Renewing Vita Memories with Soul Sacrifice
August 30, 2025
I owned and used some Nintendo systems, but I had thought of myself as a Sony kid. And more than anything, I loved my Sony portable systems.
The PSP was, and still is the coolest thing ever to me. The DS was cute and cool and had great games, but the PSP was more than just games; it was an experience. I was obsessed with that slick, futuristic UI and had my mind blown with how a portable gaming system could store music, movies, play the radio, and even play Playstation 1 games. And the games themselves were some of the best-looking I'd ever seen! Before I had more conventional ways to go on the Internet, I remember browsing through the PSP's slow internet browser, flipping through my favorite forums and websites and trying to time the Stop button in a way where I could still navigate the page without it crashing from running out of memory. My taste in games was shaped even further by the library at the time: Monster Hunter, Patapon, Wipeout, Disgaea, and Armored Core were some of my great loves, among many others.
Eventually I lost my system to time, and that was when my mom came through with the Paystation Vita. Frankly, I'd hardly heard of it! But all I needed to know was that it was the next PSP. My memory card was too small to store all of my old games, and the screen was slightly scratched, but I loved the thing. The graphics were even better; I'd never played an Uncharted game in my life, but Golden Abyss was genuinely insane to me. I thought the bubble UI and the way you closed games by "peeling" them off the screen was the coolest. A part of me really missed the PSP UI, but I liked that the Vita took a new approach. There weren't as many standout games, but I remember spending a ton of time in the port of Mortal Kombat 9 (my mom would watch me play because she loved that Freddy Krueger was there) and losing my mind when I learned there would be a new LittleBigPlanet specifically for the Vita, letting you make levels that used touch controls. I had a few regulars on my friendslist who I played Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 with and would talk shit over voicechat. I didn't even do things like that on my PS3 at the time, so I found it pretty incredible.
When I think back to the Vita, my memories of it aren't nearly as strong or as formative as the PSP; there were some great indies that got ports there which I enjoyed, but exclusives weren't many, and in fact I spent at least half of my time playing the digital PSP games I had already bought. You could argue it's strange to have profound nostalgia for such a system, but no matter how you bend it, it was mine, and I was enamored with it, warts and all. Maybe amplifying this is the fact that I somehow lost almost all of the cartridges I owned in the passing years; it's one thing to willfully give up such things, but it's something else when you're actively trying to preserve whatmeans something to you and wholly fail to do so. I even had my Playstation Network account hacked and taken from me, so my digital games have been long gone too. My Vita is still with me secured in a drawer, but I can rarely bring myself to even look at it, the scratched-up surface and vacant case of game cards having transformed into a painful reminder of how unkind I'd been in protecting this small happiness of my youth.
My sad, dirty Vita machine and the few games I have to my name after years of losing cartridges. Thank you for bringing me happiness.
Many have already touched on why the Vita struggled so much; the memory cards were expensive, developing games for it was expensive, the device itself was expensive (seeing a pattern?), smartphones and tablets were getting bigger. Before I knew it, I had forgotten all about my poor Vita, shifting my attention to a newly-arrived 3DS and the absolute powerhouse of a game library it had. Unfortunately, Nintendo had won me over in the end this time. However, there was one particularly excellent experience from the Playstation Vita that stuck with me. Maybe this doesn't mean much because the competition wasn't exactly tough, but it was easily one of my favorite titles on the Vita and one of the few things tethering me to it long after Nintendo had charmed me away with its dual-screen wiles. This experience was Soul Sacrifice.
During the PSP and Vita era there seemed to be a few amount of developers attempting to capitalize on the appeal of "hunting games", following in the footsteps of the ever-enduring Monster Hunter structurally — you prepare a character, enter a mission where you must kill a large monster in intense closed-map combat, and then use the loot to make yourself strong enough to tackle the next great beast. God Eater is a big example, but there were others such as Toukiden, Ragnarok Odyssey, and Freedom Wars. Amidst those I played, Soul Sacrifice was the most striking to me, and easily my favorite by far, in part thanks to a really strong sense of direction and inspiration that informed the formation of a wholly unique identity.
Enter a dark fantasy world where people protect the peace by eradicating human turned abominations before taking their essence into their own bodies. Every spell slung requires an exchange, and at the highest level the price can become too great to bear. To stop evil by embracing it is the creed of Avalon, the organization of sorcerers that fights to stave off the world's corruption in Soul Sacrifice.
It's a truly excellent setup, and you're introduced to it all through the game's equally cool framing device: the main villain, Magusar, has effectively already "won", and you're a mere prisoner lined up to die. In your cage you find a mystical journal that lets you relive the memories of its author, a mighty sorcerer of Avalon. Through the book you can both gain the abilities to stand up to Magusar and learn what exactly turned him into the twisted monster he is. The unique presentation of its dark fantasy world pops immediately as the game menu is depicted as pages out of a worn and bloodied old tome, and the story is displayed to you not through animated cutscenes, but through the writings of the journal, spoken by the mysterious narrator and accompanied by striking illustrations and sound effects. It's so fucking awesome.
Having recently decided to play it again, I'm reminded of how simple yet effective the gameplay is. It's a largely fluffless experience, dropping you right in the middle of deadly arenas with twisted foes, but the core combat is frantic and fun! Between spears, bombs, armor and more, there's such a strong audiovisual crunch to every spell which really sells the feeling of being a powerful mage. The boss enemies are all very uniquely designed too, acting as grotesque twists on traditional European fantasy and generally being a blast to fight. Similarly to its contemporaries a chunk of the game's appeal is also the satisfaction in power progression; stronger spells can be obtained through defeating monsters more effectively, and your strength slowly increases as you either save or sacrifice your defeated foes. Playing the saint skews you towards defense and durability, whereas making constant sacrifices makes you offensively stronger. The choice you make both provides short-term buffs in the midst of battle and contributes to your longterm character growth, so it feels like with every enemy felled your decision is no less meaningful.
You have control over the lives of every enemy you face, allowing you to descend into darkness or ascend to the light in pursuit of your ideal. Also your sick chuuni arm changes with each soul you absorb which is really cool.
The fast place, addictive loop and high replayability makes Soul Sacrifice an almost arcade-like experience; there's even a scoring system that rewards you for playing fast and smart, giving you greater rewards depending on your result. I like God Eater a lot, but I admit that at times it really does feel more like a Monster Hunter game but with a lot of the more satisfying elements stripped from it; Soul Sacrifice, on the other hand, is deeply committed to its own systems and its unique brand of "hunting" combat, and it feels extremely well-realized.
What really stuck out to me especially on a replay was the quality of the writing itself. For as grimy and scary as the game's world is, the story feels very intimate. The pains and struggles of being a sorcerer are made evident through the experiences of the main "author" character, as well as the various other sorcerers he meets, and the mage life sure isn't pretty I'll tell you that much (you get untold power but also severe mental illnesses). A lot of the side stories involving specific characters also tend to have a pattern where you meet someone who isn't quite what they seem. An early standout is the greedy, gold-obsessed Carnatux, who scams you and forces you into debt for him, all while prattling on about money and how it must suck to be poor. At the end of his chapters though you learn Carnatux's dirty work is actually in the name of giving money to people in need, and he doesn't hate the poor so much as he hates what poverty does to good people, following a personal belief that if everyone were rich, the world wouldn't have monsters. The characters you meet are all very compelling despite the minimal story format, and the tales can at times get quite emotional too. In addition every single important thing in the game's world, and every single monster has a lore entry, which tells the story of a monster's creation in a style akin to a twisted fairy tale. It's just the coolest. There were a lot of times where I'd see a new monster, go "I wonder what their deal is" and decide to flip to the lore entry after I'd finished beating them, then read it and go "holy shit".
This game ironically doesn't sacrifice great storytelling as its fascinating world and cast are conveyed through the musings of an enigmatic author from a journal brought to life.
It's kind of strange to ramble so much about this game, because I'm hard pressed to say it is all that innovative or interesting, and I'm wondering if I'm actually misleading the people reading this when at its core it's a pretty straightforward boss rush game with a lot of grinding. But more than anything it feels like it's just full of clear, simple and strong ideas done well and to the fullest. Exciting twitch-action gameplay, fun bosses, a compelling story, a strong sense of identity. A lot of my favorite games that I take comfort in tend to be good at bringing together elements that aren't the most explosive and doing it well. In particular, it's also just a perfect game for a portable system! Much like Monster Hunter the mission structure makes it easy for bite-sized enjoyment, since you can just do a quest or two and feel like you made at least a little progress in strengthening yourself and moving along the story. As a result I sank a lot of time into it, huddled under my sheets and bashing away at the horrors. Generally speaking I just really appreciate strong pick-up-and-play experiences and this is an absolutely superb one that I'm glad exists.
IT'S ALSO COMPLETELY STUCK ON THE VITA! I've been waiting for a remaster or port for a while now, and the recent Freedom Wars rerelease reminded me that the true king of these games seems to just be forever stuck on a dead system! Oh, the humanity...
At the same time, I waited about ten years for Xenoblade X to get off of the Wii U... If Soul Sacrifice takes twenty, so be it. This is a price I'm willing to pay.