The latest Playstation Plus “freebie” is for the Vita, and of course it would come out when I am working on an early review for Rainbow Moon. But, regardless, I put my game face on, deleted about 2GB’s of stuff from my memory card, and downloaded Soul Sacrifice. The whopping 1.8GB download was done while I watched Monsters University, because Rainbow Moon kept disabling the download. I wasn’t very happy about that, but I digress.
My Vita doesn’t get played as often as I would like it to get played. I lost Madden 13, which has made me buy digital for the Vita if at all possible. Sony’s decision to make those game sticks as small as possible still baffles me, but here I am, skirting around the subject again. Soul Sacrifice never enticed me to play it when the game launched earlier this year. But when something is free, it becomes a little more enticing, right? I mean, the least I could do was give it a shot.
Soul Sacrifice started off pretty slow, trying to hook me with a story that I found unusual and rather boring. That changed after an hour or so, but the first bit was a pretty big turn off. There’s a talking book with an eye, which looks like something I’m sure I’ve seen in a horror movie or two. Presentation for the story, after the opening, gets considerably better, telling the story through the book itself. Swiping on the screen turns the page, continuing the story from the slow narrator. Luckily, I found I could skip his extremely dramatic pauses between sentences by pressing the x button. That was something that was getting on my last nerve, spending 5 minutes in a story sequence just to hear a few short pieces of information.
I completed the first few missions rather easily, but was still adjusting to the game mechanics and buttons when I came across the first “boss”. Soul Sacrifice reminds me a lot of Monster Hunter on the PSP, without the epic monsters though. But it felt the same, running around in an arena-like area, attacking monsters. They dropped loot, too. But the similarities end there, and I will say again, it’s a stark comparison, but that was just what it felt like to me. The attacks are customizable, done between missions and swapped out or strengthened with the loot dropped.
After the first boss, combat was feeling better and I had a better handle on how to play the game. Run around, lock on to target, spam appropriate attack, drain soul of dead monster, and repeat until area is clear. It’s nothing ground breaking. The short sessions make this a perfect portable game, though. On average, the sessions lasted maybe 5 minutes or so.
I had customized my character and swapped out some attacks during my time with Soul Sacrifice, but I know there has to be more to offer. Being as I only have a 4GB memory card, this will probably get deleted rather quickly though since it weighs in at 1.8GB. If, however, you have been in need of some Vita time, Soul Sacrifice is worth checking out if you haven’t played it yet. There’s a lot of action, some customization, and once the story gets going, Soul Sacrifice had my interest.
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