If there’s one thing that the PlayStation Vita delivered, it was great Monster Hunter clones after Capcom’s hit series jumped ship from PSP to Nintendo 3DS. The list included games like Koei Tecmo’s Toukiden, Bandai Namco’s God Eater, and Gungho’s Ragnarok Odyssey Ace. While these mission-based games were perfect fit for the Vita’s pick-up-and-play lifestyle, they were also available on PS3.
Sony Japan even joined into the fray with the 2015 Vita exclusive Freedom Wars, which is celebrating its 10-year anniversary with a remaster on modern platforms next January, courtesy of Bandai Namco. On the heels of that surprise announcement, there’s one other hunting action game that needs to break free from the Vita’s shackles: Soul Sacrifice Delta. It’s an enhanced version of 2013’s Soul Sacrifice that added more content and gameplay adjustments.
Grimdark Archfiend hunter
Soul Sacrifice Delta was released in 2014 and designed by Keiji Inafune (yes, the auteur behind the infamous Mighty No. 9). It plays like how you’d expect from a Monster Hunter-like action game. You can hunt down your main target and hit its weak points to gather materials and create stronger weapons. It’s an engaging gameplay loop that makes sure you’re always prepared to fight increasingly stronger monsters.
The story follows a trapped slave by the evil sorcerer Magusar. While in captivity, the slave finds a sentient book named Librom and uses it to witness Magusar’s descent into evil by reliving past battles. These fights, known as Phantom Quests, allow the slave to gradually gain experience and learn powerful spells in order to eventually fight back against Magusar.
What makes the storytelling effective is that most cutscenes are told through simple drawings and the dialogue is spoken in dramatic monologues. Rather than having just one epic narrative, it feels more like a collection of short stories. It’s a charming approach, and the cutscenes don’t overstay their welcome, letting players dive right back into the action.
Soul Sacrifice Delta stands especially out in its art direction. Whereas Toukiden took players to ancient Japan and Freedom Wars embraced an apocalyptic sci-fi future, Soul Sacrifice has a more grimdark, fantastical setting. It felt like developer Japan Studio had a more international audience in mind, as the game’s aesthetic wouldn’t look out of place in properties like World of Warcraft or Magic: The Gathering.
That’s reflected in the game’s enemy designs. The big monsters are called Archfiends, and a vast majority of them are based on Greek and Christian mythology. These included Archfiends such as Beelzebub, Centaur, Incubus, and Odin. Soul Sacrifice’s dark aesthetic twist makes the Archfiends look quite sinister.
Popular figures that we typically view as more innocent and inconspicuous are presented as grotesque Archfiends. For example, Snow White has a huge mirror head, with its face being reflected in it. The Three Little Pigs consist of one central pig with the other two hogs acting as shoulder pads. The developers really nailed down these designs, making them feel threatening and uneasy.
Save or sacrifice
Players can bring along six weapons, called offerings, on each mission. Offerings have a bunch of different properties, including elemental damage, healing buffs, and minion summoning. It’s a straightforward approach, but you also have to factor in each offering’s limited use. Once you use an offering, it’ll disappear after a set period of time. But if you call upon a specific offering too many times, you risk breaking it, rendering it unusable. Thankfully, there are spots on the battlefield that can replenish your offerings.
Unfortunately, that’s just as much interaction you’ll have with the stages and battlefield. Many of them are flat spaces and sometimes were entirely too small for the large-scale battles taking place. Oftentimes I ran into camera issues with it zooming in way too closely and I felt claustrophobic in many of the missions.
The game’s central mechanic involves either sacrificing or saving your enemies. Once they start dying, you can run up to them to pick your choice, and they both have equal benefits. For more common monsters and most Archfiends, sacrificing them replenishes your offerings and raises your attack stat. If you choose to save them then you restore HP and raise your defense stat.
In the long term, you might be more inclined to sacrifice enemies to become stronger, but if you’re about to die during the heat of battle, you may be forced to save an enemy you originally intended to sacrifice so that you can stay alive. It’s a creative system that makes you weigh your different options on how you want to build your character, but also keeps you on your toes if you have to make a different decision.
Saving Archfiends also has the added benefit of recruiting new NPC allies. When an Archfiend is defeated, it reverts back to its human form. By providing salvation, they’re now willing to join your side. You could also just send them straight to their deaths and gain a massive EXP boost. Your decision to save or sacrifice certain Archfiends can also lead to branching story paths, adding some replayability to the game. Thankfully, you can always replay missions to change your choices.
Sony eventually sacrificed support for the Vita to focus on the PS4 after it was clear that the console would become the runaway success that the handheld failed to achieve. However, like Freedom Wars, Sony has the choice to save one of the Vita’s best games from obscurity by bringing it to modern platforms. Soul Sacrifice Delta’s protagonist may be stuck in a prison, but that doesn’t mean the game has to be too.