experience is earned in same old fashioned way by killing enemies but order to level up you need to go back to you need to go to your bedroom to sleep to gain a level and every time you gain 2 levels above you get a healthy token which can be used in a gym to do some exercise and improve your stats.

Young Souls also features a  similar system to Final Fantasy 7 remake’s ATB system you can’t use two items at once for that you will have to wait for that ATB gauge to refill. Young Souls also respects players curiosity of exploration with optional boss fights which can give you really cool weapons and can give you boosts in the level.

Game also features various cosmetics customization which can be bought in the shop in the town to change the look of protagonists. On paper art style of Young Souls may look like quite generic but variety in enemies and boss fights really surprised me sometimes.

The game costs 569 INR on Steam and with 10% launch discount it costs 512 INR. The game is worth the price it is asking for since an average rushed playthrough of Young Souls will take you 12 hours to finish, and with some side stuff it can take up to 15 hours to finish. If you are someone who likes to see every aspect of the game along with the achievements you have got a game which will take at least 25-30 hours to finish.

REAL TALK

 If you feel like you don’t want to spend your money on the game because Young Souls is a 2D brawler, or because of its art style, or if you really don’t feel like buying it on launch and rather wait for sale I got some good news for you: Young Souls is coming to Xbox Game Pass on Day One. If you have the game pass subscription I would recommend you to use the benefit of the service and try it at least once.

FINAL RATING: RECOMMENDED