Soulstice — Quick tips to get you started

Soulstice is now available to anyone looking for some high-octane character action. To help out, here are some quick tips for Soulstice players looking to get an early start on some of the finer points of gameplay.

Synergize it

Synergy attacks can be a bit confusing to pull off at first. In the upper-right-hand corner, there are portraits of Briar and Lute. When they’re together in one portrait and the portrait is a kind of grey color, you have a synergy attack available. All you need to do is any weapon’s second combo, namely the attack, attack, pause, attack, attack, attack combo, which you can purchase via the skills menu. Immediately after, press the attack button again after completing this combo, you’ll use the synergy attack. But be careful. The pause in the combo gives enemies extra space to attack and getting hit before the attack triggers will lower your unity, meaning you won’t be able to use the attack at all until you get your unity back up.

Buy those upgrades

I assumed the upgrades sold in the shop would just be individual pieces like the ones you’ll find in the levels or challenges but they’re actually entire upgrades. When you buy them, the upgrade will immediately take effect, so no need to bother with making sure you already have two upgrade pieces to make them worthwhile. Also, Soulstice doesn’t tell you, but you’ll need to buy Lute’s 22,000 Cobalt upgrade before she gains access to new moves.

Challenge yourself from the menu

Any time you find a challenge in a level and start it, it becomes accessible from the Extras section of the menu. If you don’t feel like doing a challenge when you’re in the middle of a level or simply don’t currently have what it takes to beat a challenge, you can always use this to come back later and get the upgrade reward applied to your character.

Proficiency

Weapons in Soulstice get a big jump in usefulness if you upgrade their profiency. What this does is give that specific weapon increased efficacy against specific enemy types. Some weapons are better against certain types than others, so take note of which are the strongest so that you don’t fight enemies for longer than need be. FYI, the gloves lower enemy armor really well, so those will probably be your go-to to deal with them.

Careful with Lute’s upgrades

Lute’s upgrade tree has a lot of abilities that will greatly help you out during combat. These include allowing her to shoot more blasts, use more counters, and create explosions that aid you. But when you unlock them and Lute starts adding them to her repertroire, she’ll use up more of her entropy. For certain fights, this means that overcharging and having Lute vanish for precious seconds will become much more common if you don’t have enough upgrades to keep your entropy from overflowing.

No need to hoard

You might be tempted to hoard healing items in Soulstice. Similar items are much more valuable in other character action games but they’re quite cheap and prevalent here. You can only hold three of the superior healing item and five of the lesser one and you’ll frequently find both sitting out in the open during levels, so you shouldn’t feel like you only need to use them in an emergency. They only cost 1,000 or 350 red currency from the shop, so they’re cheap even if you want to buy more before a boss fight.

That’s all for our Soulstice quick tips. If all else fails, just keep hitting them until they die.