SOULS is a bit too deceptive with it's outlook

33576256

SOULS (Reviewed)

Developer: Habby

Publisher: Habby

Released: Aug 20th, 2023

If you had no way to perceive this game besides the screenshots provided, then you might feel the way they depict the game overall is as a colorful adventure game, possibly on the same level as a game like Journey, this is far from the truth.

SOULS is just another clone of the already oversaturated Gacha auto-battler genre the like of which games like Raid Shadow Legends thrive on, but without a lot of the content and with a more uninteresting structure with heavily locked restrictions.

Presentation

Repetitive The game looks nice, but the audio can get on your nerves. There isn't much music and there is a constant static that is apparent every so often in battles due to what I assume to be audio tearing. Each stage (1-x) and so on, repeats the same soundtrack indefinitely until the next entire stage. This becomes irritating as it provides no auditory entertainment, and is better off muted totally to focus on the game. 

The constant pressure to play the game every so often especially within the window of 24 hours due to the fear of missing out on dailies and pulls becomes tiresome, but that is how these games usually go in that regard. You get passive and active rewards, all dependent on how many daily and weekly events you complete, etc.

The game promotes itself as having a visually appealing world with stunning landscapes and vistas, yet this is all marketing. You spend the large bulk of your time looking at a stage, upgrading heroes and gearing them up with little else to do. You're not out running around and flying through the world as you may have assumed.

You can talk with other players, and it appears to have a community that is actively playing and offering each other advice on which heroes are the best and their days.

Gameplay

A bit dull with little excitement The gameplay consists of you progressing through each stage with virtually little on the side to distract you outside of finding equipment and forging better heroes and upgrades. However, as previously said, this is not an adventure game. On the surface, their marketing appears to be deceptive, it's just another run of the mill auto-battler.

In terms of actual gameplay, you have a number of heroes, each with their own unique set of powers, abilities, and ways of fighting in their heroes order in combat.

Calix, in the above image, is a de-buff support with a (x3 V Form) who will target the fighters closest to the front of the lineup and one or two more behind them depending on where they are currently placed as they won't always be in V form.

Heroes like Idina may attack the entire front line or back line depending their abilities and what kind of role they are rolling with. Both of these heroes are supports. 

Move your heroes around to make the most of your strengths and limitations.

No stage limitations I believe one extremely entertaining component of the game that sets it apart from others is the lack of an energy meter for combat. You can battle as often as you like without running out of resources, allowing for brute force approach or tweaks to get you into the grasp of the methods you should be using to clear levels. 

The game uses a common type of elemental strengths/weakness and calls it Racial Advantage, which is a strange and slightly odd way of wording it. You want to match your best race against the current stage, while avoiding your weaknesses.

You obtain a large number of rewards as you go through each stage or by paying real money on in-game purchases for pay to win bundles and monthly rewards for the "best" gear and materials. Some of the heroes are interesting, but they all appear fairly generic and unappealing, at least when compared to the many other games that are currently accessible. You can also spin some summons to try and pull some legendary or epic heroes if you so wish to do so, but it can be addictive.

While you can level up each individual hero and reset them for a full refund to try out other high tier heroes, you won't get very far without actual gear, which can only be obtained through dungeon exploration and certain stages, dungeons which are severely limited to daily runs behind 10 minute timers forces you to use your daily gems to get in some extra runs to obtain some of the end dungeon rewards in a day.

There are material, gold, soul stones, PvP against players and other elements in the game, but they take a long time to unlock, which does provide some motivation, as any game of this magnitude does. However, I believe that, in comparison to other more visually beautiful and engaging Gacha games, this one places the least emphasis on characters and simply feels dull as a whole with no story.

Conclusion

It doesn't feel very distinctive Games such as Genshin, HSR, and many others, offer a lot of visual flair and style, as well as really attractive characters who you physically want to add to your roster, in addition to actual good gameplay that requires over levelling or appropriate strategy.

Strategy and leveling is really the only thing I can say about this game in comparison.

Much of the fighting is completed by altering your compositions and heroes to deal more and absorb less damage overall, while simultaneously over levelling them with gear and breakthroughs to power your way through each and every stage. If you become stuck, it's time to return to the dungeons or summon some better heroes.

I appreciate auto-battlers like TFT and a few that are no longer available, such as Tales of Crestoria, but any other that I play feel inferior to previous ones and are mostly a time sink or a drain on your financial life. I guess one thing to mention about the game in comparison to others is there is no story. It's just straight to the action.

The game is a 2/5 since I played with audio turned on. I began to enjoy it more with the audio off because it was really distracting, but then they started showing popups that would occur while I was grinding for levels, which I despise. More power to players if they want to support the game, but if the game repeatedly encourages you to buy in-game products and materials, that is not acceptable because $0.89 becomes $8.90, and that becomes $89.0. A vicious cycle to be prayed on.

If the developers put some time into the audio portion of the game I'd give it a 3/5. This concludes my views of this game; while my opinions may be met with criticism, that is what distinguishes gamers; you don't have to like the same things as others, nor do you have to agree with them.

If you want to catch me on one of my streams or locate me on social media, you may do so at the following locations, I'm always playing something new.

Twitch

Twitter

Steam Curation

- Pawkt