Lost Soul Aside is finally here after a nearly decade-long wait, but whether it lives up to such long-percolating expectations is a tricky question to answer. Some see the undeniable passion on display from UltiZero Games and director Yang Bing, while others feel that Lost Soul Aside is mediocre and janky to the point of being underwhelming.
As always, whether Lost Soul Aside is good or bad is a subjective question that will never be fully answered. What’s more interesting and fruitful to interrogate are the circumstances of the game’s release and development, as this might shed some light on why it has landed the way it has. Before founding UltiZero Games, Yang Bing was working on Lost Soul Aside alone, releasing a flashy, comprehensive reveal trailer back in 2016, which was eventually spotted by Sony. The Japanese games giant began supporting the game as part of its China Hero Project, an initiative meant to elevate Chinese developers. It was through this extra support that Yang Bing was able to expand his operation, founding UltiZero Games and blowing the doors open on the game’s visibility. But Lost Soul Aside’s humble roots are still intact, and maybe it would have been better to keep them in mind when devising the game’s pricing strategy.
Like Clair Obscur, Lost Soul Aside May Have Been Better as a Discount Product
Clair Obscur Set Modest Expectations with a $50 Price Tag; Lost Soul Aside Could Have Done the Same
It’s not exactly groundbreaking to point out that Clair Obscur is a phenomenal success: the breakout debut from Sandfall Interactive, a small team of young and hungry developers with a dollar and a dream, hit the games industry like a tsunami this April. It's an easy contender for Game of the Year, but it will probably be the cheapest of its contemporaries, retailing for just $50.
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, another Chinese action-adventure game from this year, also launched at just $50, indicating that this price point could carve out a bigger niche for itself.
For just $50, audiences may have rightly expected Clair Obscur to be more conservative; of course, it blew away such expectations. But on the other side of the spectrum is something like Lost Soul Aside, which hit stores with a $60 price tag, sending the message that it would be more akin to a typical AAA project in terms of scope, content, and polish. Sadly, this is not the case.
Lost Soul Aside is unpolished and unmistakably amateurish in many ways. Character animations are stiff and unrefined, English voice acting is stilted and awkward, combat is unbalanced, and it launched with a number of technical issues that needed to be ironed out with a hasty day-one patch. These problems were exacerbated by the total lack of pre-release reviews, which communicated a lack of confidence on the parts of UltiZero Games and Sony. To put a fine point on it, Lost Soul Aside is much more like a AA game than a AAA game.
At the end of the day, the difference between $50 and $60 is somewhat insignificant; it's more about the message that the pricing sends. If Lost Soul Aside were positioned as a budget experience, $10 or $20 cheaper than other, bigger Sony games, then perhaps some of its shortcomings would have been overlooked. After all, many gamers have been quick to forgive Mafia: The Old Country for its problems in light of its $50 price tag, so it's not too great a reach to assume that Lost Soul Aside would have been viewed more charitably under similar circumstances.
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 63 /100 Critics Rec: 22%
- Released
- August 29, 2025
- ESRB
- Rating Pending
- Developer(s)
- Ultizero Games
- Publisher(s)
- PlayStation Studios
WHERE TO PLAY
Embark on an epic odyssey to save your sister and the whole of humankind from dimensional invaders in Lost Soul Aside – a stylish single player action-adventure RPG.
Chain lightning-fast combos, learn new abilities, and upgrade your weapons as you take on formidable enemies and colossal bosses in fast, dynamic combat.
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 4
- Number of Players
- Single-player
- Steam Deck Compatibility
- Unknown
- PC Release Date
- August 29, 2025
- PS5 Release Date
- August 29, 2025
- Genre(s)
- Action RPG, Adventure, JRPG
- Platform(s)
- PlayStation 5, PC
- OpenCritic Rating
- Weak
