Introduction – When Dragon Power Meets Desperate Rescue
Few indie action-RPGs have carried the weight of anticipation like Lost Soul Aside. Born from a garage project by Yang Bing in 2014, it has emerged as a polished, stylish launch-era title backed by Sony’s prestigious China Hero Project. On paper, its narrative is refreshingly straightforward, a heroic quest to rescue a sister’s soul from interdimensional invaders, but dressed in over-the-top visuals and flashy combat that rival major action franchises.
At its core is dramatic bombast: you play as Kaser, bonded to a spectral dragon named Arena, lunging across shattered worlds to save Louisa from the Voidrax. Whether you’re mastering swordplay, toggling between weapons mid-combo, or unleashing supernatural bursts of power, Lost Soul Aside promises a visceral playground for fans of gleaming, high-speed action.
But even as hype swells, the game’s journey, from 2016 previews to this 2025 release, is laden with promise, patience, and questions about whether the end product can match the decades-long dream it represents.
Setting and Story – Of Meteors and Memories
Lost Soul Aside takes place in a post-apocalyptic realm that straddles high fantasy and futuristic sci-fi, echoing a style reminiscent of Final Fantasy XV and Devil May Cry. Kaser’s world, once held together by rebellion and hope, is obliterated in a single moment by a celestial anomaly, the arrival of the Voidrax. These multidimensional soul-eaters don’t just decimate cities, they consume the very essence of life.
The story pivots on Kaser’s personal loss, his sister Louisa’s soul is taken during the meteor strike. With nothing left but a pact with the cryptic dragon-like entity Arena, Kaser embarks on a soul-searing quest that’s part revenge, part redemption, and wholly stylized drama.
What’s refreshing is the dual-natured narration: Kaser isn’t a traditional stoic protagonist. His grief and guilt are juxtaposed with Arena’s cold pragmatism and dry wit, offering narrative texture that’s rare in indie-origin games. And while the central mystery, who are the Voidrax and what do they want?, serves as a compelling thread, it’s the dynamic between Kaser, Arena, and the characters they encounter that gives the story weight.
Each new world Kaser visits is both a battleground and a graveyard, filled with remnants of cultures wiped clean. Lore is delivered via conversations, environmental storytelling, and occasional anime-styled cutscenes that walk a fine line between melodrama and myth-building. There’s a definite JRPG-meets-Chinese-wuxia vibe to how morality, family, and sacrifice are handled.
Combat and Mechanics – Blade Ballet Across the Stars
The heart of Lost Soul Aside lies in its fluid, high-velocity combat system that marries the spectacle of Bayonetta with the versatility of Final Fantasy VII Remake. If you’re the kind of player who pauses a fight to admire the particle effects mid-combo, you’re going to be right at home here.
Weapon Variety That Rewards Experimentation
Kaser doesn’t just wield a sword, he cycles through a highly customizable arsenal of melee weapons, each with its own moveset, timing windows, and “special stats” that give real weight to switching playstyles mid-battle. You’ll bounce between fast, flurry-focused blades, slow heavy hitters, and even spectral constructs that behave more like living extensions of Arena’s will than mere tools.
This weapon-switch mechanic is more than a gimmick: it’s vital to success. Some enemies demand light weapons to break armor quickly, while others are best tackled with stun-heavy hammers or long-range fusion skills. Thanks to a weapon fragment system, you’re also able to augment your loadout with elemental or status-based buffs. Want a sword that causes bleed and heals you on hit? Go for it.
Arena Powers and Fusion Systems
The mystical dragon companion, Arena, plays a central role in your survivability and offensive potential. With Arena Power, you unlock area-wide buffs like healing pulses, damage spikes, or protective shields, great for crowd control during swarm fights.
But the star of the show is the Fusion Merge/Fusion Blast mechanic. As you build up the Fusion Gauge through well-timed attacks, you can summon Arena’s claws mid-combo to unleash devastating finishers. These aren’t just flashy; they interrupt boss animations, ignore armor, and give you precious breathing room in difficult encounters.
Burst Pursuit and Skill Trees
Every combo string has Burst Pursuit windows, tight timing prompts that, if hit, amplify your strikes. Think Tekken’s just frames but in an action-RPG context. Nail it, and you feel like a god. Miss it, and you risk whiffing a key chain in a boss fight.
Kaser’s skill tree offers a buffet of upgrades, from expanded evasion frames to parry enhancements and new unlockable combo trees. While it doesn’t reinvent the RPG wheel, it smartly supports multiple playstyles, whether you favor evasion-heavy glass cannon builds or tanky bruisers that can self-heal through flurries.
Replay Value and Lasting Impact – Is This Soul Worth Saving?
While Lost Soul Aside doesn’t feature multiplayer or co-op components, what it does offer is a deeply layered single-player experience with enough customization, secret content, and boss variety to keep action-RPG fans engaged long after the credits roll.
Multiple Difficulty Paths and Exploration Incentives
There are optional encounters and alternate routes scattered throughout the campaign, some locked behind gear-based traversal or Arena-enhanced abilities, encouraging backtracking and deeper exploration. Completionists will also find plenty of hidden arenas, lore entries, and elite boss challenges tucked away in the corners of each dimension. Think Devil May Cry’s Bloody Palace sprinkled across a world reminiscent of NieR Automata’s dreamlike melancholy.
Build Diversity and Combat Experiments
Thanks to the diverse weapon stats, augmentable fragments, and synergy between Burst Pursuit timing and Fusion systems, build variety remains consistently rewarding. Even post-campaign, you’re incentivized to tinker with different loadouts and fragment pairings to push the boundaries of your skill.
You can turn Kaser into a parry-focused counterstriker, an all-out brawler with heavy fusion slashes, or a hybrid jack-of-all-trades constantly repositioning with teleporting strikes. It feels like a dance, aggressive, stylish, and deeply personal.
Emotional Resonance and Thematic Closure
Beyond the gameplay, Lost Soul Aside earns points for trying to build an emotional bridge between Kaser’s personal loss and the larger existential conflict posed by the Voidrax invasion. While the narrative occasionally leans into melodrama, the sibling bond driving Kaser’s journey adds a compelling, human weight that makes its multiple endings hit harder than expected. Some of the final choices you make don’t just alter your ending, they recontextualize much of your journey.
Final Thoughts – Chasing Shadows, Finding Light
Lost Soul Aside is more than a passion project, it’s a testament to ambition meeting execution, a single developer’s dream that grew into one of the most striking entries in the modern action-RPG space. Its blend of fluid, cinematic combat, dimension-spanning narrative, and breathtaking visual design puts it shoulder-to-shoulder with genre juggernauts, while its distinct identity, rooted in its Voidrax mythology and personal story of loss, keeps it from being dismissed as “just another stylish action game.”
What truly lingers after the credits isn’t just the spectacle of chaining aerial combos across an arena or the satisfaction of finally parrying that one boss’s relentless strike pattern. It’s the emotional echo of Kaser’s quest, the quiet question of what we’d sacrifice for family, and the sobering idea that even in universes drenched in spectacle, human bonds remain the sharpest blade.
Yes, there are rough edges. Occasional pacing dips, overly busy UI prompts, and moments where cinematic flair overshadows tactical clarity remind you that even the most polished games have seams. But the core loop, combat, exploration, character growth, remains consistently addictive, ensuring both casual players and high-skill chasers find reasons to stay engaged.
Ultimately, Lost Soul Aside succeeds in answering its own question: “Can I save her?” Maybe not in the way Kaser first envisioned, but in delivering a journey where soul, spectacle, and struggle converge, Ultizero Games has saved the soul of a genre many feared was fading. This isn’t just an homage to classics like Devil May Cry or Final Fantasy XV, it’s a bold stride into the future of action RPG storytelling.
We prepared this review with a digital copy of Lost Soul Aside for the PS5 version provided by Sony.
