Ember Souls Review: An Uneven Trek

There are few things that VR does better than parkour and sword combat; so it's no surprise that Ember Souls attempts to meld the two into an action-adventure thriller, much as other titles have previously done. Does Ember Souls hit the same mark, though? Read on for our full review.

Ember Souls is an action-adventure with a heavy focus on parkour-style platforming, and puzzle-solving. Between jumping from wooden beams, dangling chains and sliding down elaborate tapestries, you also engage with combat against possessed soldiers and hordes of undead as they delve deep into a sprawling Persian palace in search of ancient magical artifacts - the Ember Stones.

Platforming is where Ember Souls shines the brightest. While you can't clamber up every wall you see, there's a solid balance between what you can leisurely ascend and surfaces that require additional caution. Early on you're taught that jumping from point-to-point is a major aspect of Ember Souls' platforming - and quickly you'll ease into the rhythm of ascending a wall or a column, facing towards a pole or ledge to jump to, and continuing on your way. Ideally without even stopping, if at all possible.

As you progress through the 6+ hour campaign, you'll gain access to new abilities as you obtain new Ember Stones. These start off fairly simple - the Wind Stone grants the ability to pull yourself toward grapple points from a distance, also giving access to the ability to push and pull objects in the environment. The Water Stone lets you momentarily freeze running water, which the game makes great use of during puzzle-solving.

Ember Souls is at its best when you can feel yourself ease into the platforming, and level design is generally solid through the experience with only a few exceptions. As far as parkour is concerned, this is also where the game's controls are the most consistent, and the game's design - as well as the Ember Stone abilities - tie into the experience in the best of ways. There were a few moments when the "hop" between different hanging points didn't seem to work out correctly as I whizzed just past where I was supposedly able to latch onto. That would be fairly easy to forgive if that was the only issue I had with the game's controls.

Unfortunately, Ember Souls feels like it begins to fall apart when it comes to everything besides the platforming. It's not just one or two main issues, but rather a bunch of complaints that coalesce with me almost dreading whenever I entered a combat encounter. First off; while the game is playable on Quest 2 and Quest 3, at least on the game's default settings it frequently suffers from performance issues, particularly during combat on Quest 3. The game itself doesn't look particularly impressive most of the time, so when it begins to stutter and hitch it takes me out of the experience. Bafflingly, upon first boot the game starts with a rather lengthy shader compilation process, which leaves me wondering exactly what was going wrong in-game.

Performance isn't always an issue but controls are consistently a pain. Platforming works well enough, though combat feels like it occupies a no-mans-land between feeling too stiff and too loose at the same time. To make matters worse, there's some rather serious misfires with the game's menuing. Your melee weapons rest at your hips, but the game falters in movement registration a tad; your inventory is accessed from the front of your hips, along the same height as your weapons.

On multiple occasions I'd grab my melee weapon from my belt only for the inventory to open itself up as I unsheathe my sword - obscuring my view of combat when I needed to pay attention to my surroundings the most. While you can place the inventory closer to your body, it's by no means a perfect solution, and requires some fiddling. Picking up objects, on the other hand, is a frequent problem; even when certain puzzles require you to shuffle around physics objects for pressure plates, or to give yourself enough height to reach a platform, it never really feels like things are working quite as they should.

While it's never much of a concern during regular combat, things head sideways during boss encounters. One midgame fight against a Hydra is a particularly troubling example; you're supposed to activate water pillars which you then lead the Hydra to, so you can freeze it in place - but the actual act of kiting it while staying close enough that you won't eat its fire breath was annoying. What really irks me is if you manage to freeze it in the middle of an attack animation, you can't even approach it close enough to start hacking off its heads. Despite being frozen in place, the hitbox for its attack remains active, meaning I have to wait for several seconds before maybe having a second chance to freeze it again. Other boss fights are similarly frustrating.

It's little moments like this that continue to annoy me. Ember Souls has some rather intuitive and interesting puzzles to solve, though combat always feels like it's trying to force me to play by its rules, even when it made no sense. Early on you're told that you can throw knives to deal damage; so later on I found myself right behind an enemy that was wearing a helmet, yet their back was completely exposed. So, I threw my knife directly at their back - and it magnetically targeted their helmet instead, forcing me into a combat encounter I was ready to bypass entirely. If I had stabbed them through the back with my sword instead, I would've been right on my way none the wiser. Certain Ember Stone abilities - such as the Wind Stone's Force Push - are also inconsistent. Sometimes activating at the slightest movement of my hands, and other times refusing to budge even with sufficient Energy in my reserves.

With a few small tweaks and some extra polish, it would be much easier to recommend Ember Souls. However, it's currently hard to do when there are so many other VR action-adventure games offering a more consistent experience. For what it's worth, Ember Souls does not suffer from a lack of content; beyond the lengthy campaign, you can also tackle randomly-generated challenges in Raids. If the combat does speak to you, you can put yourself to the test against waves of your choosing in the Sandbox. The story, while nothing special is fine and does its job well enough. Though it's worth noting that the voice acting was distractingly bad, especially for anyone that wasn't a main character.

Ember Souls - Final Verdict

There's a good game hidden somewhere in Ember Souls, even if the current version makes it hard to parse underneath a ton of jank. The core conceit with the game's heavy emphasis on parkour platforming, and the unique level design centered around the use of your Ember Stones feels like it should work better than it does - yet performance and tracking issues collide with uneven game design that hold the whole experience back.

Maybe with a few patches the game can reach a point where it can be recommended, but in the current state it's hard to do so. Ember Souls' heart is in the right place, but the execution is frustrating and promising in equal measure.

UploadVR uses a 5-Star rating system for our game reviews – you can read a breakdown of each star rating in our review guidelines.