Lost Soul Aside: A Comprehensive Look at the Gaming Experience

Introduction and Story of Lost Soul Aside

Game Introduction: "Lost Soul Aside" is a stunning, meticulously crafted action experience, offering captivating cinematic combat and a wide variety of weapons. The game boasts breathtaking visuals and immersive environments; however, its performance on personal computers frequently faces challenges and frame rate drops. While the story may not be the most engaging, the jumping and climbing mechanics require further refinement.

Story Core: The events of "Lost Soul Aside" revolve around a young man named Kaser, who joins a resistance group known as Glimmer to confront the Empire. The story begins with an intriguing introduction highlighting political aspects, but it quickly evolves into a traditional adventure focused on saving the world from monsters from other dimensions known as Voidrax and their leader Aramon. The plot twists are evident, which might make it difficult for players to fully immerse themselves in the narrative, even as the stakes escalate after the Voidrax steal the soul of Louisa, Kaser's sister.

Main Characters: During his journey, Kaser teams up with a dragon-like flying creature from the Voidrax named Arena, and an enjoyable relationship develops between them. Arena expresses remorse for his past actions and vows to atone by granting Kaser the ability to fight the Voidrax. Exploring Arena's background helped keep me engaged in the game beyond combat, even when the story itself might have lacked excitement.

Gameplay Mechanics and Exciting Combat

Combat Style: The gameplay in "Lost Soul Aside" is an absolute highlight, with real-time combat strongly resembling the "Devil May Cry" series, focusing heavily on combat combos. Kaser gains more weapons as he progresses in the game. The choice between four main weapons – sword, greatsword, spear, and scythe – offers a highly satisfying experience thanks to the ability to seamlessly switch between them mid-battle. Although the pace of unlocking the spear and scythe might be slow in the later stages of the game, the first half provides an abundance of combat combinations that can be executed using the sword and greatsword, thanks to the effective upgrade system. Kaser has a skill tree for each of his weapons, with each node providing a stat increase or a type of complementary attack for his combat combos. While this system isn't necessarily revolutionary, its straightforward nature serves its purpose effectively and helps bridge the timing gap between unlocking all of Kaser's weapons.

Voidrax Special Attacks: "Lost Soul Aside" becomes visually more stunning and gameplay more thrilling when Kaser gains special attacks powered by the Voidrax in cooperation with Arena. These attacks sufficiently change the gameplay to go beyond mere button mashing. Kaser can equip up to three attacks simultaneously, and these attacks vary greatly. Among the favorites are "Breath Barrage," which summons two smaller, floating Arena-like heads that automatically fire like turrets, and "Life Giver," which summons a tree that slowly heals Kaser as long as he remains within its range.

Combat Peak: "Lost Soul Aside" is at its best when Kaser has unlocked all his weapons. Combat is the most polished aspect of the game, and the ability to quickly switch between weapons allows for extremely fluid battles, even with a frame rate that might not always be perfect. The trinkets and accessories Kaser can equip have an increasing effect on instantaneous movement, adding surprising depth and customization to combat.

Strategic Element: These powers also add a strategic element to combat. After breaking an enemy's shield, I would activate "Breath Barrage" to increase the damage dealt before they could recover, and "Life Giver" allowed me to preserve my healing potions as long as I played cautiously for a while. Experimenting with how Arena's powers synergized with Kaser's combat combos gave the gameplay a new dimension to enjoy.

Weapon Enhancement: Kaser can also enhance his weapons with accessories found in levels inside chests or as rewards for story progression. These accessories grant various effects, such as a 5% increase in damage or restoring some health points upon landing a critical hit. Initially, these accessories might not seem to make immediate changes. However, as more weapon accessories, and even stronger ones, accumulate, their effect becomes clear. They satisfy the part of my mind that enjoys optimizing performance, despite the absence of a traditional stat upgrade system.

Stunning Visuals and Game World

Graphics Quality: Graphically, "Lost Soul Aside" is truly impressive. It features the highly realistic anime style for which "Final Fantasy" games are known. The multiple environments are also breathtaking to behold. While levels might seem a bit restrictive at times, there are instances where exploration is encouraged, and you can find chests containing gold or sometimes even trinkets that Kaser can equip for passive effects.

Dispersed Dimensions Challenges: There are also special combat challenges called "Dispersed Dimensions" hidden within levels, offering valuable rewards for overcoming them under certain conditions, such as completing them within a time limit or with Kaser's health constantly draining. The rewards were certainly worth it, as these trinkets were rarer and had stronger effects than those found in chests.

PC Performance and Control Challenges

PC Performance: Nevertheless, the PC gaming experience is marred by poor performance. There are constant stutters and frame rate drops everywhere, both in and out of combat. Even opening the menu causes some lag, with about a second of delay where the screen turns black before returning to the game, which is notably annoying. Performance is particularly detrimental given that "Lost Soul Aside" is a fast-paced action game where every second counts, or you risk losing.

Performance Impact on Gameplay: For instance, there's a specific challenge in "Dispersed Dimensions" where enemies can only be damaged by Arena's attacks. With all particle effects active simultaneously, this caused the game to slow down significantly, even freezing for a few seconds before resuming. This trial also grants an extra reward if completed without taking any damage. With these performance issues, meeting this condition was frustratingly impossible.

Jumping and Climbing Issues: Stuttering can also be a major problem during jumping and climbing segments. Missing a platform jump is truly frustrating, especially when it sends you back to the beginning of the section. Jumping itself is also unpolished. Kaser's jump range fluctuates a lot, causing you to miss more platforms than you'd like to admit. When Kaser's feet touch the ground, it doesn't feel quite right – the sensory impact feels too soft and doesn't "stick" the landing for me.

Conclusion and Recommendations

Review Summary: "Lost Soul Aside" excels significantly in its most crucial aspect: its frenetic and exciting gameplay, in addition to beautiful visuals. Everything else about it, however, falls short of expectations. Its story isn't very engaging, and the PC performance issues leave much to be desired. Its influences are certainly clear, but its blade is clearly not as sharp.

Player Recommendations: If you are a fan of character-action games, such as "Devil May Cry" and recent "Final Fantasy" titles, you will enjoy "Lost Soul Aside"'s combat style. However, if you are looking for a deep story, the narrative here gets the job done, but it's not particularly captivating. And if you desire a stable experience, the PC version currently suffers from many stuttering issues, so wait for a patch or update before diving in.

Additional Details: "Lost Soul Aside" is a game developed by the Chinese studio Ultizero Games, founded by independent developer Yang Bing. The project began as a solo endeavor before evolving into a full-fledged action RPG with support from Sony as part of the PlayStation China Hero Project. The game was released in early September 2025 (specifically September 5, 2025, on Steam), and is available on PlayStation 5 and PC. The game relies on the popular Unreal Engine 4, and supports Ray Tracing technology to provide an enhanced visual experience. You can visit PlayStation (US) and Steam for more information.

Accessibility Features and Review Methodology: "Lost Soul Aside" unfortunately has few accessibility features compared to other "Sony" games. However, there are options for colorblind mode (red, green, and blue) and a slider for colorblind intensity. There are also sliders to adjust camera sensitivity and motion blur. The game was reviewed on PC for 23 hours, and the main campaign was completed, in addition to undertaking most of the "Dispersed Dimensions" challenges and finding as many collectibles as possible. An "Xbox Wireless Controller" was used. The first time you play the game will be on Normal difficulty, and "Hard" and "Nightmare" difficulties are unlocked upon completing the campaign for the first time. You also gain the ability to replay levels. Key PC specifications included an AMD Ryzen 7 7700X 8-Core Processor CPU, an AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT GPU, and 32 GB of RAM. The review was conducted in August 2025.

Benefits of Using Knowledge Graphs

Challenges in Building Knowledge Graphs