The Dark Souls trilogy and its many counterparts in the Souls-like genre have left their mark in the gaming industry, we’ve had more than our fair share of absolute gems, but also a few duds. Red Candle Games is the latest developer to take a shot at creating Souls-like releases and while this Taiwanese studio is relatively young, considering it was only founded in 2015, they had a great start with their first release, Detention in 2017. Now, while Detention was an absolute hit for its psychological horror aspects, Red Candle Games decided to take a shot on the wilder side of gaming with their release of Nine Sols on 29 May.

The world of Nine Sols is weird, to say the least. You’ll take on the role of Yi, an ancient hero who was betrayed in a time long forgotten. Fast-forward to the future and he is awakened by a child from a village and nursed back to health, though this is also where his epic quest for revenge begins. Your objective is to reclaim New Kunlun, home of the Solarians, and defeat the 9 rulers of their forgotten sanctuary. The rulers in question are known as Sols, yes, there are a total of nine Big Bads to take down and you’re in for a hell of a trip to get to each of them in this painfully unforgiving misadventure.

Right off the bat, you’d expect Nine Sols to be better played on a controller but the sad truth is, the controller mapping is a mess. Maybe it’s mapped the way it is for efficiency, or maybe it’s a mistake, but it makes combat and exploration painfully tedious and weird. Sadly, going for a mouse and keyboard with any Souls-like release isn’t easy either but it’s a lot easier than dealing with a messy controller layout. So, it is recommended that you take this piece of information with a shovel of salt because everybody has their preferences.

Moving on, Nine Sols still plays like a side-scroller platformer at its core but combat is where the unforgiving side comes out to ruin your day. As can be expected from any Souls-like release, it’s a matter of learning the patterns, blocking / parrying, and attacking when there’s an opening. Sadly, you might not find a pattern here and instead, enemy attacks seem to be mostly random. This will without a doubt raise the difficulty since you’ll need to actively pay attention to the attacks coming your way for the sake of survivability, instead of memorizing a pattern and crushing anything that comes your way.

In terms of combat in Nine Sols, you’ll have your basic three-hit combo which will also make up most of your attacks since you’ll only have melee at first. Your options expand slightly as you progress through the story and unlock the Azure Bow for ranged attacks or your Talisman charges for some post-parry damage. However, your ranged attacks are quite limited and more meant for situational use and Talisman charges aren’t always useful in a fight, even less so when there’s more than one enemy to take down.

It’s sad to say but Nine Sols is far from forgiving if you’re playing on the normal difficulty. Your upgrades will end up feeling like they don’t add anything and you’ll likely still end up dying after taking just a few hits, your damage upgrades will also end up getting the same treatment, effectively raising the stakes on just how unnecessarily difficult Nine Sols is. Sadly, wanting a slightly fairer experience means you’ll have to switch to Story Mode where things will scale much better and not seem unfair.

Life in Nine Sols isn’t all gloom and doom though and as you’ve probably already guessed, you’ll need upgrades powered by skill points. This is probably what gives any Souls-like a bit more freedom of choice as you get to choose your path in a manner of speaking, and it’s a rather big skill tree to work your way through. Now, skills points will naturally come from experience points which you get by taking down anything that stands in your way, but it’s a very slow build-up from the looks of it and you’ll need to choose your upgrades carefully. You can cut down entire hordes of enemies and only get a single skill point for your efforts, this will, unfortunately, slow things down for you.

On the side of the same coin, your skill tree is where you’ll also get to expand your arsenal a bit more with new attacks, damage boosts, special attacks, and much more. However, even though getting skill points is slow, you’ll also have access to Jades. Nine Sols might have taken a page from Hollow Knight’s Charms for this one as this is exactly that. Jades are your swappable buffs that require set amounts of slots for each one, you’ll likely end up spending more time than you’d like deciding on which Jades to use when you consider how many there are and just how much they can alter your playstyle.

Now, Nine Sols does seem to intentionally limit how fast you can progress through the story with specific movement abilities or tools only unlocking at certain points in the story. A little patience will go a long way in this regard but at the same time, this intentional ‘slow down’ also plays well into the main theme of the world which is built around Taoism. Everything happens as it should at its own pace and that’s what Taoism is also built on, essentially letting things take place as they should instead of rushing forward… Speedrunners are going to have a field day with this one.

Now, Nine Sols has quite a lot to offer but it also comes with a few downsides that can completely kill the enjoyment, the biggest one being the combat. With some careful playing, it is possible to avoid unnecessary damage but you’ll still notice your health silently chipping away when you parry attacks. This makes zero sense since parrying is supposed to negate any damage, but Nine Sols will still make you pay for that and you’ll likely lean more towards outright dodging instead to avoid taking even a small hit.

Some will probably see this as nitpicking but there is another side to Nine Sols that somewhat make and break the game as a whole. Technically, we’re looking at two things that form part of one problem – Healing and respawning. Much like any Souls-like, you’ll have the campfires in the Souls games as an example, and Nine Sols uses a similar mechanic called Root Nodes. These serve as your campfire where you can heal up, spend your skills points, and even respawn upon dying, nothing new here.

However, it’s a rather massive world and you won’t always find Root Nodes when you’re out exploring, and your respawn point is the last node you visited. You can already see where this is going, getting a little careless will mean that you lose all your progress. To make matters worse, healing yourself isn’t exactly that simple either as you’ll only have two charges on your Medicine Pipe and it doesn’t give a lot to begin with. This can change with a few upgrades or even a Jade, but the early stages in Nine Sols will make you feel the pain.

On the visual side of things, Nine Sols’ hand-drawn 2D art style works really well with the overall theme of the world and uses a mix of simple and detailed texturing to bring the world to life. The mix of modern technology mixed with old Tao art styles is sight a to behold with how brilliantly implemented the ‘Tao-punk’ style works. So, when you’re not out fighting and taking down the Sols, it’s well worth the time to stop and admire the roses.

Where Nine Sols really shines is with the amazing music, and once again, it’s a perfect blend of old and new that drives the point home while breathing life into the world. Unfortunately, there aren’t any voiceovers for the dialogues or cutscenes since they are more meant to be experienced like an old comic book. However, the sudden shifts between ambient sounds or calm background music to what is essentially battle music does break that atmosphere slightly and all it needs is a slightly smoother transition.

Overall, Nine Sols is one of the more beautifully crafted Souls-like releases for this year but it does come with its flaws that make it a little too unforgiving. It could be that the developers are possibly taking a shot at reimagining the genre with a new twist but that will more than likely throw off many fans of the genre when they discover the randomness in combat. On the other hand, if you can look past the issues at hand, there’s still an absolutely beautiful world to experience with all the detail that went into it and just how much it touches on the old Tao principles.
 

Jay Claassen (@R3GR3T_3NVY)
Senior Editor, NoobFeed