tormented souls was an experience, but i left with mixed feelings on the game. im recommending the game based on its story, but i have a lot of gripes with the gameplay mechanics. but for the first couple of hours, i absolutely hated playing and i was really not looking forward to playing the game (especially since i intend to 100% tormented souls). before buying tormented souls, i highly recommend reading a lot of reviews. presumably, most of the negative reviews are going to trash the gameplay mechanics while most of the positive reviews are going to praise the story. as a brief content warning, there is a fair amount of nudity and body horror. first, ill start with the positives of the game. i actually found the story of tormented souls to be pretty interesting. for the sake of avoiding spoilers, im gonna be brief. you play as caroline walker, who receives a mysterious photograph in the mail and heads to the mansion-turned-hospital to investigate. upon arriving, she blacks out and when she comes to, shes locked in a bathroom, worse for wear: naked and submerged in dirty water, hooked up to a ventilator, and missing an eye. the further you explore, the more questions arise. caroline has the strange ability to climb through specific mirrors to enter an alternate version of her world, similar to the otherworld seen in the silent hill games. she can also travel throughout different periods in time via several vhs tapes. this is a super interesting way of conveying the story and setting up various puzzles. theres a total of three endings: the bad, the neutral, and the good ending. in the grand scheme of things, the endings dont vary that much. the ending you get is determined based on your choices near the very end of the game, so if you want all three endings, you can use the same file and just reload a save to get each ending (i highly recommend AigisABC’s guide to help you figure out when the best times to save are, especially if youre going for all the endings). onto the minor issues i had with the game. tormented souls has no difficulty modifier. if youre struggling, theres no easy mode. if you want a challenge, theres no hardcore mode. its not that big of a deal, but just a minor inconvenience. the models and animation quality are pretty mediocre, but it gets the job done. the characters’ mouths dont move when they talk, which is pretty funny, though caroline’s face does change emotions in various cutscenes. the voice acting is also pretty mediocre, but again, it gets the job done. the subtitles and voice lines dont always match. sometimes the differences would just be words added or replaced, other times entire voice lines just didnt play. as much as i enjoyed the stationary camera angles, they were sometimes…odd. the camera angles were frequently positioned to keep enemies out of sight, but you can usually hear them nearby, so they dont usually catch you too off-guard. however, the camera angles could get a bit annoying, since it can be pretty jarring to suddenly have the camera be across the room or behind you. there was also an incredibly useless camera angle, where the camera was looking up from the floor for a brief moment while you walk down four steps. no clue why that was put in. the map was also a minor inconvenience. the map doesnt remember which part of the building youre in/what floor youre on, so it’s up to you to flip through to find the one glowing room to indicate where you are. and due to the wonky camera angles, it can sometimes be a bit tough to use the map, since the world frequently bounces around and inverts the directions you need to follow. now, onto my gripes of the game. lets start with the biggest one: the saving system. just like the ink ribbons in the original resident evil games, tormented souls has a similar save system. in order to save, you need to collect 7-inch tapes scattered throughout the mansion and bring them to specific locations. i believe there are 16-20 tapes total, though i may be a bit off. regardless, that means you have to be really careful about where you save. if youre on your first playthrough, you likely wont know when ideal times are to save, nor where the tapes themselves are. many of the tapes are in easily missable locations too. it can be agonizing, racing back to a save location while on low health, only to be killed just a few feet away from the door to the save room. it can be incredibly frustrating, especially when you havent been able to save for a very long time. theres no autosave system either, so each death can be a major loss of progress. the controls are pretty janky (i used keyboard controls, so i cant verify if the controls on controller are equally janky). for some reason, viewing the map was ‘f’ instead of the standard ‘m’? id always forget that and hit ‘m’, before just manually opening the map via my inventory. moving backwards is incredibly slow, and dodging can be a bit rough to time or entirely useless on some enemies (id frequently get hit by the slasher and atomic men despite dodging). turning was sometimes a bit awkward and id get stuck on various objects as a result. im gonna talk about achievements now, so this may not be applicable to everyone. but for achievement hunters, this one is for you. there are 29 achievements total and most of them arent too bad. the vast majority of the achievements are earned through doing necessary tasks to progress through the story, beating the game and getting all three endings, getting various collectibles, and doing miscellaneous tasks (which, youll likely get by just playing the game). but three achievements are the bane of my existence. beat the game without saving, beat the game in under three hours, and beat the game without healing. as previously mentioned, theres no autosave system, so if you die, its game over. and theres no auto regeneration system, so you essentially have to do a no damage run. on the topic of achievements, if youre going for the speedrun achievement "anxiety", then best of luck. from what ive heard, the game doesnt pause the time when youre paused/tabbed out of the game. that means even if you pause the game to quickly check a guide for the locations of something/solution to a puzzle, youre wasting precious time and you could ultimately lose the speedrun as a result. overall, the gameplay was incredibly miserable. in fact, i didnt start enjoying the game until i found an amazing guide (“Tormented Souls Guide” by AigisABC, i highly suggest referencing this) to help me. the guide mentions ideal save locations, where to find 7-inch tapes, key items in certain rooms, what enemies are in what rooms, etc. once i had a guide to help me manage when to save and where i needed to head next, i actually began to enjoy playing the game. i was able to actually enjoy the story, since i was able to quickly find morphine/first aid kits to heal up, 7-inch tapes to save, and ideal locations for a save. id highly recommend playing tormented souls if youre interested in the story, but maybe stay away from the game if youre easily frustrated or sensitive to body horror.
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