Soulstice's combat has my Devil May Cry senses tingling

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There's no such thing as too many character-action games.

We first saw Soulstice two months ago at the PC Gaming Show, and it looked cool: It's a combat-focused game in the vein of Japanese action games like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta, but from a small Italian studio. A new trailer from the Future Games Show today gives us a bit more background on Soulstice's two main characters, a pair of sisters who have managed to stay pretty tight despite one of them being a ghost. I'm really here for a few more glimpses of the action, though, and we definitely get that.

I didn't catch on before that the giant sword our angsty eyepatched hero Briar is swinging around can transform into other weapons, but that's definitely what's happening here. The sword can at least take on the form of a heavy duty axe that looks like the go-to if you prefer impact over speed. But Briar's clearly going to be able to use some other weapons, too: There are a few seconds of whip combat in the trailer above, and in one fight Briar has a giant gauntlet on one hand that's clearly built for big punches.

It's hard to know how well Soulstice will stack up against the likes of Devil May Cry 5—that's tough competition for a small studio. But it does look fast, fluid, and full of stylish attack animations.

I'm eager to see some combo breakdowns and slices of combat that last more than a few trailer-perfect seconds, but that'll probably be a bit of a wait—Soulstice is coming to Steam and consoles next year.

Wes Fenlon
Wes Fenlon
Senior Editor

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.


When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).