Soul Sacrifice Delta (2013) [Vita] review

“No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.”
-Aristotle

The world’s ended. It probably ended a long time ago, in fact, but there’s not too many people left to keep track of the calendar these days. The sorcerer Magusar, a tyrant with godlike power and eternal life, rules over the land and periodically culls the few remaining humans to maintain his immortality. As one of those chosen to be a sacrifice to Magusar, you might think everything is hopeless…but that’s not necessarily so. A talking book called Librom offers you a way out. Librom contains the writings of a sorcerer from long ago, one with knowledge of Magusar and of the ways of magic. By studying this sorcerer’s life, you might be able to take on some sliver of their power for yourself, and that just might be enough to help you resist the evil mage. The sorcerers of Sony’s Vita-exclusive hunting-action title Soul Sacrifice and its later expansion Soul Sacrifice Delta, though, aren’t the robed, finger-waggling dandies we’ve come to expect from fantasy.

Magic in this world is never free.

There’s always a cost, one that must be paid via sacrifice, be that of one’s possessions, one’s foes, one’s allies, or even one’s own sanity. Some even take this too far, giving into their desires and becoming monstrous Archfiends; it falls to the rest of the sorcerous community to deal with the threat these pose to the land. A small minority of sorcerers, meanwhile, believe that it’s not always necessary to sacrifice fallen monsters, that there could be salvation even for those who have gone beyond the pale.

This theme of salvation and sacrifice extends to Soul Sacrifice’s gameplay; in fact, it’s the main way that Soul Sacrifice distinguishes itself from its contemporaries. Unlike most hunting-action titles, your gear in Soul Sacrifice runs on what’s essentially an ammunition system. Your sorcerer’s magic is powered by Offerings, magical talismans that offer arcane might in exchange for steadily deteriorating. Each Offering produces a different effect, ranging from conjuring a melee weapon to summoning deadly homing mines to unleashing energy beams to healing, and each has an associated cost.

Usually this takes the form of the Offering having a limited number of uses per quest, though the Delta expansion introduced new blood Offerings that instead consume your health when activated. The number of shots you get per Offering varies, and this means that efficiency is important; melee weapons tend to be a little weaker than big ol’ arcane blasts, for instance, but they also last much longer before they need to be re-conjured. Depleting an Offering’s uses breaks it, rendering it unavailable (even on future quests) until you pay a resource cost to repair it, so you’ll want to avoid this unless it’s absolutely necessary to wring out that last cast.

If you’re concerned about running out of juice before your quarry goes down, well, that’s the idea. You’ll solve this issue by saving or sacrificing fallen lesser foes. The result of a save or sacrifice depends on your sorcerer’s faction affiliation; dark sorcerers of Avalon regain power and claim Soul Essence through sacrifice, while heretic saviors of Sanctuarium save defeated foes and claim Life Essence instead. Neutral cultists of Grim, meanwhile, recharge by leaving defeated foes to their fates, resulting in a random reward of Soul or Life Essence along with reloading their Offerings. Renewed Offerings keep you in the fight, while the Essences you collect can be used to equip Sigils, Soul Sacrifice’s version of gear.

The delicate balance between keeping your Offerings repaired and focusing on the Archfiend you’re battling makes Soul Sacrifice feel a little more frantic and strained than many hunting-action titles. Each attack carries a cost that you’ll likely have to repay before the fight is over, so careful aim and precision are paramount, and you’ll inevitably have to break away multiple times to hunt smaller prey and reload. This plays well with the genre’s multiplayer focus, and it’s little surprise that Soul Sacrifice offers AI-controlled party members to keep Archfiends distracted and revive fallen players.

Along with your Offerings, you also have access to a single Black Rite of your choice, These are gruesome super attacks where your character offers up parts of their own body as the sacrifice to power them.  You get a lot out of these but the cost is great indeed. One has you tearing out an eye, which then animates into a laser-spewing satellite but also drastically cuts your visible play area. Another has your character rip a chunk of their own spine out of their mouth and wield it as a macabre sword, which is certainly powerful but has nasty repercussions for your . Yet another reforms the bones of your arm into an Archfiend-binding chain, allowing you and your allies to attack with abandon but costing you your Sigils’ bonuses. These are all simultaneously impressive and terrifying, serving as great finishing blows at the end of a grueling battle.

On a moment-to-moment basis, Soul Sacrifice’s quests tend to be over pretty quickly one way or the other, in keeping with the game’s handheld nature. A typical hunt that you’re properly prepared for will average around ten to fifteen minutes. Unlike many hunting-action games, Soul Sacrifice doesn’t have extra lives, so if the whole party goes down you’re booted out immediately. Thankfully, team members can save their fallen allies to get them back in the game…or sacrifice them, rendering them ghostly and intangible for the rest of the fight but unleashing a powerful attack in return.

The system takes some getting used to, but it’s worth your while. Soul Sacrifice’s big draw is its aesthetics and presentation. Unlike Monster Hunter’s verdant wilds and colorful quarry, Soul Sacrifice gleefully plummets into the depths of grimdark. The Archfiends you battle tend to represent twisted versions of mythical creatures and, in Delta, fairy-tale staples, with each accompanied by a comically bleak tale about how they came to exist after a hapless human gave into greed. These are all worth the read and lend plenty of flavor to Soul Sacrifice.

You’ve got your Jack O’ Lantern, a sphere-shaped soldier who rolls around while spraying fire; your Centaur, an archer fused with a horse and cart so as to better flee and bombard you with arrows; there’s even a take on the Phoenix that combines the horrific nature of eternal death and rebirth with a moth’s tendency to burn itself in flames. For my money, the most memorable design is the hilariously gross Musicians of Bremen, introduced in Delta and represented here as a donkey-man that retches up a progressively smaller series of also-retching animals like a gory Matryoshka. You certainly haven’t fought anything like these guys before.

Soul Sacrifice doesn’t really relent with its weirdness. In fact, it revels in it, and with the Delta expansion there’s plenty of weird to go around. Between its over-the-top plot and monster designs, its excessive amounts of lore and its solid-if-bizarre take on hunting-action, this is a game that can’t be missed for Vita and PSTV owners – and there’s also no question why its a franchise that’s never made a return, since it’s A Lot all at once. This is a game that takes some time to really settle in, but once you understand what it’s asking of the player, you’ll be willing to sacrifice plenty of your time to enjoy it. It’s worth noting, also, that all of the above applies to Delta, which adds a huge amount of content, implements some much-needed rebalancing and is a superior package all in all, so sacrifice whatever extra cash it takes to play that version.

PIXEL PERFECT

Recommended

Cory G. believes the pen is mightier than the sword…well, depending on how sharp the pen and sword are. A child of the ’90s and a prolific writer, he strews his work about like Legos made of words, just waiting for your brain to step on them. He enjoys a devilish challenge, so when it comes to talking about some of the more difficult games out there, you might just run into the Infernal Accountant Mage. Some advice: hold on to your soul around this guy, and don’t sign anything. Read more at popzara.com.