This game has been on my radar since it came out in 2021 for being something I’ve wanted for years- a new classic survival horror game, fixed camera angles, tank controls, inventory puzzles, limited saves and all, but one that crucially isn’t also trying to look like a PS1 game. I think that it really nails the gameplay and visuals, playing like a mixture of Silent Hill and classic Resident Evil. The environments look gorgeous and it’s just a treat to see a game in this style made with modern graphics. The foundation for a very strong survival horror game is all here.

It’s a bit of a bummer though that despite the team clearly knowing how to make a technically proficient survival horror experience, Tormented Souls falls kinda flat when it comes to its more creative aspects. The writing, storytelling, voice acting and character/monster design on display is bland, generic and frankly amateurish. You might argue that’s just staying true to classic survival horror as plenty of those old games also had bad writing and stilted voice acting, but Tormented Souls doesn’t have the weird charm and idiosyncrasies those older Japanese games have. The vibe here is just kind of generically low-rent and you get a distinct sense the game was made by like, Italians or Spaniards.

The monsters are all mutilated and emaciated Hellraiser gimps with blades grafted onto their arms, aka one of the most generic types of horror game enemy. The setting is a mansion in Canada turned into a hospital, and while it certainly often evokes the opulence of the Spencer Mansion or the Raccoon City Police Department from RE, creepy 18th/19th century sanatoriums and hospitals are also incredibly well-trodden horror ground. (Also, the hospital is called Wildberger Hospital, which just sounds like “wild burger” when characters say the name out loud.)

The player character’s outfit is really goofy. She wears a frilly white dress with a rose pattern and a big red bow on the back paired with a cropped leather jacket with a big floppy hood. She’s also got fingerless leather gloves and two giant Tetsuya Nomura belts, one of which has a big leather bag attached to it and the animations imply she keeps her inventory there. She looks like a teen cosplaying as a vtuber but her voice actress sounds like she’s in her 30s and I still have no clue how old the character is supposed to be or what her occupation is. (Speaking of voice acting, it’s the sort of bland you’d get from a late-period European point-and-click adventure game from the 2000s)

The game didn’t leave the best first impression with its opening. The main character receives a mysterious letter from Wild Burger hospital and decides to go there to investigate. Cut to the main character lying fully nude in a bathtub in said hospital connected to a respirator before she wakes up distressed and horrified and begins pulling the tube out of her throat. I can see what they were trying to do, but even the horniest of PS2 horror games didn’t just shove tits in your face in the first five minutes and it just feels really gratuitous and schlocky. You then walk up to a nearby mirror and the protagonist discovers that one of her eyes has been surgically removed. I get that they intended the close-up of her empty eye socket to be disturbing, but with how awkwardly the scene is shot, how janky the game’s cutscene animation is, how it happens mere seconds after the gratuitous nudity and how little build-up there has been since this is all takes place before the game even properly begins it just comes off as comical

Even though I’ve dumped on the game for several paragraphs I would still like to end by recommending the game to those who like old school survival horror. It plays great and looks great (well, the environments do), I just desperately wish the devs had an ounce of the style and creativity those old PS1 and PS2 games did