Young Souls

It is a fun game with interesting graphics over a plot that evolves as you advance through the game learning about the main characters and seeing their growth over their ways.
There is a really accomplished combat system that rewards skill plays and it is very satisfying to pull off in the hardest difficulty.
The main issues I had were the balance of the game and how quickly it wraped up in the end. For the first point, i feel there is a heavy balance change between the first part of the game and the later part..... at first some challenges seem way too hard, while on the other side the second part of the game feels like a breeze
Storywise.... it feels that in the end a lot of events are just mashed together at quick pace and happen one after the other, so it kinda loses impact
Still, a good game to enjoy

After a Remote Play Together playthrough of this game I can recommend this, with this one piece of advice:
Do not play on the "developer recommended" Challenging difficulty. Try it if you're curious, but you will probably hate it. Me and my friend cleared 1/4 of the worlds on Challenging and got about halfway through World 2 before lowering to Normal, at which point we had a significantly more fun, if easier, time.
This game is a solid beat em up. However, the "Souls" in the name hints at the design direction, and unfortunately that twist on the beat em up formula is not well executed. This is not an issue of me or my mate not liking "souls" brand difficulty, we finished a Seamless co-op Elden Ring playthrough not that long ago. This is an issue of the game not living up to the genre's expectations. Instead of a challenging experience that's rewarding to overcome as you grow to learn how fair it actually is, I got the sinking feeling of realizing how badly the game was designed.
Here's why, so you know what you're getting into:
The fundamental balancing of encounters is awful. The first Yarlanda (reoccurring optional boss with different movesets) fight was brutal and took us at least 20 attempts, while the second we took down our first try without needing to practice countering her. (both on Challenging)
What convinced us to get off Challenging was a difficulty spike with a duo miniboss fight, with a full boss' worth of HP each, who both took off half our health with every hit. After clearing it (and we only managed that on Normal), we found there was ANOTHER boss afterwards with no checkpoint inbetween! We had just finished a comparable "miniboss endurance" style level in an optional zone, designed for higher level play, with rare items behind it for its difficulty, and found it MUCH easier, even if it took us a few retries. But this one on the mandatory path and appropriately levelled was a total difficulty wall for us on Challenging. In late game, there's also several levels and a boss you need to finish while locked at 1 HP, which I still can't believe was mandatory instead of being an optional area.
A good chunk of bosses have attacks that are unreactable, especially in the chaos of coop play. Eg. Yarlanda has a close range kick on some of her movesets, that has no audio cue. I believe from rewatching footage that it comes out in 14-15 frames, and 15 (in a 60 FPS game) is the bare minimum for a completely prepared person, with nothing else they're thinking about, reacting from visuals alone. In fighting games with a lot to think about, 18-19 frames is usually considered the practical borderline for visual reactability, and it usually takes the best players in the world to nail those consistently in practice. Most enemies with shields also have riposte attacks, that trigger entirely at random when they block, and when they begin blocking can happen in 1 frame between your attack connecting and them deciding to block with no windup. Thankfully, most of those ripostes just stagger you, but some bosses get damage out of ripostes, or can follow up while you're staggered.
Your damage output is very polarising due to the Mana system putting beat em up combos into bossfights. Mana charges with your attacks/parries and lets you consistently put bosses into hitstun or knockups. This means there is a big damage disparity between hitting bosses while there's an opening or if you get a parry stun, vs using Mana to get a aerial juggle combo going. Good use of this at endgame can halve a boss' healthbar if you expend all your mana, all while they're helpless to fight back. It's fun once you've mastered it, but these combos are the main judge of how many more interactions against the boss you must win to kill it, not the core fundamentals of combat. (and they're probably a lot harder to execute in singleplayer) Without a damage scaling system, your damage ends up revolving entirely around how long you can chain these combos, instead of them being a fun extra to rack up some extra damage.
Young Souls' approach to healing is nonsense. You can carry as many healing potions as you want and use them instantly, but they are limited by a long cooldown (about a minute) and the fact you will usually need to buy them. This allows you to cheese bosses without long range attacks by running away and waiting out the clock for healing, and incentivises long waits in empty rooms for your potions to come off cooldown for the next room. They aren't refunded if you die, and money is very limited in the early game, so you are stuck in a terrible situation of not wanting to heal on boss runs if you mess up early. Healing doesn't exist as leeway for your mistakes, but as a way to secure runs that are already going well.
Young Souls is also a traditional beat em up, which means 2D art that can't clearly communicate the vertical range of boss attacks, moving vertically is mostly incompatible with sprinting, and rolling vertically lets you cheese a LOT of stuff because bosses can only lunge or etc horizontally. It's a format that was designed for co-op partners to beat on hordes in parallel, not really for precise bossfight positioning.
On Normal, you have enough health leeway to power through these sketchy elements... On Challenging, you don't. You will usually die in ~3 hits from a boss, so better stop taking risks, exercising agency, or enjoying your moveset. It is time to patiently parry everything, until it's your turn. (or use mana to skip to your turn, if you have it) Maybe that experience is easier in singleplayer, but I wouldn't expect that to be the case.
It's like a bad imitation of Sekiro, with 10x less health to work with, an array of unreactable attacks, and you have a co-op partner, politely waiting for the boss to target them instead, because parrying focused combat essentially boils down to a rhythm game only one of you can play at a time.
The RPG elements of this genre are also a mess, though not an active roadblock to fun like the above stuff can be. The art team put a lot of work into dozens of unique weapons/armorsets, but the majority just can't be viable because of how big the stat gap is compared to other equipment.
Eg. Yarlanda weapons unlock the ability for the blacksmith to sell weapons of the same moveset. But Yarlanda weapons vastly outpace shop weapons, so why would I spend tons of money getting a mediocre two handed sword, when I just got one of the best two handed swords in the game?
Heavy armor is also better than light armor, without much contest. Light armor speed is fun, but heavy armor will double or triple your HP while allowing you to keep comparable movement speed with lightweight weapons. As a bonus issue, the game has a currency for cosmetics when running around town, but equipping a cosmetic in your hat slot unequips your combat headgear and vice versa, which is one of the most baffling QoL issues I've ever seen in my life.
While this review has focused on Young Souls' drawbacks, I want to emphasise that there is a fun co-op beat em up here, just as good as others in the genre when that's what it's focusing on. While the bossfight focus and RPG elements do not come together, bouncing enemies off walls like tennis balls is fun.
Just please keep my warning in mind that the "developer intended difficulty" will not give you a fair or fun challenge, but instead a very unbalanced exercise in frustration.

Superficially stunning, yet full of regretful developmental choices and angst.
Just like young folk, the title fits to a T.

the animation and graphics are just amazing. the game does support remote play together btw, although posts in the forum say otherwise, just press shift tab in game, go on friends tab, right click on the friend you want to invite and press remote play together. (you might need to connect two controllers on the host pc)

Love the art style and gameplay. A bit on the hard side, but switching equipment to take advantage of a bosses weakness usually does the trick. Little things like being able to pick out the twins clothes at the begging of the day is a nice touch but the human town serves little purpose other than being where most of the shops are and I would have liked to see more of the area and had some more NPCs to interact with.
I'd say grab it when its on sale or if you're in the mood for an old school beat em up with some modern mechanics thrown in

I just 100% this and had a pretty good time. I very much enjoyed the personalities of the dual protagonists. I do also wish I had someone to play it with co-op to make this even better, but it was fun solo.

My only real issues with this game are the slow loading times. I don't know what takes it so long to load anything since the game isn't that new and the graphics don't look that complex to warrant the waits.

Would recommend though.

A fun action RPG with good graphics and game play.