Titan Souls proves that a little restraint goes a long way.

“ Titan Souls' innocent presentation slowly reveals thoughtful, layered logic typically reserved for puzzle games.

Shoot it in the eye, don't miss, don't get smashed. Sounds simple enough, doesn't it?

The sum of its large-scale boss fights, minimalistic gameplay systems, and one-hit kills should equal frustration, yet with every failure I walked through each boss battle’s entryway more determined, more aware, more ready to take on my massive enemy.Armed with nothing more than my bow and single arrow, I failed again and again, until, suddenly, I didn’t. And I felt like a god.Titan Souls is a top-down 2D action game centered on one-on-one battles. As a child archer, you enter a room, awaken an enemy, and avoid its aggressive and often unpredictable attack patterns in an effort to kill it in a single shot. You can play the original demo here This is a game of precision, endurance, and concentrated skill. In my first fight, I shot an amorphous blob holding a heart in its center. My shot split the slime in two, creating a new foe to follow me, and a smaller target containing my mark.Avoiding rampaging blobs took finesse, awareness of numerous enemies moving at different speeds and in different directions, and quick reflexes. Titan Souls’ main character can only walk, run, roll, shoot, and recover his arrow. Systemically, this is simpler than almost any other action game, but it’s as complex as they come because of its enemy variety, and the ways in which you engage with the environment.A later boss covered his weak spot -- they all have one, it’s just a matter of surviving long enough to identify it, and how you’re going to take the crack-shot at it -- with stone hands. The hands alternate attacking -- left covers, right attacks; left attacks, right guards. Obviously, the small window between its attack and guard moves is the sweet spot, but landing in the right spot at the right time and firing an arrow with the exact amount of power takes an extraordinary amount of luck, skill, and/or practice.But in a battle against a group of enemies that quickly crush, poison, and kill you in any number of one-hit ways, the ability to exploit their sole weakness for an instant victory is as empowering as any outstanding enemy encounter I’ve ever played. I breathed a genuine sigh of relief when firing an arrow through a small flame and into an icy enemy because I didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath.I felt my shoulders loosen up when I let loose an arrow into the eye of a tentacled plant-beast. It was a risky, desperate shot taken from inside a poisonous cloud that, if I didn’t fire and roll with instinctive speed, would have killed me. Believe me, I know. It killed me five times before, when the flailing, spiked tendrils didn’t.Titan Souls is as much about those satisfying successes as it is the failures leading up to it. Character progression doesn’t exist -- this is all about you, your growth, and how you improve on solving Titan Souls’ evolving complexities. Quick deaths lead to rapid learning. Combined with the pure skill necessary to overcome these obstacles, Titan Souls' innocent presentation slowly reveals thoughtful, layered logic typically reserved for puzzle games.The team promises about 20 total enemies, each with its own distinct look, combat style, and solution. I fought eight bosses in Titan Souls. I killed four.This is a thinking person’s combat game, for the contemplative and observant. I am only halfway there, apparently. Challenge, rather than outright difficulty, is what developer Acid Nerve is going for. So far, it’s working, and all because Titan Souls focuses directly on what it does best, and doesn’t let anything get in the way.

Mitch Dyer is an associate editor at IGN. He's trying to read 50 books in 2014. These are the 50 . Talk to Mitch about books and other stuff on Twitter at @MitchyD and subscribe to MitchyD on Twitch