I was on the fence for a long time about Tormented Souls. I kept seeing it come up in videos about modern, classic survival horror games. People kept insisting that it was good. But I had played the demo back near its release in 2021, and I wasn't really impressed. So it sat on my wishlist for years, waiting for a steep discount. That discount finally came, I bought the game, installed it, and it still sat on my PS5, un-played, for months.
But when College Football 26 turned out to be a borderline un-playable dumpster fire, and without having enough free space on my hard disk to install Indiana Jones and the Great Circle's 130-gig install, I found myself with extra free gaming time on my hands, and decided to look for some relatively quick games to play in my back catalog. It was either this or Crow Country, and I decided to give Tormented Souls the nod. Besides, Tormented Souls is supposed to be getting a sequel soon, so I wanted to play the first one, in case the sequel gets really good reviews, and I want to play that sooner rather than later.
Part of the reason that I was on the fence about the game was that I had concerns about the maturity level of the game and it's developers. The design of the player character is kind of ridiculous. Is she supposed to look like an anime character? Her default outfit looks like something you'd see an anime maid wearing, and they go out of their way to pull her tits out in the opening cutscenes. It all seems like it's designed to titillate a particular demographic that doesn't exactly have a reputation for having a mature or healthy view of women.
I could not take the main character's default outfit seriously.
It would be one thing if the game were going for some kind of dis-empowerment gimmick, and actually gave the player control of the character while she's naked and vulnerable. But they don't. She gets dressed during the fade-to-black between the end of the opening cutscene and the player taking control for the first time. So the outfit and nudity all seem rather pointless.
It seems like even the developers understood the ridiculousness of their design, since they include an optional alternate outfit for her in a locker in the starting room. This alternate outfit includes a more practical (and less revealing) pair of jeans with a leather jacket. I actually didn't notice this outfit until after I died and had to restart the game, but once I found it after the restart, I couldn't switch to it fast enough. At least now, I could take the character and game more seriously -- pending finding out if the game's story and scenario are equally silly and immature.
Nostalgic call-backs
Was the story as bad as I was afraid?
Well, no. Not really.
It's mostly fine.
If anything, Tormented Souls isn't so much "immature", as it is derivative. From the start, many audio cues and music sound like they are pulled straight out of a PS1 Resident Evil game. The improvised weapons give slight Dead Space vibes. And as the game goes on, it's story should feel more and more familiar to anyone who played through the original Silent Hill, except without all the clever symbolism and references to real-world alchemical and occult beliefs that help gave Silent Hill its uncanny tangibility.
If the bar is set at "less smart version of Silent Hill", then I guess things could be a lot worse.
Gameplay-wise, Tormented Souls feels more like the original Resident Evil with its static cameras, tight hallways with monsters hiding around blind corners, and a save system that requires a consumable resource to save your game. There's no magic item box though, as you carry all your supplies and puzzle items on your person at all times, including multiple weapons, a crowbar, a hammer, a car battery, and other large, bulky items that definitely don't fit into those pouches slung around Caroline's waist.
You will be blindly pointing weapons at enemies off-screen.
It definitely does have the classic survival horror feel, with some modern bells and whistles. For one thing, it borrows the REmake design of mapping the character-based tank movement to the direction pad, while keeping directional camera-based analog control on the left joystick. The tight halls and frequent camera cuts make it difficult to use the analog stick when navigating the mansion halls, and there were multiple places where trying to do so resulted in me turning around in circles multiple times. There were even a couple places later in the game where the camera glitched out and got stuck rapidly flickering between 2 angles. For situations like these, it's great to have the tank controls.
Just like with REmake, there are also situations in which the analog controls come in handy. I mostly used it for combat and for mini-boss encounters. It was a lot easier and quicker to shoot an enemy and then run away with the analog controls, compared to the more sluggish tank controls. Many enemies are fast bullet-sponges with long-reaching, quick-hitting attacks. As such, standing still and blasting them with a gun (especially in the tight confines of the mansion halls and rooms) is not viable. Enemies will still frequently close the distance and get off a hit or 2. Hit and run tactics became essential for me, especially considering how the game is very stingy with healing items, but more more liberal with ammunition.
Specifically, I fell back on the tactic of blasting an enemy with a single shotgun or taser blast to knock it down, then switch to the crowbar and run up close to hit it 2 or 3 times while it's down, then back off and switch back to a gun while it gets back up. This was too slow and imprecise with tank controls, but worked smoothly (to the point of almost feeling exploitative) using the analog controls.
Having to go to the inventory to switch between a weapon and light gets annoying.
It also takes advantage of some modern lighting technology. Light is a big deal in this game. Being in the dark will actually quickly kill the character for ... some reason ... leading to a Game Over. As such, you need a light when wandering around the dark halls. An early puzzle involves restarting a generator in the basement (because what horror game would be complete without having to go to the basement to restart a generator?). Candle are also scattered throughout the mansion, which can be lit to provide limited amounts of local light. This can free up your hands to use a weapon to fight enemies, instead of having to hold a light to prevent yourself from instantly dying.
... to a fault
Overall, however, Tormented Souls is annoyingly lacking in modern conveniences and bells and whistles, and leans on its late 90's survival horror inspirations to a fault.
The controls and U.I., for instance, are "retro" to a fault. Outside of the movement controls having the seamless option between retro "tank" controls and stick-based analog movement, the rest of the game's controls and U.I. feel like they are pulled out of the 90's in the worst ways possible.
Perhaps the greatest offender is the fact that you cannot have a light and a weapon equipped at the same time (at least not for the first half of the game). Even going back as far as the original Silent Hill on the PS1 (and maybe earlier?), players could have a hip or chest-mounted flashlight equipped while using a gun or other weapon. Not so for Tormented Souls, as the primary light resource is a simple lighter that has to be held out in the character's hand. If you want to switch between the lighter to see where you're going in the dark, or a weapon to attack a monster that might be lurking in that dark, you have to go into the inventory screen, navigate to the 2nd tab, select the item you want, and press "Equip".
Switching between tank and analog controls on-the-fly is useful when fighting in close quarters.
OK, fine, Carline is a dainty, small-framed woman who looks like she's probably never held a power tool in her life. I get why the game designers might rationalize that she can't use the nailgun one-handed and hold the lighter in the other hand. Hell, I would probably struggle holding up a nailgun or swinging a crowbar one-handed. It may be a bit sexist, but whatever. I'll let that slide. That still doesn't mean there couldn't have been a button to switch between an equipped light and an equipped weapon (or any 2 equipped items, for that matter). There's even un-used buttons on the controller, such as the L1 button, which is completely un-used. Why not make that button bring up a quick-inventory, or a toggle between 2 equipped items, even if it leaves you vulnerable during the frames of animation of switching items?
You can have "retro" design and controls, but that doesn't mean that the game has to feel archaic!
The archaic design doesn't end with the controls and inventory either. The map is also a consistent source of frustration. First and foremost, opening the map does not automatically take you to the specific map belonging to the area that you're in. And it always opens in a weird, tilted angle. So whenever I open the map, I have to waste extra cursor movements and button presses in order to tilt the map to look at it head on, and to select and open the appropriate page of the map. Why does something as simple as checking the map have to require a complicated, multi-button ritual?!
Even when I'm in the correct page of the map, it's still less useful than in any survival horror game made in the last 25 years. It does not highlight which rooms you've explored, which doors are locked, whether a room has been fully explored, and it isn't consistent about marking the location of puzzles or items of interest. It marks the location of save recorders, certain complicated locked doors, and occasionally, it will mark the location of an important objective like the generator or a computer that you need to use. But other puzzles or locks remain un-marked. For example, a complicated, 3-part lock puzzle is tucked away under the stairs of the main hall, but is completely un-marked on the map, and can be easy to forget.
There also isn't any kind of "mission log" or anything that tells you what your current objective is. There is a character who you can talk to, who provides guidance with where to go and what to do. If you forgot where you're supposed to go next, you can talk to him. But his last known location is also not marked on the map. If you reload the game and forget what you're supposed to be doing, you'll have to remember where you last found him, and backtrack there to get a [sometimes cryptic] reminder.
This lead to me having to resort to a walkthrough on multiple occasions, just to figure out where I'm supposed to go or what I'm supposed to do next. There were a handful of key locations and progress gates that I had simply forgotten about, because they aren't labeled on the map, such as an elevator in the library that requires a charged battery to operate, and that aforementioned 3-part lock under the main hall stairs. When you go days or weeks between play sessions, and you aren't frequently revisiting these locations to remind yourself that these puzzles or locks exist, it's easy to forget about such details. Why the game would label the location of some locks and puzzles, but not others, is absolutely beyond me!
I sometimes needed a reminder of where to go next and what to do.
Is my failing memory the game's fault? No, I guess it isn't. But these sorts of accessibility conveniences aren't difficult to implement, are standard in any survival horror game made in this millennia, and could easily have an option to turn them "off" if the designers think that they make the game "too easy".
Back-and-forth puzzles
Speaking of things that I had to go to a walkthrough for: Tormented Souls also features some obnoxiously obtuse puzzles. Don't get me wrong, there are some good puzzles that I enjoyed solving on my own. Which specific puzzles are easy or hard will also depend on the specific player. There was one puzzle that I frequently saw complaints about on Reddit and forums, but which I breezed through on my first try with no problems at all. There were other puzzles for which I looked up the answer, only to smack my forehead in annoyance at how simple the solution actually was. In yet other instances, I not only had to look up the solution, but also try to search online to see if anyone would actually explain how that solution is supposed to be figured out, because I had no idea how anyone would have gotten the solution from the scant information given. Long story short: puzzles run the gamut in terms of complexity and difficulty.
This game expects the player to carefully examine pretty much every item that you find, as clues are often hidden on key items themselves. The amount of pixel-hunting that the game expects can also be annoying at times, but it is used to good effect on occasion.
I needed to consult a walkthrough for some of these puzzles.
Oh, and speaking of pixel-hunting: the designers also couldn't be bothered to program the character to turn her head to look towards nearby objects of interest. This means you have to rub her up against every wall and surface in the game to look for action prompts to find certain useful items, clues, or flavor text. Thankfully, there is a button prompt indicator, so you're unlikely to miss something if you do happen to face directly towards it. Again, this is a convenience that's been in these sorts of games since at least Silent Hill 2 over 2 decades ago, and I kind of expect it in any new game that maintains a third-person or fixed camera.
A couple of the combination key puzzles on locked doors gave me trouble. I also knew how to do the Operation Room puzzle, but I must've done something wrong because it didn't work the first time. So I had to go online to verify that I was supposed to do what I thought I was supposed to do.
One puzzle requires that the player have pitch-perfect hearing in order to reproduce a musical melody by ear. This is despite the fact that examining a piano earlier in the game revealed that the character does not know how to play the piano, which makes me skeptical that she would be able to solve this puzzle either.
Be prepared to run back and forth across the entire map multiple times.
This game also has a lot of back-tracking. The actual game map is fairly small, so the designers padded out the length by putting key items on the opposite side of the map from the doors that they unlock, and by putting everything in a very strict linear sequence. This has the player frequently back-tracking across the [probably empty] corridors multiple times throughout the game. A common sequence of events in this game is to find a locked door in one wing of the map, explore the opposite wing to find the key to that door, go back to the first wing to unlock the door, only to find a key item used for a puzzle in the opposite wing again.
This means that the game does get a lot of use out of its small map. The compact layout and miniscule loading times means that no one instance of back-tracking ever feels like it takes too long. It's really the aggregate whole of having to do it over and over again that started to take a toll on me and drained my patience.
To the game's credit, you will also open convenient shortcuts as you hit major milestones, which will make most backtracking trips very direct. The back-tracking can be annoying (especially early, before the shortcuts are unlocked), but they don't come close to being a deal-breaker.
A reminder of why survival horror was disliked
As I said, Tormented Souls is "retro" to a fault. I like it just fine, and I do recommend it to anyone who does enjoy the classic survival horror games of old. But if you do play it, be prepared for some rude reminders of why some people didn't like those old survival horror games, and why they fell out of favor among publishers and mainstream audiences during the late 20-aughts and 2010's.
Cheap hits from enemies that are off-screen. Obtuse puzzles. Frequent back-tracking. Awkward controls and interface. It's all here.
When it's firing on all cylinders, it does evoke that sense of claustrophobia and vulnerability that defined the classics of the genre. And its cerebral, strategic play faithfully captures the spirit of those old favorites.