Dual Souls: The Last Bearer

Genre: Fighting Game

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local / Online)

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Review:

Dual Souls is a Fighting Game that can trace its history back to the 2002 Game Boy Advance release of a game called Dual Blades. This game later received a 2014 sequel on the Ouya platform under the name Slashers: The Power Battle, which was later ported to PC in 2017 and to mobile devices in 2020. Then in 2021 on PC, we saw the release of the third game in this series, with the title Dual Souls: The Last Bearer, with this game coming to Nintendo Switch in 2022.

I say these are separate games because they do all show distinct differences between installments – Slashers gave the game higher-resolution visuals, expanded the character roster from 8 to 10 and added an RPG-style Journey Mode, and Dual Souls reworked the game’s art, added a few extra features like an artwork gallery, as well as a few new gameplay mechanics. However, this is a series that still seems pretty firmly rooted in its original Game Boy Advance release, even if new installments in the series all do have distinct new elements.

Despite that each new installment in the series has seen its visuals have remade, the presentation still seems awkward and somewhat lacking. The 2D character designs seem crudely-drawn and amateurish, and their animation seems stiff and clumsy. While I don’t expect 2D Fighting Games to all be at the same level of art and animation quality as the Guilty Gear series, Dual Blades is far under the standard I think we’ve come to expect from the genre at this point.

Much as with the visuals, the sound is also just a bit… off. The game’s voicework seems stilted and out-of-place, and the energetic soundtrack is oddly quiet underneath the noise of the battles.

When it comes to the gameplay, there’s some good and some bad here. On the one hand, the aforementioned Journey Mode is a relatively unique take on the genre, giving players a sense of constantly building up one character as they fight through a series of foes with minimal healing. And when it comes to the combat itself, the controls feel reasonably fluid and relatively accessible, there’s a good mix of gameplay mechanics here, with parries, move cancels, throw reversals, fall recoveries, and “limit break” moves, among others. Newer players can probably get by with mashing buttons and rolling the D-Pad, while more expert players can find some satisfying combos and strategic high-level play.

However, on the bad side of things, the hit detection seems off, with attacks that should hit often whiffing. And much as with the character animation, movement often seems stiff and clunky. I should also take a moment to talk about the game’s online multiplayer, which is here, but with empty online lobbies so you’re unlikely to find anyone to play with at this point unless you bring your own friend.

In the end, I enjoyed Dual Souls, but in my mind I kept being drawn back to one word: “jank”. While there’s a lot to like in this game, throughout there’s a sense of lacking quality and polish, and while it’s not a bad game, there’s hardly any area in the game where I feel like it couldn’t do with some improvement, from the artwork and animation to sound and voicework to movement and hit detection. Even the tutorial has instructions that disappear if you’re still pressing a button from the last move you did! If nothing else, Dual Souls stands as an example of how an otherwise solid Fighting Game can be severely damaged by a lack of polish.

tl;dr – Dual Souls is a Fighting Game that can trace its roots back to the Game Boy Advance, and it has some enjoyable gameplay and a fun RPG-style “Journey Mode” in its favor. Unfortunately, virtually every element of this game seems unpolished and clunky, and while it’s still enjoyable, it just can’t compete with other modern entries in the genre.

Grade: C+

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