BLACK SOULS Review Summary

Exceptional Story and Lore: Players overwhelmingly praise the game's story, lore, and narrative depth, frequently calling it a 'masterpiece' with a compelling and impactful plot. While some describe the story as simple, others highlight its hidden complexities and emotional resonance.

Rich Content and Replayability: The game offers substantial content, high replayability, and excellent value for its price, keeping players deeply engaged and often leading to obsession. Its availability on Steam and achievement system further enhance the experience and encourage multiple playthroughs.

Unique Dark Fantasy Aesthetic: The game's unique blend of dark fairy tales, Lovecraftian themes, and grimdark fantasy creates a distinctive and immersive world. Its rough yet expressive hand-drawn art style perfectly complements this atmosphere, enhancing the overall experience.

Top-Tier RPG Maker Game: The game is highly regarded as a top-tier RPG Maker title, often considered the best in its genre, especially within the 'H-game' category. It pushes boundaries in narrative and gameplay design for RPG Maker games, offering a quality experience even without its adult content.

Engaging Combat System: The combat system is widely enjoyed, described as immersive, engaging, and strategically deep, despite some initial learning curve or older system feel. Players appreciate the satisfying parry and dodge mechanics, contributing to a fun and rewarding gameplay loop.

Game requires external patch: The Steam version of the game is heavily censored and incomplete, requiring an external patch to be fully playable. Without this patch, critical content like character sprites, dialogue, and adult scenes are missing, leading to numerous bugs, progression blockers, and an overall unplayable experience. This unpatched state is considered unacceptable by players.

Poor optimization and dark narrative: Players report a generally negative and unoptimized experience, citing frequent crashes, poor performance, and a feeling of incompleteness. The game's narrative is often described as dark, nihilistic, and emotionally taxing, with many players finding the endings unsatisfying or overly brutal.

Outdated combat and mechanics: The combat system is frequently criticized for being rudimentary, repetitive, and unengaging, with clunky controls and a lack of depth. The game's reliance on an old RPG Maker engine contributes to outdated mechanics and simplistic visuals, especially compared to its sequel.

Missing basic game settings: The game lacks essential quality-of-life features and basic settings. Players cannot adjust resolution, remap keys, or access in-game system settings, leading to a poor user experience and potential loss of progress.

Missing NPCs and content: Without the necessary patches, many NPCs are missing from the game world, and crucial dialogues, locations, and plot interactions are cut or altered, severely impacting the narrative and exploration.

Souls-like Dark Fairy Tale RPG: The game is heavily inspired by the Dark Souls series, incorporating many of its core mechanics and thematic elements into a 2D, turn-based RPG Maker format. It uniquely blends this Souls-like foundation with a dark, twisted fairy tale setting, featuring familiar characters in a grim context.

Multiple Endings & Player Choice: The game features multiple endings (at least four main routes and ten character-specific endings), which are directly influenced by player choices and actions throughout the game. This encourages replayability and careful decision-making.

Strategic Turn-Based Combat: The combat system is turn-based, utilizing an Active Time Battle (ATB) system where speed influences action frequency. A key strategic element is the ability to parry and dodge, which are highly effective and can even be used to defeat powerful early-game enemies.

Undead Progression & Bonfires: Players assume the role of an undead protagonist, with death leading to soul loss that can be recovered. Souls serve as the primary currency for leveling up and purchasing items, and bonfires act as checkpoints for resurrection and fast travel.

Adult Content & NPC Interaction: The game includes explicit adult content (eroge) and features a 'sin' mechanic where players can choose to kill, violate, or imprison NPCs, including heroines. This content is a significant aspect of the game, though some reviewers focused on gameplay.

Requires unofficial patch: Players frequently report that the game is unplayable or severely buggy without an external, unofficial patch. Issues include crashes, missing assets, and incorrect sprite placement, indicating a critical need for a fix.

Stable post-patch: Despite the need for an external patch, once applied, the game generally runs without major game-breaking bugs. Players note overall stability, though minor balance and navigation issues can still occur.

Uses RPGMaker assets: The game is built using RPGMaker and heavily relies on its default free assets. This gives the game a primitive visual style that some players find unappealing.

Minor technical quirks: Some minor technical quirks exist, such as settings only applying after a restart and slight image degradation when resizing the window. These are not critical but affect user experience.

Good Steam Deck performance: The game reportedly performs well on the Steam Deck, offering a good experience for players on that platform. This indicates good compatibility with portable gaming devices.

Highly Recommended Masterpiece: Many players highly recommend the game, often calling it a masterpiece, especially for fans of dark fantasy, Souls-like RPGs, and deep, challenging narratives. They emphasize that it's not for everyone due to its mature and sensitive themes, encouraging players to approach it with an open mind and to persist through its difficulties.

Support Developer & Series: Many players purchased the game specifically to support the indie developer, Toro, and to encourage the release of future titles on Steam. They see buying the game as a direct way to show appreciation and foster the development of the series.

Focus on Story & Plot: Some players recommend focusing on the game's story and plot, suggesting that those short on time can use walkthroughs to understand the narrative. This indicates the story is a key draw for players.

Wait for Updates/Sales: A few players note that the game currently has issues and suggest waiting for updates or sales before purchasing, indicating some concerns about its present state or value.

Manage Adult Content Settings: There's conflicting feedback regarding the game's adult content; some suggest it can be disabled, while others advise against it, stating that disabling it means missing out on significant lore and themes.

High Anticipation for Sequels: Players are highly anticipating the release of the sequel, Black Souls 2 (BS2), and other future titles like Red Death, on Steam. There's a strong desire for the entire series to be available on the platform, with many considering BS2 a masterpiece.

Fullscreen Mode Issues: Players frequently mention methods for enabling fullscreen mode, such as using Alt+Enter or adjusting settings via F1. This suggests initial usability issues with display options that require user intervention.

Player Freedom Encouraged: Players suggest that the game is best enjoyed by playing freely and making personal choices, as intended by the developer. This implies a non-linear or player-driven experience.

RPG Maker Indie Title: The game is identified as an RPG Maker title developed by Sushi Yuusha Toro, representing a new generation of works from indie circles.

Desire to Find Characters: Some players express a strong desire to find specific characters like Alice and Norden, indicating memorable character interactions or unresolved plot points.