Who it Caters to (Use CR #1)
Are you a gamer from the time when NES was thriving and arcades were still a thing? Do you remember the time you saw Back to the Future or even ET with maybe friends or family members? Then Crossing Souls will be a title that should pique your interest. Harking to the 80s, Crossing Souls feels like a Saturday morning cartoon being broadcast on the good ole VHS tapes before DVDs and Blu Rays were a thing. Crossing Souls is filled with references and themes that will make you smile if you loved or love the 80s and that is the audience it’s aiming to deliver to.

Crossing Souls melds the 80s with the modern age of gaming. Players should expect tons of old school references from various games like Streets of Rage, Simpsons, The Legend of Zelda and even Final Fantasy. On top of that, players will take control of several teenagers who each have special abilities that will need to be utilized to fight various baddies and even solve puzzles. Crossing Souls will feel like a nostalgia trip from a long-forgotten age of awesome TV, movie and gaming references. If that seems like it’s an amazing theme to you, then you’re going to love Crossing Souls.

Five friends have discovered something incredible in their small and quiet California suburb that will forever change their worlds. A strange purple pyramid found off a dead man gives the kids the ability to enter the Duat, a strange world where the dead can interact with the living. While at first the friends Chris, Big Joe, Matt, Charlie and Kevin—Chris’ brother—think this is just a way for a new adventure to begin, little do they know that this small artifact has those who seek its power chasing after it ferociously. Now the kids will need to team up together to fight against demonic spirits, angry punks and special organizations hell bent on obtaining the pyramid artifact. A grand adventure awaits Chris and his pals in Crossing Souls.

Several days ago, we here at Honey’s Anime previewed Crossing Souls by developer Fourattic and we really enjoyed it. While the demo was only an hours’ worth of Crossing Souls, it made us excited to see what the full game had in store. Finally, we here at Honey’s Anime got our copy of Crossing Souls and we have our opinions on it. Welcome to our review of Crossing Souls. Let’s begin by talking about the main premise.

In Crossing Souls, players take control of five friends who must save their town after finding a strange artifact. The so called Duat allows them to see the world of the dead and even interact with them. The main crux of Crossing Souls is to navigate around various locations, beat up baddies and solve puzzles. Though, Crossing Souls does this in some rather unique and fun ways which keep it entertaining, for the most part at least.

The idea of having several characters allows for some interesting gameplay mechanics to be utilized in Crossing Souls. Each of the five heroes, Chris, Kevin, Matt, Charlie, and Big Joe play quite differently from one another. Take Chris for example, he is the only character who can jump and climb in comparison to Big Joe who can’t jump but does a lot of damage and can move obstacles. These different play styles allow for different ways to explore areas in Crossing Souls and solve puzzles that involve the abilities of each character. This keeps Crossing Souls from getting overly repetitive while you’re exploring around and also keeps combat from getting stale.

One element we also loved about Crossing Souls is the wonderful slew of boss battles. While there aren’t dozens of boss fights, the several that are scattered throughout all feel different and can be taken down in different ways. One fight required us to play Simon Says and another had us dodging missiles and flaming baseballs. While we won’t say bosses were tough, some did require multiple retries to get them taken down. However, this wasn’t because these fights were unfair but more so we just needed to learn the proper ways of either handling the fight or using the right heroes.

Now if Crossing Souls has one major advantage over other titles like it, it would have to be the 80s themed elements scattered throughout. Crossing Souls makes references to things like Michael Jackson, Ghostbusters, ET and the list goes on. In terms of gaming references ,some areas played out like old school arcade titles like The Simpsons or Streets of Rage. In many ways, it’s almost like a game in of itself to find and spot all the 80s references the developers hid in Crossing Souls. Trust us ,folks, we probably could name tons more but even we think we didn’t find them all.

Graphically, Crossing Souls—as we mentioned in our preview—reminds us of a Saturday morning cartoon in both its visuals and its music. We love how the animated cutscenes look like a VHS tape of a cartoon and the graphics themselves scream a NES title. The music however feels like a mixture of old 80s songs with more current sounds but it helps keep Crossing Souls from being too old-school. Honestly, we hope more indie developers mirror Fourattic’s use of cartoon-like cutscenes as we don’t see it too often.

Crossing Souls is nearly perfect but we do have two complaints. The first is the combat itself. Crossing Souls is fun during the initial hours and during the boss fights but after several hours it can feel a bit repetitive. The same can be said of the exploration which doesn’t ever change much. There are some cool moments like having to sneak into a military-like facility but areas with jumping puzzles and moving crates around feel generic. These few problems won’t hamper the enjoyment of Crossing Souls but equally it does make you wish there was more diversity in enemy types and even the puzzles you do have to solve.

Crossing Souls was easily one of the most fun titles we’ve played that tried to be retro and succeeded. Not only does Crossing Souls embody the word fun, but it’s chock full of video game, TV and movie references that those who loved the 80s will enjoy immensely. While the combat and exploration at times become a bit stale, none of the elements within Crossing Souls fail to deliver an overall fun title with a lot of heart. When we previewed Crossing Souls here at Honey’s Anime HQ, we knew the final product would be something special. Turns out folks, it was and that’s why we fully recommend downloading Crossing Souls as soon as you possibly can.

We don’t tend to gush over every game we review here at Honey’s Anime because that would make us overly biased. However, Crossing Souls is a game we don’t mind putting on a pedestal as it harkens to some of the best elements of the 80s in terms of media. We really think you’ll dig Crossing Souls if you love the older days of gaming but need that modern spin to keep it from feeling too retro. Are you now excited for Crossing Souls because of our review? Why not tell us in the comments below so we can talk with you beautiful souls? Remember to also keep coming back to our hive for more game reviews and articles here at Honey’s Anime.