Ember Souls (2024)

Ember Souls feels like it was born out of a need for a new Prince Of Persia game that we never got. It's a really enjoyable several hour game that puts you right into the jumping, swinging, wall running and combat of a 2003 classic.

The main character Kasim travels to a castle that has been overrun by an evil emperor. He’s greeted by a magical falcon who guides him as he scales castle towers, fighting his way through many combat encounters and platforming and puzzle sections. There is plenty of variety that cycles in and out, but it does feel like it borrows a bit too heavily on the Prince Of Persia gameplay elements and mechanics.

The movement felt really solid during platforming, and just generally running around. I never felt like I didn’t have full control of my characters movement, and was nearly always able to have consistent situational awareness. Being able to jump in and tweak the sliders a bit let me zero in on the proper feel of my movement, and customize it to my liking.

Being able to easily target weapons and recall them from a distance also was a nice touch as it felt as if there was nothing out of my reach. I constantly have issues in other games where I can’t grab something simple, especially in a seated position in front of a desk, but that was never an issue in this game. It also made combat encounters much more enjoyable as well than the standard fair in the melee action adventure genre.

The combat was something I initially didn’t find too engaging. It felt fine, but I also have an issue with VR games that have a very floaty style to the melee. Arms usually feel very rubbery and seem like it never maps 1:1. While the sword and shield combat isn’t anything special. It’s when I started thinking outside the box a bit, that I started to really enjoy it. The ability to throw knives and swords really amps up the speed and enjoyment of the frantic multiple enemy encounters. And being able to spin around, toss weapons into the air and catch them with a flourish and then send it flying straight into someone’s skull was icing on the cake. And I can’t move on without mentioning being able to decapitate someone’s head clean off with a nice swipe of a sword or the giddy satisfaction when I slammed a massive war hammer onto a dude’s skull and watched it pop like a grape.

The platforming and parkour is something that I’ve always found very entertaining in VR and I think that mostly Ember Souls pulls it off. There were a couple of times where I ended up having a bit of an issue tossing myself off a column and ended up falling to the ground and dying, but the only big point was when I fundamentally didn’t understand my objective and tried to go somewhere where I wasn’t supposed to. That was entirely my fault. I loved the wall running and climbing and scaling walls. Something I mentioned several times in my streams was that I loved climbing up and then being able to lift myself off up the ledge and having my character teleport onto solid footing. Normally I struggle clambering up ladders and other places, but this was a breeze to climb up ledges.

The only real downsides to the game are the fact that it does feel unpolished with many areas feeling barren and textures being extremely low resolution. I’m assuming this is due to the Meta Quest 3’s hardware requirements and wouldn’t be an issue if this was a PCVR release. I never experienced any noticeable performance issues besides the occasional slowdown when many enemies were on screen and bombs were blowing up all at the same time.

I’d say that Ember Souls is a solid VR game that emulates the classic Prince of Persia Sands of Time game extremely well. With a few too many winks and nods that made the game seem more of an imitation than its own game. But in the barren wasteland of games of this nature, that’s not the worst place to be. The $25 price point isn’t too much to ask and there are a few more game modes that are starting to roll out to give you more enjoyment than just the single player campaign. I loved playing Ember Souls and can’t recommend it enough if you love parkour platforming, or melee combat in VR… or if you love Prince Of Persia, because that’s basically what the game is.