Lost Soul Aside Reviews

Lost Soul Aside wore on me pretty quickly, with its repetitive arena-to-arena flow, characters I never spent enough time to care about or what happened to them, and unpolished issues and quirks. Sometimes being "cool" just doesn’t cut it.

Lost Soul Aside is an action-adventure RPG that had a troubled development. That becomes obvious when you start playing. It's an upoptimized mess, with a story that actively annoyed me, and gameplay that got boring and repetitive. The game just takes from others in the genre that inspire it, with no idea how to make it work. The end result is a disappointing game I can't recommend to even the most curious of players.

After nearly ten years in development, Lost Soul Aside has finally arrived on PlayStation 5 and PC. This debut title from Ultizero Games began as a solo project by developer Bing Yang and eventually grew into something much larger. With such a long development cycle and support from Sony’s PlayStation China Hero Project, expectations were naturally high. Our review covers the game’s story, technical polish, combat system, and RPG elements to help you decide if this action game is worth yo...

The development history of Lost Soul Aside reads like an epic fantasy in and of itself. Originally the dream project of a solo developer, Yang Bing, it was revealed in 2016 before being picked up as part of Sony’s China Hero Project. Between 2016 and 2025, however, the game went through various different teams and visions, finally being released as a weird fusion of Devil May Cry, Final Fantasy, and an Anime 101 storytelling guidebook. The end result is a fascinating mess that isn’t a complete disaster but instead manages to be almost the dictionary definition of mediocre.

Lost Soul Aside is eight years too late to resonate with today's sensibilities, and it lacks a coherent vision to really be memorable.

Well, I finally played Lost Soul Aside and had a lot of fun with it so here are my thoughts on this divisive yet highly entertaining action game.

Lost Soul Aside’s repetitive story, derivative characters, and bland level design take turns setting up rakes for its excellent combat to step on. This game would be much better without trying to be an RPG.

Lost Soul Aside is a competently made action game filled with phenomenal combat and cinematic battles. It has some compelling visuals and environments, but PC performance is lackluster, resulting in frequent hitches and distractions. The story isn’t the most engaging and has awkward platforming mechanics too.

Lost Soul Aside is an action-heavy, flashy adventure with fun combat but a forgettable story.

Lost Soul Aside almost nails its combat, but unlikable characters, bloated RPG elements, and a generic setting make it a chore to get through.

The most damning critique I can make of Lost Soul Aside is that I couldn’t wait for it to be over. While the combat does occasionally shine, the poorly constructed narrative, terrible cinematography, and levels that drag on for the sake of having a longer game. While the technical performance was better than expected, Lost Soul Aside is still fairly buggy, and a stable frame rate can’t make this an enjoyable experience.

I don’t enjoy dunking on bad games. Games are hard to make, and harder to make well.  While acknowledging the 11-year-long commitment that finally brought the game to release, there are simply too many serious problems to ignore. Lost Soul Aside’s sometimes excellent action is undercut by flat characters, cliche story, terrible writing and rough mechanics.

Despite a deep and enjoyable combat system, there are a few issues that hold Lost Soul Aside back from being a great action-RPG title.

Lost Soul Aside has the foundations of a great action game with strong combat, but those strengths are buried beneath an inconsequential story and noticeable polish issues.

Finally getting to play a game that you've been waiting on for years can be a daunting experience. Expectations can shift significantly in that amount of time depending on marketing, previews, and the project's own development cycle.

Lost Soul Aside is a flawed but occasionally brilliant action game that represents both the potential and the pitfalls of passion-driven game development. What Yang Bing and his team at Ultizero Games have accomplished is nothing short of extraordinary, because the core combat system genuinely delivers the kind of stylish, skill-based action that genre fans crave. However, another year of development to smooth out the rough edges might have allowed this game to live up to its sky-high expecta...

A dazzling spectacle of combat and style struggling to balance substance with shine.

There's no getting around the fact that Lost Soul Aside feels like it belongs in the mid 2010s and honestly that would be fine were it not the fact that the game feels so compromised in so many other aspects of its design that it's difficult to shake the feeling that it just feels outdated, rather than a heartfelt love letter to the past. Though the soundtrack is frequently excellent and the combat reliably exciting, neither are enough to save Lost Soul Aside from tumbling into a deep abyss of rank mediocrity, which is a shame; especially considering the sheer amount of graft that has gone into the game since its inception all those years ago.

Lost Soul Aside left a bitter aftertaste of hype seasoned with unmet expectations. It's one of the few RPGs that made me care less about its characters and story the more I played, due to its shoddy narrative and half-baked cutscenes. The gameplay is excellent, offering plenty of versatility for everyone and depth. The post-game challenges will undoubtedly please those wanting to test their hack and slash proficiency. That is, however, if they have the grit and tolerance to see the game through to the end.