- DIFFICULTY -

🔲 Not difficulty based
🔲 Easy
🔲 Normal
☑️ Hard
🔲 Insanity

- GRAPHICS -

🔲 Pixels
🔲 Bad
🔲 Graphics don't matter in this game
☑️ Good
🔲 Beautiful
🔲 Masterpiece

- MUSIC -

🔲 Bad
☑️ Music
🔲 Good
🔲 Beautiful

- STORY -

🔲 This game has no story
🔲 Very mind numbing
🔲 Available if people want it
☑️ Well written
🔲 Epic story

- PRICE -

🔲 N/A
🔲 Underpriced
🔲 Perfect price
☑️ Could be cheaper
🔲 Overpriced
🔲 Stupidly priced

- REQUIREMENTS -

🔲 You can run it on a calculator
☑️ Mid Spec
🔲 High end
🔲 Top of the Range

- LENGTH -

🔲 Very short (0 - 3 hours)
☑️ Short (3 - 15 hours)
🔲 Average (15 - 50 hours)
🔲 Long (50 - 90 hours)
🔲 Extremely long (90 - 110 hours)
🔲 Continuous

- FUN -

🔲 Dead
🔲 Hard to enjoy
🔲 Repetitive
🔲 Actually pretty amusing
☑️ Ride of your life

- REPLAYABILITY -

🔲 None
🔲 Only for achievements
☑️ If you wait a few months
🔲 Definitely
🔲 Infinitely replayable

- WORTH BUYING -

🔲 No
🔲 Wait for sale
☑️ Yes
🔲 Free

⏰ How long to beat Young Souls:
- Main Story - 8½ Hours
- Main + Extras - 11½ Hours
- Completionist - 12 Hours

⭕ - Conclusion -:
Young Souls is an outstanding game which has everything you could ever want in a 2D brawler. The combat is spot on and provides a fun challenge but also has great combos and weapon types. The game has an interesting story with a smooth progression system. The 2 player aspect of the game is definitely what lets it stand out. It has really cool mechanics and gimicks. This is an incredible game which was worth every penny.

The game has its fun side but overall it felt highly unsatisfying after beating it. I wish what we had now is simply a beta version b/c that's honestly what it feels like. Story, battle, music are all underdeveloped. The story is very generic and boring to say the least. Why the developers make the players feel we are the bad guys half-way thru the game is also unclear and unnecessary.

The ability to choose your responses to dialog only appears early in the game, but has no impact at the story at all. It begs the question on why bother doing it at all if they are only going to be used in the early parts of the game.

There is only 1 town to visit and not much to do in town. No sidequests watsoever.
The weapon and equipment system are pretty terrible with loads of items having bad status attached to them. Elemental critical atk bonuses are a joke b/c most of the weapon doesn't even fire off any elemental attacks. This makes it only a very small handful of weapons/armor are useful.

The special skills part had potential but was not implemented very well. If they can be used so a certain type of enemy or boss is very vulernable to a skill/attack, that would have been fun to discover and play around. Or if you need to use a certain skill to discover hidden places or destroy obstacles that would have been cool as well. But nope, the developers didn't take advantage of any of that. Aside from bomb and landmine, everything else felt rather useless.

There is also limited resources for upgrading your weapons and special skills. I didn't realize that until I was at the end of the game. You cannot upgrade all your weapons and armor, some gems don't respawn and are only found in treasure chests. The things to upgrade special skills is also limited.

When you finally feel you got the hang of the game and a good build of weapons/armor the game pretty much just ends. All the hard work you put in, nothing gets carried to the next game. There is no New game +, you start everything from scratch. No post game dungeon, nothing!

The game had good potential, but almost every aspect is underdeveloped. Overall, it just feels like a very shallow game. A real pity.

first impressions:
A very beautiful 2D beat-em-up ARPG. Only played solo so far. Playing on "challenging" and it has not been too hard for me yet (full disclosure: I like dark souls)

Steam remote play co-op edit:
After playing the game with my brother over steam remote play I can say this:
+ even more excellent fun!
-+ the difficulty ramps up with two players as its harder to recover hp via the twins tag-team feature
+ forces you to try out different gear more
-+ Steam remote play can be a bit laggy (depending on your internet ofc), making timed blocks harder. But the games accessibility functions can help (auto block etc).
+ co-op adds loads more replay value!

Solo play notes:
+ Beautiful, the art style is simply awesome
+ So far the itemization is interesting (upgrades, cool weapons, etc)
+ Lots to be seen (town area) and everything can be done at a leisurely pace (lots of save points, fast travel to merchants)
+ So far no bugs / glitches / issues
-+ blocking based combat - time it right to stun the enemy and then open a can of whoop-ass. There's probably more to it, but haven't needed anything more fancy yet.
-+ the writing is ok I guess, but if you compare that to the art style, the art wins 2-0.

Strong recommendation!

I really wanted to like this game. I enjoyed the first few hours, but around halfway through, the game started to get grating. The combat is good for the most part, but attacks eventually get to the point where there's almost no time between the wind up/"tell" and the attack. This is especially annoying as you deal with juggling attacking and blocking, and most shields do not allow you to block while an attack animation is playing. Also, as you get closer to the end, it becomes clear the team was running out of money and/or ideas, because the quality of both the gameplay and the story starts dropping and doesn't stop (♥♥♥♥ your spectral weapon 1 hp ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥).

Then there's the story... It's... ok? I think? It comes off as someone tried to write a story where the protagonists and antagonists are morally ambiguous and that there's good and bad on both sides, but it doesn't stick the landing at all. Our protagonists are too reflective and empathetic to come off as bloodthirsty idiots charging into a foreign land, slaughtering any in their way. Our antagonists are too hateful and apathetic to come off as well-rounded people. When one side is, without reflection or guilt, sending soldiers to kill literal children who just want their parental guardian back who only fight said soldiers in self-defence while constantly offering peaceful alternatives... You don't have much room for moral ambiguity. The end gets closer, but still doesn't hit the mark.

Again, I really wanted to like this game. I wish it was more thoroughly polished/written. But as it stands, I don't recommend it. If you're still interested, get it on a sale.

Young Souls is a hack and slash action game. As the rebellious twin Jenn and Tristan, their normal life suddenly changes when they discover the gobbons living underground and their foster father is kidnapped by the gobbon empire which plans to take over the top for vengeance. Now the twin must gear up, seek out and help those who are willing to give them a hand, and rescue their father simultaneously preventing the gobbon invasion. Yes, this game features distinctive artstyle. Yes, it has an interesting customization visual-wise and function-wise. Yes, the combat is fun and rewarding. Young Souls has done a number of good thing, but the levels of those good deeds are basic. The depth of each feature is surprisingly lacking, which means the game can provide so much fun after one hour. Any time longer the fun will decrease drastically.


Compliments
→Satisfying combat and easy-to-use combo.
→Lovely cartoony artstyle.
→Nice soundtrack.
→Simple but effective story.
→Parrying is satisfying to pull off.


The Whole Arsenal
Like: I like the variety of weapons(one-hand sword and hammer, twin dagger, great sword and great axe.) and armor in Young Souls. Each weapon and armor have distinctive visual and different bonus attributes when upgraded. Playing around their conditions can make the combat encounter extremely one-sided.
Dislike: Even with all these interesting bonuses, the most dominant factor is still the damage. Late-game weapons easily outshine early ones just by being a sheer powerhouse. Armor ties directly to your max health. It's really a shame for me because I really like some of the early-game design. Using them late-game feels really underpowered and ineffective.


1. Town Feels Packed But In Reality, Empty.
The town the twin dwells in is a quiet little place. Pedestrian strolls by. Police patrols the street. Homeless guy sits on a bench with his dog. It`s such a peaceful town, and sadly that is all of it. Most of the pedestrians are just background props. The npcs you can interact with have the exact same dialogue each time you talk to them, no matter how many day passes. I wish the developer could put more things for players to interact with, more npcs with different lines as time goes by, and at least more places to go.

2. Easily-Exploited Enemies, No Matter The Size.
I think its the natural flaw of this kind of game. Enemies can only attack what is in front of them and to some degree, behind them. Using X, Y, Z Axis, players will be completely save if they stand at Y axis of the enemies, which often creates hilariously easy-to-abuse opportunity to destroy the enemies. Bosses do have some attacks that hit around them but their starting frames take too long to land.

3. Accessories Need More Spice.
I know the accessories function more as supporting skills to crowd-control or to deal with enemies far away. I still think there are still rooms for them to improve. I wish two accessories can be equipped at a time. This way players can create more synergies between weapons and accessories. Simple stuff like using Grappling Hook to pull enemy into Mines, or throw a bomb to knock down enemies so you can combo them safely.

4. Merchants Can Have More Wares.
For the town, I wish the merchants could have more variety. The sneaker shop could have a feature of customizing your own sneaker, by combining two of the existing sneakers into one; the clothes shop could sell more kinds of apparels and accessories like scarves, gloves, or headphones. The town could even have a convenience store which can sell supplies that can temporally buff the players, and a barber that you can further customize the twin.
For gobbon markets, I wish the blacksmith can sell upgrade materials after you finish the game since farming materials does not seem to be a thing in this game; the potion merchant needs to have new stocks besides simple stuff, like potions similar to the supplies in convenience store I mentioned before, but stronger and have a significant side effect; I wish the armor merchant could have the transmog system, changing the appearance of best late items to something the players prefer.

5. Minor Complaints
→Difficulty does not affect much.
→Wish all upgrade materials can be farmed.
→Great axes and great swords need to have different movesets.
→Levels don`t have much different beside visuals.

中文小簡評
→簡單卻不失特色的卡通畫風。
→簡單的連招系統。
→單純的劇情。
→和平樸實的小鎮缺乏互動及生機。
→關卡設計相對單調。
→以XY軸來講，敵人沒辦法有效攻擊Y軸。
→無論是哥布林或人類商人都缺少商品多樣性。

When I first saw this game, I have changed the background of my phone lock-screen to one of the key art pieces on their homepage. When they announced the special edition, I pre-ordered it when it was available. While looking for further info on the game, I noticed the composer of the soundtrack was on Bandcamp so I followed them and got the OST as soon as it was out.
This game has been out for quite a while on Google Stadia and while I totally respect the decision of the timed exclusivity, it wasn't quite worth it for me to get into cloud-gaming for this. But I don't think any game will ever get me to that point.

Either way; sufficed to say, I was hyped about this game from the start and so far (after 4 hours playtime), it did not disappoint.

Even though I like the concept of beat-em-ups, the classics like Golden Axe and Streets of Rage could never quite grab me. Young Souls, despite it's rather generic name instantly got my attention and motivated me to play more from the first second of gameplay.

The fighting mechanics are very solid and make even a beat-em-up novice like me feel awesome. Parrying, dodging and chaining attacks on the multiple goons just feels right and the animations look quite cool. The various movesets of the different weapons and other mechanics like hotswapping characters (which also can generate an attack) and ranged options (like a bow and magic) keep it interesting in the long run.
While this probably plays best with a controller, I always try to play my PC games with mouse and keyboard first and it feels quite good playing like that.

Still, the game is pretty difficult at times. The first major boss before unlocking the second stage had me struggling for the better part of an hour but felt very fair throughout the multiple phases of his fight and the moment I managed to get his last healthbar to zero felt very rewarding.
There's multiple difficulty options and accessibility settings to customize how hard the gameplay is, which is always a good thing to see in a video game. You could even go in the opposite direction and make it more difficult by just using weaker armor, weapons and not using the optional gym minigame to boost your stats.
As far as I can tell, you could even go so far as to not level up at all since the game never seemed to require me to put the characters to sleep, which is required to actually use your exp to level up.
The different stages had what seemed like level requirements on the front door of them but I remember going into a lvl 5 door, while only being level 2 or so.

The soundtrack so far is nothing jaw-dropping but it's pretty nice nonetheless and I'm happy to have put it in my growing collection of game OSTs.

Despite all the praise, there's still some aspects I don't really like about Young Souls.
For one, the optional stat raising mini-game, which requires you to spam a button in just the right amount, was not fun at all.
The amount of cutscenes, especially at the start, where a bit too much for me but with this kind of game I always put gameplay way above story so I often feel inclined to just skip the conversations and the litte, optional mini-cutscenes you get when looking at various things strewn about the overworld and in the dungeons.
Speaking of the overworld; after unlocking all the points of interest, it's kind of annoying to have to run about the little town to get to where you want. The devs give you a moped and a fast-travel option in but not all the locations you visit frequently are included, so you still have to do some legwork (or take the vespa for a ride).

At this point in the game, I'm not quite sure how to feel about the special locked chests that you can find all over the dungeons since they have different rarities and require different higher level keys that you get later in the game. That means I will probably have to backtrack and if the older levels still contain the same enemies as before, this won't be very fun.

So far the only noticeable glitch I encountered, was when I kept jumping against the portal while it loaded up the level behind it, I just fell through the floor. Since this was the start of the level and I could still use fast-travel while falling, no progress was lost. Other than that, the game looks and feels pretty polished.

🟢 Plug and Play

The game is not optimized very well, so expect to use high TDP to hit consistent fps.

Tested on: OnexPlayer Mini Pro 6800U

Follow Handheld Friendly

Oh my God. I LOVE this game so much.

It's a beat 'em up game with RPG elements (swords, armor sets, bows, magic), where you play as these two awesome twins full of style.

The combat is tight and cool as heck. You got dodges, rolls, parries and blocks. Combos! If you are a beginner you are totally safe mashing buttons and trying to create your own combos, and if you're really into it you can make your own customized, deadly and cool-AF combos, juggling your enemies in the air for quite some time.

And the gear? Jesus, the loot is so addictive. You'll always want to go to the next dungeons for stronger gear.

And don't even get me started on the art style (really cool and unique) and the very polished gameplay experience overall. The soundtrack is awesome too, although (in my opinion) it gets too silent sometimes.

I don't even like this genre, but I'm totally in love with this game. Do I need to say anything else?

Young Souls for the win.

Small update: Also voted on this game for the Steam awards. <3

OK, here's the deal. This game is babies first RPG in terms of actual difficulty. Even on the Expert difficulty I was able to breeze through this game. But that's not the point. The point is I was able to breeze through this game with my wife. Anyone who is married to or dating a gamer can attest to how difficult it can be to find fun Co-Op games.

Well, this is a fun Co-op game, Plain and simple.

Its fun enough to keep your attention while being segmented enough that you can pick it up and put it down. Meaning you can play it together when you have the free time.

So here is what I suggest.

1. Buy the game.
2. Find a partner to play with.
3. Give them every good piece of equipment that drops. This will make them feel special and over powered. I could equip the starting sword and beat this game, so let them have the best gear. The parry mechanic is incredibly simple to execute so you don't need to worry and there is plenty of equipment.
4. Save the blue tear drops until you get Teleport and then max it out and give it to them. It will instantly make them feel like a bad ass as they teleport around the map.
5. The best sword in the game is called World's End. It is the chest reward from the third floor challenge dungeon. It's easy to overlook, as it doesn't have six upgrade levels. It only has three and will vaporize anything it touches in this game. Just encase your partner really sucks. If so just put them in heavy armor with teleport and this weapon and they will have a blast.

I love Beat 'em Ups and this one caught my eye when it was announced.
In short, I'd say its a solid 7/10.

• The Combat is pretty straightforward but has some depth to it. There's a pretty decent weapon variety.
  Juggling and Parrying are always satisfying to pull off once mastered, a new addition is the ability to do Tag Combos and Tag Reversals in Solo Play. Tag combos are a great feature, but I'm disappointed in the lack of a Training Mode to really experiment with it.
  
• The Boss Fights I thought were a huge highlight of the game. While not all of them were great, a surprisingly good amount had me on the edge of my seat, such as the fights with Yarlanda and Tencha.
  
• There's no sugarcoating it. The game is buggy. I'd have to force-quit the game when I leveled up and the screen went white. I fell through the floor on multiple occasions. At one point I saw one of the playable characters head floating at a corner of the stage. Most of the bugs only ended up as minor inconveniences to work around, but it shows this game could have used more time in the oven.
  
• The controls aren't bad. They could just use a few improvements. I should have the ability to bind multiple buttons to the same function if possible, regardless of practicality. The ability to change the "interact" button would be great if you're using exclusively a keyboard to play so you don't have to reach for the mouse. There should also be a setting where I can sprint by slamming the stick rather than double-tapping every time. Another note is that if you're used to cancelling attacks with the guard button like Sifu or Furi, That's not present here. Parrying requires a lot more commitment than it does in those games. This is something I can see some preferring and others not liking as much.
  
• No Training Mode. When I first saw the trailer for this game I was really excited because the combat looked extremely stylish with Juggles, Parries, and Tag Combos like I said before. Again, its a pretty personal gripe, but I do wish it were more convenient to really experiment with the combo system.

Overall, I had fun with Young Souls. It's a flashy and enjoyable game that needs a few updates to be even better. Even so, I still think it was worth my time.