Eldest Souls in the test: Not even interesting for Dark Souls fans

Eldest Souls in the test

You shouldn't rate a book by its cover, but with some games the entire content can be read off by the name. Because if you suspect that Eldest Souls is a rock-hard action role-playing game with a dark, post-apocalyptic fantasy setting, in which a chosen hero sets out to face fallen gods and die a thousand deaths in the process, then you are spot on, and take it Reward a biscuit. You will need the nerve food.

Table of contents

1 Once bosses without anything and extra sharp 2 Controls from hell 3 Learning curve? Concrete wall. Recommended editorial content At this point you will find external content from [PLATTFORM]. To protect your personal data, external integrations are only displayed if you confirm this by clicking on "Load all external content": Load all external content I consent to external content being displayed to me. This means that personal data is transmitted to third-party platforms. Read more about our privacy policy . External content More on this in our data protection declaration.

Once bosses without anything and extra sharp

Eldest Souls is an isometric boss rush game in which you armed with a powerful obsidian blade explore a crumbling citadel in order to kill nine evil, wicked creatures and their leader lay so that subjugated humanity can breathe again. The story, which is assembled from Souls-like set pieces, is quickly explained and the short exploratory trips between the ten bosses are hardly worth mentioning, so the game doesn't hesitate and throws you straight into the first fight after the intro sequence. In a classic, timing-based duel, you will learn the basics of the combat system that make the game stand out from its genre colleagues.

Your only weapon, the obsidian blade, can either be wielded normally or charged for a charge. The specialty: If you hit the enemy with the storm attack, the sword starts to burn and heals you for every hit landed - until the bloodlust display has cleared again. In addition, you cause significantly more damage in the bloodlust, which is also urgently needed with the tough bosses.

Controls from Hell

The first boss is one of the few classic duels in Eldest Souls. In most other fights, there is some special mechanic to grasp. Source: PC Games That means in plain language that you should open every attack on the opponent in this way in order to make the best possible use of the tiny pauses that enemies offer you between their relentless attacks. Unfortunately, this makes it all the more annoying that the somewhat sluggish, imprecise control of the game often lets your own attacks go nowhere. If you stand in front of the boss with your pants down again, only a brave evasive jump will help. A very clever mechanism comes into play here: by default, you are only allowed to dodge three to four times due to your extremely tight stamina bar, but if you flit straight through the enemy attack at the last moment, your stamina regeneration is briefly accelerated. So Eldest Souls rewards perfect evasive maneuvers - and it challenges them too.

Learning curve? Concrete wall.

Its inconsequential story only explains the game briefly at the beginning. Then the usual, cryptic environmental storytelling scam is the order of the day. Source: PC Games Because after the second boss at the latest, the game demands everything from you that you were able to learn in the short time before. With only ten enemies, the roster is quite thin, but the monsters are varied and always treat you with new mechanics, which you have to internalize with countless deaths for each enemy. A single boss suddenly splits into two no less dangerous halves, you are shot at with bullet patterns in shoot'em-up fashion, slowly frozen by ice attacks and sucked into carnivorous plants that suddenly appear.

What this plant here makes? What does the yellow bar mean? Why is the boss suddenly buffeted? We would also like to know. Source: PC Games The principle of "Learning by Dying" only works to a limited extent with Eldest Souls, because often enough the bosses' special mechanics seem simply opaque and superimposed to artificially increase the level of difficulty. Lightning-fast attacks overlap with area damage, which turns parts of the tiny arenas into a death zone, bosses receive buffs for no apparent reason that make them strike even faster and harder, and the isometric perspective partially obscures the turmoil from the level inventory. Unfortunately, Eldest Souls occasionally disregards the golden rule of "hard but fair", and even for Souls-like standards you have to bring a good deal of frustration resistance to even reach the second half of the game.

Between the Fight, you explore the small game world, you listen to the monologues of some NPCs, complete simple pick-up-and-bring quests and look desperately for upgrades for your skills. After all: Thanks to the chic pixel style, you get to see some atmospheric panoramas and the music in the boss fights goes well with the gloomy atmosphere. In addition, the game gives you a flexible skill system with which you can switch between attack, evasion and counter focus at any time. Even if focusing on maximum damage usually turns out to be the best strategy, you still have a few options to choose from, with which you can run against the concrete wall again and again!

My opinion

By Stefan Wilhelm

Editor

[email protected] The motivating game principle is buried under half-baked mechanics and frustration. Gosh, what agony this game was! Now you could think that the agony is actually the selling point in this genre, but even as a player who is capable of suffering, I had very little fun with Eldest Souls. I wouldn't mind learning the bosses' attack patterns in a lot of attempts, especially if that's the only game content. But when these attack patterns are so often obscure, chaotic, artificial and annoying, I quickly lose the desire to let myself be torn to pieces again and again. With such an extreme level of difficulty, the controls should be more handy, I would like to get stuck on the enemy less often and the assault, which I am supposed to use constantly, should feel more precise. So, apart from the comfortable skill system and the actually successful game principle, there remains a title with which only those who have already played through everything else in the Souls-like genre will be happy. Eldest Souls (PC) 6/10

Graphics - Sound - Multiplayer - Eldest Souls (PS4) 6/10

Graphics - Sound - Multiplayer - Eldest Souls (PS5) 6/10

Graphics - Sound - Multiplayer - Eldest Souls (NSW) 6/10

Graphics - Sound - Multiplayer - Eldest Souls (XBO) 6/10

Graphics - Sound - Multiplayer - Eldest Souls (XSX) 6/10

Graphics - Sound - Multiplayer - Pros & Cons Nice presentation Varied bosses Flexible build customization possible Hardly any content apart from the ten fights Unimportant genre standard More pros & cons ... Conclusion Only for extremely suffering players who already know all the other Souls-likes.