Lost Soul Aside is an admirable disaster

There's no joy in putting down a passion project, but it's equally impossible to praise potential.

Lost Soul Aside began as a solo development project over a decade ago by developer Yang Bing. A few years later, Sony saw the potential in Bing's vision and brought him aboard the China Hero Project, an initiative to support Chinese developers.

Ten years later, Lost Soul Aside is the product of some 40 people, that looks, sounds, and plays like that indie love letter to Final Fantasy dreamed up back on a college campus.

In many ways, I want to love it for the simple fact that it exists. After all, it is clearly a work of passion. But passion alone doesn't equal quality, just look at anything Neil Breen makes. In its haste to copy and emulate the titles developer Bing grew up on, Lost Soul Aside becomes a muddled mess of disparate parts, none of which fit together in any meaningful sense.

Story and gameplay

The story of Lost Soul Aside is as confounding as it is derivative. Our hero, Kaser, is basically a blank slate, despite multiple characters declaring him Very Important from the moment we meet them. He looks and plays like someone who didn't get a callback to Final Fantasy XV.

Kaser lives in Slum Harbour with his sister, Louisa, who keeps reminding Kaser that he's her brother. Together, they work for the resistance group GLIMMER who oppose the empire because that's what resistance groups in these types of games do.

Then, during a mission that makes very little sense, Louisa is killed. Luckily, it's the Princess Bride type of dead, where she's only mostly dead. This gives Kaser an opportunity for a quest, which is perfect, as he's just fused with an ancient dragon god called Arena, who seeks penance for his past actions.

To achieve their mutual goals, Kaser and Arena must travel through alternate dimensions and encounter ruthless demons – some of whom are Arena's old compatriots – if they're to harness the power to bring about every cliche this story needs to come to an end.

In theory, Lost Soul Aside works as a Character Action Game, like Devil May Cry, where the narrative isn't as much of a focus. In practise, the awful pacing and downright disastrous writing that tries to emulate Final Fantasy in the worst way possible make this impossible. If this was a brisk, 10 hour action romp, it would be so much easier to ignore the issues.

Instead, Lost Soul Aside aims for grand epic, with a bloated runtime of minimum 20 hours to complete. Much of that time is spent in hilariously bad cut scenes, where characters hurl inane jargon at each other, none of which is interesting, new, or even inventive. At worst, it sounds like placeholder dialog, the kind of stuff you put into a text just to get through a draft. Only this time, nobody has gone back to edit the material into better shape.

The horrendous voice acting doesn't help the bland writing. If you're yearning for the days of 90s anime dubs, you're in for a treat. This is some of the most unintentionally funny acting in years. At one point, all other sound cut out – though I'm still uncertain if this was intentional or a bug – as a massive cataclyms wiped out half a city, and all the main character could say was "huh" in a way you hear someone react to a mildly amusing TikTok.

Luckily, not everything is a disaster. The combat mechanics are arguably the highlight, and work perfectly fine most of the time. It's all heavily based on dodging and blocking, with a respectable amount of weapons, move sets, and accessories to its name. There's a skill tree, too, but it's so bereft of meaningful content it might as well not exist.

Annoyingly, the fast paced action comes to a grinding halt in boss battles, which are nearly constantly drawn out to frustration. Each boss has only a set amount of moves which are easy to figure out, but they also have multiple health bars that take an inordinate amount of time to grind down. The result isn't annoying because it's difficult, but because it turns the combat from fast and furious and balletic to tedious repetition.

And speaking of tedious, good grief the platforming sections still need work. The movement is janky, jumping is imprecise, and it's yet another element of the developers seeing a good idea done elsewhere and mimicking it without considering how it fits into the grand scheme of things.

Add on to this a static and hugely linear world, repetitive gameplay, and a soundtrack that plays like the B-sides of every other JRPG in existence, and Lost Soul Aside starts to get old really fast. It has the passion of a student project, it's just a shame it also has all the expertise of one, too.

Technical aspects & accessibility

On the base PlayStation 5, Lost Soul Aside runs perfectly fine without any major hiccups that I could notice. Frame rates are mostly stable on performance mode, and the Unreal Engine 4 graphics are fine. Like most of the game, they feel dated in design and would have fared a lot better on the PlayStation 4, but none of it is distractingly bad.

Audio issues, on the other hand, were plentiful. I had music cut out randomly, dialog not play when it should, effects disappear and re-appear mid-combat, and sometimes the game would just go silent. I at first thought it was my sound system, but even testing it directly through my TV produced the same results.

Which isn't terrible, in a way. At least that way you don't have to listen to the voice acting.

Accessibility options are the bare minimum, with adjustments to color blindness and subtitle size. Nothing in terms of helping out with combat markers or timings, which aren't exactly the most accommodating.

Verdict

Lost Soul Aside would probably have gotten a better reception even 5 years earlier. It feels like a relic of the PlayStation 4 era, a AA-title arriving at the tail end of the console's lifespan. Something that you'd find at a bargain bin for 20 Euros, which proves just enough of an interesting oddity that it keeps you engaged for a brief spell.

Instead, it's released in 2025 at a full 70 Euros, competing directly against titles like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Metaphor: ReFantazio, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

It simply can't hold a candle to any of these titles.

Is it unfair to compare it with any of them? I'd say so. After all, Expedition 33 could compete in terms of design team size.

I'm glad we're getting more original IPs out there, I really am. But Lost Soul Aside simply isn't ready for prime time yet. Certainly not at this price point.

As a proof of concept for a combat system, it's terrific. There's really something there. But as an Action RPG, it's a mess. It feels unfinished and borderline like something thrown together to justify a full release. I would have happily paid for a shorter game with a tighter gameplay loop, if that would be an alternative.

Now, hardcore fans might find the combat to be just enough to justify a single playthrough. For everyone else, it's an easy miss at a time when RPGs are having some of the best releases ever.