Back in the day, I was a fan of the old 3D Prince of Persia games. The setting was always a joy to explore, sure, but for me the joy laid in the amazing platforming that consisted of fancy parkour. It felt like a bit like Tomb Raider, except that you weren’t worried about dying with every single jump. It made you feel like a badass fighter.

Ember Souls effectively set out to be that but in VR, but how well can it achieve those lofty goals?

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SULTAN OF SWINGING
Ember Souls places you in the shoes of the last immortal, who is traversing a grandiose Persian Palace owned by the mysterious Shadow Sultan. Filled with traps and seemingly possessed foes, the only way you can succeed is by obtaining and harnessing the power of the ancient Ember Stones.

It’s a simple enough premise, although quite a compelling one mainly thanks to the beautiful environment that the game takes place in. The narrative itself doesn’t quite do enough to grab you, as the AI voices feel notably stilted and detract from the overall immersion – but I suppose it’s a better choice than having unvoiced text boxes.

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The palace itself is where the true wonder of the game comes into play. Whilst the boat ride to the entrance leaves a little to be desired, I was genuinely impressed by how great the environment looks. It looks as stunning as you’d hope, and it only gets better the closer you are. Of course though, the doors won’t be open to you as you reach the entrance, as this is where the game introduces you to what you’ll be doing the most: parkour.

The parkour works as you’d expect for the most part, with standard grabbing and climbing making up the bulk of it; however, it’s the small details that really make it a joy. Swinging from poles, chains, and the like is an absolute breeze due to the game’s use of highlighting to indicate where you’re able to jump to means that you’ll feel far more confident as to whereabouts you’re going to end up. I particularly like how you’re not only able to slide down poles and ladders too, but even curtains – which is something I’ve not seen done in a VR game before now.

The parkour movement only improves as the game goes on too, as the titular Ember Souls can grant additional abilities to help you out. Most noteworthy is the grapple that is gained early on, which can fling you towards certain objects – even if it does break the game a little by being able to reach areas that were clearly not meant to be accessed so easily. Still, it’s hard to really dislike any such ‘jank’ when this also makes the platforming seem far more open than it actually is; in reality, the game has quite a linear path to make your way through, but being able to look out for other ways around help to make it feel like you’re carving your own way through the palace.

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As an additional way to bolster your abilities, the game also grants you experience that you can trade in for additional abilities and coins that can be used for new weapons and armour too. There’s nothing groundbreaking here that will make you feel overpowered (I even forgot about using it for a long time), but there’s still some neat things here too for those that want to mess around in the hub area between missions. You can even set your loadout for the next mission, assigning the helmet you wish to don, along with the weapons you wish to have equipped to your sides and back.

And these weapons definitely are essential, as the game is quite reluctant to provide you with weapons mid-mission unless it’s absolutely necessary. As such, you’ll want to make sure you have a good sword by your side in order to cut down the enemies that get in your way…

…which unfortunately leads me onto my main criticism with the game: the combat is absolutely awful. In essence, it plays out much like most physics-based VR games, where you stab the sword where you can and try to block any incoming hits. The problem is that the combat never really evolves beyond basic stabbing, and neither do the enemies. There are only really a small handful of enemy variants throughout the game, and every fight plays out in the same tedious manner. Sure, there may be some that offer magical based attacks – and there are even bosses too with varied attacks – but these stronger foes end up being even more tedious to fight. There was one  foe later on that seemed to take forever to kill, until eventually they suddenly dropped dead – not a particularly hard fight, but one that proved incredibly boring.

And it’s not even just the fighting itself either that’s an issue, as even something as basic as the inventory seems rather mismanaged. It feels like it should be simple enough, but I had real difficulty placing weapon in their holster and they’d even disappear sometimes – presumably because I thought I’d attached it, when in reality it had fallen on the floor behind me. This small hitbox for the weapon holster is only made worse by the potion inventory having a massive one, thus causing you to open up your selection during a frantic battle instead of grabbing your sword. It’s such a frequent occurrence that I’m surprised it wasn’t picked up in testing.

And it’s a shame too, as the combat really puts a downer on the excellent palace you’re traversing and the genuinely fun parkour. Wallrunning around fiendish traps and swinging across lamps is great fun … until you realise that you have to stop and fight another bunch of mindless drones.

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But despite all the game’s issues, there was something about it that made me want to play more. Even though the parkour can be described as ‘loose’, at best, it’s still quite a lot of fun to pull off and I even found it quite rewarding when I found out a new way to skip whole sections. Why bother picking up that lever when I can jump over the gap instead! And maybe if I stand in this position, I can grapple my way to the end of the next platforming section. It almost started to feel like a puzzle where I had to make my way across in any way but the intended one!

But that probably isn’t going to appeal to everyone, and there will be many that find themselves falling as a wall-run fails to connect, or sighing as they come across yet another bland combat encounter against the same enemy they’ve fought fifty times before. There’s certainly a lack of polish that is going to put off a lot of people, and it’s going to be even more apparent with people going in straight after the likes of Batman Arkham Shadow and Metro Awakening. It’s not really fair to judge the likes of Ember Souls against these bigger hitters, but the style of game and release date means that it is inevitably going to come against such comparisons. In fact, maybe it’s best waiting a little before diving into this game so you can really judge it on its own merit – and they may have even dropped a patch or two in the meantime.

VERDICT
Ember Souls is rather rough around the edges, with some mediocre combat and loose parkour (in addition to a multitude of other issues), but the game still has a lot of heart and there is fun to be had as you run and jump around this gorgeous palace. It might be hard to overlook its faults, but it’s at least worth a try; it may not be game of the year, but it’s not all that bad either.