Titan Souls is a game that makes me excited about victories but also keeps me absolutely infuriated all the time.

On one hand, that’s the whole point. After all, the name is purposefully similar to Dark Souls, and all the mechanics in the game are based on one hit death – both for you and the bosses that have one particular weak spot that you need to get to.

The thing is, what makes me infuriated is not the one-hit death part. It’s the way you target your arrows with the stick. You don’t see the trajectory of where you’ll fire, and while one may argue that it’s part of the skill to learn how to target and I’ll certainly agree with that, I’ll also provide a counter-point that missing the mark by a couple pixels is very frustrating. And it happens very often, usually leading to death after, because as bosses start getting trickier there’s pretty much just one chance to shoot.

And this is what makes me conflicted about Titan Souls. That particular shooting part doesn’t feel fair. And the thing about why hardcore games like Dark Souls can work so well is because they feel fair. Yes, they’re difficult, but you also clearly know that if you fail it’s because you aren’t skilled enough yet. But you also know where and how you need and can improve.

Bosses in Titan Souls involve you moving around a lot, stopping just for a second, sometimes even less, to make a shot. And when you train yourself enough to avoid all the attack patterns, eventually get into a good firing spot and launch an arrow into the boss’ weak spot only for it to miss by just a little bit… That doesn’t feel fair. Because I don’t know how to improve. What am I supposed to learn? That in this sort of position I need to make sure the left stick is just a little bit higher? How will I know when I need to do that when visually and physically there’s pretty much no difference?

So that’s why Titan Souls is a game that I can’t play more than beating one boss per session. Because the satisfaction of beating an enemy is immense. But then the frustration you have as you get to another boss, not because of the difficulty, not because of not learning the patterns, but because it just happens that you regularly get slightly so unlucky… and that makes me close the game.

Thank you all for reading. Feel free to leave any comments below. If you’d like to keep an eye on my future blog posts, feel free to follow me on Twitter @farlander1991 🙂

And if you’d like, consider supporting my work on Patreon! Thank you very much!