PS VITA – Forget the wizards from Harry Potter, Merlin, or any other sorcerers you might heard of so far. Even the most evil ones are choir boys compared to the sorcerers in Soul Sacrifice who are all cold hearted bastards who murder their own kind and innocents as well to either maintain their immortality or gain tremendous powers. There’s a great deal however of sacrifices to be made for them as well: they need to offer their own body parts and ultimately their own souls, before becoming a grotesque monster altogether. Keiji Inafune’s Soul Sacrifice is back with a terrific, well-polished and upgraded edition: Soul Sacrifice Delta.

The original Soul Sacrifice was hands down PS Vita’s game of the year in 2013 for me. While it lacked polish in many areas still it was an innovative and well-designed dark action RPG with moody story taken from Arthurian legends, a funny and unique talking book telling the whole story and also serving as game interface and an extremely well designed multiplayer.

To save or to sacrifice? That is the question…

One of the most interesting aspects of the game involved the choice of whether to save or sacrifice our fallen enemies or even friends thus augmenting our level of health/defense or sorcery power. If we sacrificed our own allies, a devastating and terrible spell was also unleashed. At its heart Soul Sacrifice may have been a “Monster Hunter-like for the PS Vita” but in my opinion it was far better than any original Monster Hunter on any platform.

While being kind of a niche game, it still considerably helped to increase the staggering sales of PS Vita at its release. It certainly wasn’t Vita’s “killer app” everybody waited for last year but it still was one of the most memorable games on any handheld. On the other hand it had many flaws and with Delta Marvelous AQL choose to release a whole upgraded edition of the original Soul Sacrifice with lots of new features, new single player quest lines, factions, original characters and more.

“Magusar, you bastard! You killed… everybody!”

The game’s main storyline is still the same: it follows the path of an unnamed sorcerer who becomes the partner of Magusar (who is Merlin in the original Japanese version) an extremely evil and corrupted sorcerer from Avalon. Magusar and our hero are completing different “contracts” which includes monster slaying and hunting down and killing renegade sorcerers who became monsters themselves. Gradually they are becoming more and more monstrous themselves and they start to fight each other… A living and talking book tells the whole story using its own particular sardonic style and there is also a big surprise at the end if you complete the game.

Besides the unchanged main Magusar “ordeal” (that’s the name for every quest line involving sorcerers in Soul Sacrifice) there are lots of new ones in Soul Sacrifice Delta. Some of them involves factions like “Sancturarium” where we have to infiltrate an order which only saves its enemies and never sacrifices them so we have to do the same or else the quests fails.

The other faction: Grim’s pacts are following the ordeal of the sexy female sorcerer “Red Hood” reminiscent a bit of Red Riding Hood from Grimm fairy tales. There’s also a level which made me think of the village from Hansel and Gretel story (the original fairy tale, not the crap action movie adaptation.) The new tales are once again told very stylishly through the living and talking book. The stories themselves are still a bit weaker than Magusar’s main ordeal, but still better than the “sub-quests” involving side characters like Carnatux in the original game.

Make your shoppings in the Bazaar!

Oh yes, Carnatux. The fat money lover sorcerer has now his own Bazaar which we can unlock if we go through his short ordeal once again. Here we can buy “raiments” (different clothes) which, contrary to the original game, Souls Sacrifice Delta doesn’t gives us automatically anymore.
We can also perform debt pacts first with him, later with Vidiara, his pretty sister, who is much “easier on the eyes” than the fat and annoying Carnatux. Vidiara is also a character standing casually in the “bazaar” and while reading your palm she can give your “rumours” if you pay with the soul essences you have collected during your adventures.

“Rumours” are in fact not gossips about fellow sorcerers, but useful upgrades which can boost your combat results by adding more experience points or help you against a specific monster. Another character, “Aurex the Whisperer” also sells you rumours of you give him your “offerings” instead. It’s not only useful for getting new rumours but also a good way of getting rid of low level offerings, which you don’t use anymore anyway and which are just cluttering your offering’s inventory.

Basically Carnatux’s bazar is good place to upgrade your character abilities and clothes as well and it’s not only a fun place to visit but also a welcome addition to the new game.

Brains and brawn

While there many cosmetic changes, the essence of Soul Sacrifice: combat and sorcery still remained the same. Whether in the single player or the multiplayer game, you fight in arena-like levels, so it’s not a land roaming action RPG like for example Diablo or Monster Hunter. Since you are a sorcerer, you can’t use any kind of physical weapons but you can conjure powerful spells from offerings which includes magical weapons or different kinds of invocations with devastating effects. You can bring with you up to six offerings from your ever growing offering inventory.

There’s a small change however in Soul Sacrifice Delta regarding some specific multiplayer levels which only allows you to have three offerings to make the said level a bit more challenging. If you want to partake in the fight you have to limit manually your offering inventory in the field to three spells which is a bit annoying to be honest.

Combat itself is still as frantic and exciting as in the previous game. You have to constantly roll over to save you from enemy attacks so besides smart thinking regarding the use of correct spells you also have to use your reflexes. The two thumbsticks have a major role here, so that’s why a similar game to Soul Sacrifice would never work correctly on a smartphone with touchscreen control.

“You shall not kill you own kind!”

Multiplayer is still the same fun as well: you can take specific contracts with up to four player in coop mode and while there are tons of customizations in the setup, starting and playing a coop level is still as simple and extremely fun like in the previous game – with new levels, monsters and “raiments” added to the show. You still don’t need especially good bandwidth for the multiplayer: a 3G shared through your smartphone will make it so it means that you can have a satisfying multiplayer experience on the go even without WiFi connection.

On the minus side PVP mode is sadly still missing from the game. What’s a bit strange is that the “factions” feature in the single campaign seemed to be installed in the game for the PVP mode, but there isn’t any option to fight with other players in multiplayer. Perhaps it will be added later to the game, since the first game had also tons of upgrades.

Facelift

However there’s another important aspect of the game which is improved: graphically Soul Sacrifice Delta looks a lot crisper, then the original. It has to be said: one of the weaker aspects of Soul Sacrifice was its resolution which was lower than Vita’s own 960*544 resolution.
Crisper graphics are particularly easy to spot on the beautiful new levels, with both awe inspiring and stylish environments. The new characters like Red Hood or Vidiara also looks more detailed, it’s just a pity that they still can’t open their mouths while they are speaking.

Worth to sacrifice some money for it?

The original Soul Sacrifice was a PlayStation Plus game a while ago so if you had both a PS Vita and PS Plus (or if you were smart enough and claimed the game regardless that you didn’t own yet a Vita) you could had it for free not long after its release. I have somehow a hunch that the same will happen with Soul Sacrifice Delta but nothing is certain of course. What is certain however is that it’s one of the best PS Vita games I have played so far so if you never bought or claimed the first game (it’s not on PS Plus anymore) and you like innovative, eastern style dark RPG’s like the Dark Souls series or Dragon’s Dogma then Soul Sacrifice Delta is an instant buy, it’s a no brainer.

-BadSector-

Publisher: SCE Japan Studio
Developer: SCEI, SCEA, SCEE, SCE Australia
Genres: Action, Role-Playing
Published: Mars 31