3Souls

3Souls - Episode 1: Nelesa has an intriguing story, character and setting, but ultimately falls short of its full potential as a puzzle platform game. There is far too much trial and error when it comes to a lot of puzzles or working out how to navigate each area. While a lot of the challenges steadily increase over time, the problem is that you can't but help feel cheated whenever you lose a life due to the amount of guesswork required. With another two episodes on the way, Red Column must find the right balance in terms of difficulty and execution of GamePad ideas. Give this a go if you are feeling patient enough for a slow paced puzzle platformer.

In a sense, 3Souls is amazing because it has the decency to be universally bad. There are no qualifiers that need to be added, no "Well, if someone enjoyed this other game, they might enjoy 3Souls." There is no one that will like this, and 3Souls is one of those rare games that is entirely devoid of any merit. It is a short, pointless, boring chore that doesn't have a single good idea from beginning to end. The only good thing is they waited so long to release the second and third episodes that hopefully everyone else out there forgot this existed and won't have to play it. This isn't a reason to dust off the old Wii U again. If anything, this is a reason to launch it through the window and never look back.

3Souls is a short but solid game. The puzzle setup has potential, but was lacking in execution and accessibility options. Even though it took three hours to complete, I would still recommend it for those who want to give this game a try.

It features well designed levels, an interesting narrative and the interaction between the GamePad's functionalities and the game shows the careful planning that went into its making. Being a game divided in three chapters, what follows remains to be seen but as a first chapter, this is a good entry which could only benefit from a longer lifespan, despite its tripartite nature.

Overall, I can only really recommend 3Souls in its current state if looking for a challenge and some degree of repetition. With some patches or changes in the second episode, it could evolve into a much stronger game, but it isn't quite there yet.