Lost Soul Aside
Aug. 29th, 2025 02:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rainwatersparkI've been following the discourse around the recently released video game, Lost Soul Aside. I don't really have a stake, since I'm not going to buy the game (in large part because I don't own a console that can run it), but I had a couple of thoughts as someone who also saw the original LSA trailer before it was picked up and developed into a full game.
I can't speak to optimization issues, but here are my thoughts on why the game has attracted such a negative reception:
1. The price. Pretty self-explanatory; if this had been priced as a AA game, the reception probably would've been better.
2. Comparisons to other Chinese games. Unfortunately, games like Black Myth Wukong, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, and Phantom Blade 0 have set an extremely high bar for Chinese-developed games. Those games aren't just good *Chinese* games; they're considered good games period, standing out even among the competition from Japanese and American games that have dominated the space for decades. LSA not quite reaching that tier is probably a major part of the disappointment people feel.
3. People projecting what they wanted the game to be.
This, to me, is the most interesting thing to think about, and the reason why I wanted to write this blog post. It was interesting to see some people be very disappointed that LSA didn't have a deep, well-written story, and saying they expected it to have one because of the Final Fantasy comparisons.
And yet, if you watch the original trailer, there WAS no narrative ever revealed. There was never any promise that the story would be good when there was no evidence of a compelling story.
(The only crumb of narrative we got from the original trailer was that it seemed like the relationship between Victor and Kaser was supposed to be more like Vergil to Date, and yet in the final game, Victor doesn't have much of a presence. I wonder if the creator, Yang Bing, had a few ideas but not necessarily a story, and ended up hiring a story writer who came up with...this, I guess.)
It feels like people clung to the idea of a "FF Versus XIII redemption story" and placed too many hopes on an unproven game with an unproven story.
Another part of it is people criticizing the gameplay. That part is interesting to me, because if you've watched the trailers and gameplay videos that have come out for this game over the years...the final game looks exactly like what was in those videos. They were visually cool, but to me, the gameplay shown didn't really sell me on the game (not the way, for example, Phantom Blade 0 did).
4. People having expectations because this game was "in development for 10 years."
This fact gets bandied about a lot, since the first trailer came out in 2016 and Yang Bing said he had been working on it since 2014.
But long development cycle doesn't necessarily mean a great game, which you think people would know from the development cycles of games like Final Fantasy XV. On top of that, LSA was created by a new, inexperienced studio. It had Sony's backing through the China Hero Project, but I don't know if anyone has the details about just how much investment or guidance the China Hero Project provides.
It's a particularly striking contrast to Phantom Blade 0, which is also S-Game's first AAA title, yet the studio had worked on several 2D/mobile games prior to that. Perhaps those prior experiences helped S-Game gain experience in project management/video game development. While I don't know the details, it also seems like Soulframe (S-Game's founder) took the time to find top talent to help him bring his vision to life. Like with LSA, it's not clear yet whether PB0 will have a well-told story (although at least the premise of it is more interesting than LSA's). But at the very least, it seems like they spent the time/got the funding/recruited the talent to develop compelling gameplay (also an interesting direct comparison, since both LSA and PB0 were inspired by the hack-and-slash combat of Devil May Cry).
*EDIT: This post provides some more info/context on the development of the game (I don't love using a ChatGPT translation, but I can't find a real translation for this).
Particularly, it clarifies that the game was scrapped and restarted in 2020, and development was slow from 2020 to early 2023 due to COVID lockdowns. So the idea that the game was "in development for 10 years" doesn't actually mean that a full development team was working on it full-time for 10 years. And while Sony provided funding, the fact that they used tracks from Two Steps From Hell in the game instead of having a composer compose all tracks is at least one pretty big clue that they did not have a ton of funding (to either pay a composer to compose all tracks, or to hire a composer talented enough to realize their vision).
It also says that Sony intervened in the narrative in early 2024—unclear whether they rewrote the story or whether they just cut it down (for budget/development time reasons?). I have seen some people say that the prologue area has more optimization issues than later areas, and maybe that was a late addition due to changes in the narrative. It is tempting to blame the lackluster narrative on Sony, but again, I'm not sure whether Yang Bing had always had a strong vision for the story or not (contrasting, again, with Soulframe/Phantom Blade 0).
I can't speak to optimization issues, but here are my thoughts on why the game has attracted such a negative reception:
1. The price. Pretty self-explanatory; if this had been priced as a AA game, the reception probably would've been better.
2. Comparisons to other Chinese games. Unfortunately, games like Black Myth Wukong, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, and Phantom Blade 0 have set an extremely high bar for Chinese-developed games. Those games aren't just good *Chinese* games; they're considered good games period, standing out even among the competition from Japanese and American games that have dominated the space for decades. LSA not quite reaching that tier is probably a major part of the disappointment people feel.
3. People projecting what they wanted the game to be.
This, to me, is the most interesting thing to think about, and the reason why I wanted to write this blog post. It was interesting to see some people be very disappointed that LSA didn't have a deep, well-written story, and saying they expected it to have one because of the Final Fantasy comparisons.
And yet, if you watch the original trailer, there WAS no narrative ever revealed. There was never any promise that the story would be good when there was no evidence of a compelling story.
(The only crumb of narrative we got from the original trailer was that it seemed like the relationship between Victor and Kaser was supposed to be more like Vergil to Date, and yet in the final game, Victor doesn't have much of a presence. I wonder if the creator, Yang Bing, had a few ideas but not necessarily a story, and ended up hiring a story writer who came up with...this, I guess.)
It feels like people clung to the idea of a "FF Versus XIII redemption story" and placed too many hopes on an unproven game with an unproven story.
Another part of it is people criticizing the gameplay. That part is interesting to me, because if you've watched the trailers and gameplay videos that have come out for this game over the years...the final game looks exactly like what was in those videos. They were visually cool, but to me, the gameplay shown didn't really sell me on the game (not the way, for example, Phantom Blade 0 did).
4. People having expectations because this game was "in development for 10 years."
This fact gets bandied about a lot, since the first trailer came out in 2016 and Yang Bing said he had been working on it since 2014.
But long development cycle doesn't necessarily mean a great game, which you think people would know from the development cycles of games like Final Fantasy XV. On top of that, LSA was created by a new, inexperienced studio. It had Sony's backing through the China Hero Project, but I don't know if anyone has the details about just how much investment or guidance the China Hero Project provides.
It's a particularly striking contrast to Phantom Blade 0, which is also S-Game's first AAA title, yet the studio had worked on several 2D/mobile games prior to that. Perhaps those prior experiences helped S-Game gain experience in project management/video game development. While I don't know the details, it also seems like Soulframe (S-Game's founder) took the time to find top talent to help him bring his vision to life. Like with LSA, it's not clear yet whether PB0 will have a well-told story (although at least the premise of it is more interesting than LSA's). But at the very least, it seems like they spent the time/got the funding/recruited the talent to develop compelling gameplay (also an interesting direct comparison, since both LSA and PB0 were inspired by the hack-and-slash combat of Devil May Cry).
*EDIT: This post provides some more info/context on the development of the game (I don't love using a ChatGPT translation, but I can't find a real translation for this).
Particularly, it clarifies that the game was scrapped and restarted in 2020, and development was slow from 2020 to early 2023 due to COVID lockdowns. So the idea that the game was "in development for 10 years" doesn't actually mean that a full development team was working on it full-time for 10 years. And while Sony provided funding, the fact that they used tracks from Two Steps From Hell in the game instead of having a composer compose all tracks is at least one pretty big clue that they did not have a ton of funding (to either pay a composer to compose all tracks, or to hire a composer talented enough to realize their vision).
It also says that Sony intervened in the narrative in early 2024—unclear whether they rewrote the story or whether they just cut it down (for budget/development time reasons?). I have seen some people say that the prologue area has more optimization issues than later areas, and maybe that was a late addition due to changes in the narrative. It is tempting to blame the lackluster narrative on Sony, but again, I'm not sure whether Yang Bing had always had a strong vision for the story or not (contrasting, again, with Soulframe/Phantom Blade 0).
