A couple of years ago, I had the chance to play an indie horror game called Tormented Souls. I’d never heard of it before, and only picked it up on a friend’s recommendation, but I’m so glad I did because it turned out to be one of the best games I’d play that year. Last week, I finally had the time to pick up and play through the sequel, and once again I’m thinking it’s going to be in my top 3 this year! Seriously, can we please get more games like this??

There was a lot to like about the first Tormented Souls if you are a fan of classic survival horror game design. It was very much like the first three Resident Evil games from the PS1 era. Inventory and environmental puzzles, fixed camera angles, hokey voice acting and just-clunky-enough combat are all found within and are all brought together with a haunting soundtrack. In particular, the puzzles offered some real brain-bending challenge, and the devs really put a lot of thought into every camera angle. Add in an intriguing story and the result is a truly solid experience.

Tormented Souls II builds on this foundation in just about every way. There are more locations to explore, more puzzles to solve, a more involved mystery to delve into, and much more threatening enemies to contend with. On top of all that, the game takes a noticeable step up in terms of production quality, with the character models and voice acting seeing the most improvement. It still looks like something that would be at home on the Xbox 360 or PS3 and still sounds a bit silly, but it’s all by design and that makes all the difference. After all, a “throwback” experience is part of what’s on offer here.

There are a few weak points, though none really did much to dampen my experience. I found myself lost at times, and it was always because I didn’t quite grasp how to use something. That is, I had the right items, and I was right about how to use them. It’s just than I’d be missing a step or a piece of information without realizing it. I also didn’t really care for the boss fights. They weren’t bad, but they kind of felt like they were just meant to soak up my extra resources. They were interesting to be sure, but I guess boss fights are just destined to be awkward in this kind of game. There’s only so much you can do within their limitations, after all.

Okay, that’s all the bad as far as I’m concerned. You might disagree, but I think Tormented Souls II does a pretty good job of mitigating the issues inherent to its genre without crossing into modern hand-holding territory. As for what there is to like about the experience, I already laid out the basic highlights so from here I just want to talk about a few specific things that I really enjoyed. Don’t worry, I won’t be going into story spoilers or anything. I want everyone to have as fresh an experience with this as possible. Trust me, it’s worth it.

First and foremost, the puzzle design was darn near peak in Tormented Souls II. There wasn’t really a point where I had to break out the pencil and paper and start scrawling notes like a madman, but there were plenty of times when I solved the puzzle by asking myself “what if?” What I meanby that is that there often was, to me, a solution that would definitely work, but I’d think “there’s no way they thought of this, right? But, what if they did?” I’d then try my crazy solution, and it’d work! I cannot express just how satisfying those moments were! Not every puzzle was like that, but man were those cool!

I also found myself appreciating the more varied environments more than I thought I would. See, I had feared that they would be less fleshed out than Wildberger Hospital was in the first Tormented Souls. And yeah, they kind of were. It wound up not really mattering, though. The main locations were dense enough with puzzle and story content that I really didn’t notice at first, and the weaker locations worked well as transition pieces.

Also, everything was unified by Tormented Souls II’s unrelenting atmosphere and strange sense of unreality. I mean, everything about this was over-the-top and video game-y, yet it had enough internal logic that the town of Villa Hess wound up becoming a believable place, perhaps even more so than Wildberger Hospital at times. It also helped that the developers’ sheer attention to detail made every screen absolutely gorgeous to look at. Not in a high-end graphical kind of way, but in a cinematic one. Everything was presented lovingly in the best possible way, and it really pays off!

I could go on, but that would be getting more specific and risking spoilers, so I’ll leave it here for now. Seriously, we gotta get more games like this! In the meantime, if you haven’t played the Tormented Souls games, I cannot recommend them enough! You could just jump right into this one, but it really is worth going back and playing the first too!

---

If you’ve played Tormented Souls, what was your experience like? If not, what’s another classic-styled game you’ve played recently?

Image is official promotional artwork