Best way to use summoned souls effectively

Solution 1:

Like a lot of things in the GOW series there are several attacks that don't a provide significant damage benefit, but do increase the excitement of the fight and allow for easier combo-ing. Most people seem to be in agreement that the Claws of Hades souls are in that category.

That being said, The Cyclops Berserker soul will provide one or two very powerful blows that will help with larger creatures, especially in the likely event that Kratos is low on health. Sending the Berserker in to swing away while you deal with other creatures/try to find health worked well for me.

I also think the Soul Rip (L1 + circle) has some worth when you're surrounded by lots of low-grade enemies. The Soul Rip pulls a 'generic soul' from an enemy and causes it to attack any nearby foes. The souls are very weak, but several of them are spawned per hit, so if you use this repeatedly you can cobble together something akin to "splash damage" in which you attack one enemy and cause damage to others nearby. I remember favoring the Claws when fighting groups of grunts because they seemed to go down quicker.

Solution 2:

I actually found them quite useless myself. Outside of getting the trophy, they are really mostly helpful against the undead and at that I've found that to be marginal at best.

After you get it fully upgraded the souls you can summon seem to get a little more useful though. The Centaur General was actually fun to use.

Here's more info on them: Claws of Hades