REVIEW - Soulvars is a good effort, but not without missteps

The team behind Soulvars must be commended for taking a double challenge by first creating an original game on the crowded mobile market and then by porting it to consoles. The result is an inventive take on the deck-building RPG genre that sadly falls short in a couple of areas, mainly due to its mobile roots.

The strongest feature of Soulvars is, by far, its deck-building system. The cards, called Soulbits, are the essence of the game. Every piece of Gear has different Soulbits associated to them, so your deck depends of what you choose to wear. Also, many Gears have slots that can be enhanced by putting Modules on them. Those Modules could be extra Soulbits, or they can boost your stats. They can be removed and reused at any time.

In battle, you have access to five Soulbits at a time, but you can only use as many as the number of Action Points (AP) that you have available in that turn. You start with one AP but if you play strategically, you can increase that number for the next turn. For example, hitting a weakness, blocking an attack, or debuffing an enemy will increase your APs for the next turn. Any action that increases your APs also increases your FLOW gauge. Once that gauge hits 100% you can use your equipped Soulflow, which heals you and may temporarily boosts some stats.

It is very important to increase your APs because by combining two or three specific Soulbits they transform into an Art, which are powerful skills that can turn the tide of battle. You can learn Arts by using certain items that you find or buy, but they can also be unlocked through the most important Gear you have: Souldrives.

Every Souldrive that you equip will increase its own Sync Rate after every battle. Once you reach a certain threshold, you can use SoulFragments (additional items you can also gain after winning a match) to unlock Arts, Abilities, or permanent stat boosts. Additionally, the higher the Sync Rate, the bigger the stat boost that equipping that Souldrive will give you. We will talk more about Souldrives later.

To finish our analysis of the battle system, we need to talk about the Burst Rate. Every attack will either be normal, strong, or debuffing, or it will increase the Burst Rate. Enemies will lose a turn and receive increased damage when the Burst Rate reaches 100%. Hence, it is key to play your Soulbits strategically.

All the preparation for and the battles themselves are where Soulvars shines. Before going into any battle, you want to pay attention to the synergy between Gears – especially your Souldrive, Arts, Abilities, and Soulbits. Then, once the encounter starts, you want to boost your APs while increasing the Burst Rate and be clever about how you combine your Soulbits to use powerful Arts.

It is extremely satisfying to pull out great combinations, especially against challenging bosses. You also want to be fast; if you run out of Soulbits, you need to pay a percentage of your health to reload. In Hard difficulty you have to pay 50% of your health, but in Easy only a 10% cost is needed. To somewhat counter this, you can recover a bit of your health by using a limited amount of items in battle, certain Soulbits, your Soulflow, or by using Alternation.

Alternation is a special Ability that can be used once per battle when your health is under 40%. You fully recover your health and all your stats increase. You also gain access to a powerful Soulbit. Once you use that Soulbit, you go back to your usual stats, so it is best to use such skill to finish a battle or if you are about to faint.

Clearly the team behind Soulvars created a great battle system, and it made sense to port their game from the mobile space to consoles. Sadly, there are a couple of areas where the transition was not as smooth as it could have been and the game suffers from it.

The biggest problem I found was the grind. Any RPG fan is used to some level of grinding, but the way Soulvars handles it is not as fun. You permanently increase your stats by unlocking bonuses on your Souldrive. Once you reach a certain point with a Souldrive – or when you have unlocked all the permanent stat bonuses – you’ll want to pick a different Souldrive to start unlocking new bonuses. However, the moment you change Souldrives, your stats change as well because the equipped Souldrive will boost your stats depending on its Sync Rate. Let us see an example in these screenshots:

Therefore, if you want to grind a Souldrive from scratch, all your stats will be so low that you either face low level enemies or try only one battle with strong enemies, hoping that you win, and then leave the dungeon to heal. Neither option is particularly fun. Perhaps in the mobile space, by playing little bits here and there, the grind does not feel as bad. Nonetheless, on consoles, it feels like padding in what is otherwise a nice battle system.

Other faults are the music, which is not bad but not memorable, and the way the story is told. If you read the eShop description or the in-game glossary, you can see what the story is about. However, if you only go by the story cutscenes, you may feel a little bit lost. It does not help either that the script has typos and grammar mistakes here and there. Additionally, some icons for Soulbits are very similar, which is confusing for a game with so many mechanics. There are a lot pallet swaps for enemies, too. Finally, one dungeon has a very annoying gimmick where you receive damage at the beginning of every battle (about 20% of your health) but, thankfully, it doesn’t take too long to complete it.

These issues aside, the battle system is great and the team did other good things as well. There are multiple, very helpful tutorials in the menu. Many side missions allow you to test your mastery and provide some variety while you grind. I reached the very challenging final boss in Easy mode in about 8 hours but playing in Hard doubled my time (there is more grinding involved). The game’s performance was good in both handheld and docked modes, with only some slowdown in some battles at the end. In one boss battle my game crashed, but it was not a problem since the game does a good job in warning you before boss battles so you can save and prepare beforehand.

Featuring a very satisfying battle system that gets more interesting with the more options you unlock, Soulvars is a good option for deck-building RPG fans. The game is held back by its mobile roots, but playing in little bits can ease some of its problems. It will be great to see what more this team can bring to the table in future games.