The foundation for an engaging VR experience exists, but right now, it's buried under layers of technical and design issues that detract from what could otherwise be an impressive adventure
In Ember Souls, you step into the role of the last immortal, tasked with exploring a vast Persian palace while seeking powerful artifacts known as Ember Stones. The game immediately sets up an intriguing premise, placing you in a world where ancient magic and architecture blend together in a unique VR experience.
The visual design of the palace is arguably one of the game's strongest aspects. From ornate tapestries to towering columns, the environment captures the grandeur of ancient Persian architecture. The attention to detail in the surroundings creates an immersive atmosphere that makes you want to explore every corner of this mystical place, at least initially.
Unfortunately, the narrative struggles to maintain the same level of engagement. While the premise is interesting, the story feels disconnected and fails to create meaningful stakes. To be completely honest, I don't know who I was, who was I fighting and why was I doing all of that. This disconnect is further amplified by the AI-generated voice acting, mainly for the NPCs, which are completely lifeless and often break immersion rather than enhancing it.
The core gameplay revolves around parkour-style movement, which forms the foundation of both exploration and puzzle-solving. When it works, swinging between poles, sliding down curtains, and wall-running feels exhilarating. The game implements a helpful highlighting system that shows where you can grab or jump to next, theoretically making navigation more intuitive.
Yet, the parkour system suffers from inconsistency issues. What should be smooth transitions between grabbing points often results in frustrating misses and deaths. The physics can be unpredictable – sometimes you'll grab a pole perfectly, other times you'll inexplicably fall despite making the same motion. Now, I can accept a fair amount of jank when it comes to VR games, but even that only goes so far as then it becomes too annoying to continue.
The game introduces various abilities through the Ember Stones, with the grappling hook being an early acquisition. Later you get the ability to freeze water transforming them into poles you can grapple onto, burn vines to clear obstacles and even grow some vines, transforming them into, you guessed it, poles. While these powers add variety to navigation, they sometimes break the intended level design. It's possible to bypass entire sections of platforming challenges using unintended methods, whether by creative use of the grappling hook or exploiting environmental objects. Honestly, I kinda love this, like skipping entire platforming sections in creative ways is very immersive-sim like. The problem is that if you do that in Ember Souls, you might break the game soft locking yourself from progressing further.
The puzzle elements in Ember Souls show potential but suffer from unclear design. Many puzzles lack proper signposting or feedback, leaving you just standing there trying to guess at solutions through trial and error. Early in the game there's a puzzle that involves you rotating an orb to open a door, but you really have no idea how or what to align it with to open the door. The same goes for some other puzzles where you need to rotate three different parts of a cylindrical pillar to match a picture or pattern. Aligning the three parts to form the painting is extremely easy, but where you should align them to is not at all clear. If any of the devs are reading this, why not change these puzzles from one stretched image on a cylinder to a more intuitive rectangular pillar with slightly different images on each side that you have to rotate to match the painting or pattern?
Combat represents one of the game's weakest elements. The physics-based melee system lacks precision and feedback, often devolving into mindless arm-swinging rather than strategic combat. Enemies don't react convincingly to hits, and their AI patterns are basic and repetitive. Dual-wielding swords and just swinging your arms around doesn't really feel like a combat system.
Boss fights, which should be exciting culminations of your skills, instead highlight the combat system's shortcomings. The Hydra boss battle, for instance, becomes a tedious exercise in repetitive motion rather than an engaging challenge. The other boss fight, one involving a giant rock golem, is better as it at least has a unique boss mechanic to it. Still though, the absence of meaningful overall combat mechanics or enemy variety makes these encounters feel more like endurance tests than skillful confrontations.
The game includes a progression system allowing you to upgrade abilities and purchase new equipment. You can customize your loadout by choosing different weapons and helmets. While this system adds some depth, it feels somewhat superficial cause you don't really know what buying and equipping a new sword actually does as there's no indication of the benefits you get from it.
Apart from the campaign, Ember Souls has two additional modes: Raids and Sandbox. In the Raids mode, you can test your skills and resilience as you battle through procedurally generated maps. You can compete for high scores, uncover rare and powerful weapons, and face evolving challenges that make each raid a fresh trial of your abilities. As for the Sandbox I guess that pretty self-explanatory.
Ember Souls shows glimpses of excellence in its ambitious vision of VR parkour adventure. The beautiful Persian palace setting and the core concept of combining platforming with magical abilities create moments of genuine excitement. However, the inconsistent platforming mechanics, unsatisfying combat, unclear puzzle design, and various technical hiccups suggest a game that needed more development time. While patches and updates may eventually address these issues, the current state of Ember Souls makes it difficult to fully recommend.
The foundation for an engaging VR experience exists, but right now, it's buried under layers of technical and design issues that detract from what could otherwise be an impressive adventure. Thanks for reading!
The game was previewed on a Quest 3 via a promo copy provided by the publisher. Ember Souls is available on Meta Quest.
