Soul Sacrifice review: book of revelations

Players start Soul Sacrifice as the next-in-line victim of Magusar, a powerful sorcerer who fuels his life force by feeding on the sacrificial deaths of the magically-inclined. Librom, a wise-cracking book bound in flesh, records the fates of the imprisoned and the obscured tales of Magusar, his enemies and his allies. As players read through Librom, they relive the quests and memories of the talking tome's former owner, uncovering — and in some cases rewriting — the history of the sorcerers charged with defending the world from monsters.

The concept at the heart of Soul Sacrifice is the player's option to save or sacrifice fallen enemies, from lowly goblins and orcs — twisted mutations of rats and cats, it turns out — to the archfiends, humans who have transformed into grotesque boss monsters. Choosing to save a fallen foe grants the player energy toward their life and defense, while sacrifices devote that energy to magic and attacks. The system doesn't challenge players to make moral choices, but rather has broad-reaching implications on a player's individual strengths and weaknesses, frequently resulting in difficult decisions with equally compelling outcomes. Weighing the risks and spoils of each sacrifice is rewarding. But your choices can also be easily undone and overwritten, so there's not as much weight to them as there could be.

The boss fights shake up the grind, at least. Soul Sacrifice's take on Cerberus, a giant electrified three-headed weredog, presents an intense, thrilling and occasionally maddening challenge that helps the battle stand out, which is good — you'll be fighting it more than once due to the nature of the game's reward systems.

Soul Sacrifice doles out bits of gear depending on your performance in each mission. Better performance nets better gear, naturally, and slicing off certain cursed parts of archfiends will award even better drops. In pursuit of hundreds of offerings and essences, I felt forced to repeat missions, meticulously enduring lows to reap the occasional collectible high.

The strength of Soul Sacrifice's story and its means of relaying it through Librom is the one thing that alleviates the tedium of monster grinding in single player. The living book who recounts the story of Magusar and the tome's former owner is the source of the game's twisting narrative. Detailed myths and side stories inked within help shed light on the world of the sorcerers. He's not the best appendix, or the most intuitive universal user interface, but Librom is the game's main source of personality and its rare comic relief. It's an inspired method of telling the game's dark, winding tale.