A lot of things about Soulvars made a lot more sense when I learned it was originally a mobile game. Thats not meant to necessarily be read as me thinking the game is bad or anything, I dont have anything against mobile games but its one of those things where the limitations and design considerations of that platform jumps out at you once youre made aware of it.
Soulvars is an RPG. I guess a JRPG since its published by Shueisha (who apparently publish games now?) and all the screenshots are in japanese. It also describes itself as a deckbuilder but I am not sure I agree. Superficially its combat system of having a set of individual basic attacks and spells which you combine to make even greater spells and techniques are semi randomly loaded on your list of available spells in battle in a way reminiscent of a deckbuilder but I think advertising it as such will leave some disappointed.
Your skills are mostly determined by your equipment, which has the traditional RPG stats but also "soulbits" which act as essentially the games' cards. For example a flame sword might include 2 sword soulbits and 3 fire ones; if you had nothing else on that would be your "deck". Curiously for an RPG however, there is no levelling system. Its substitution for progression is a set of bracelets which I forget what the made up name for them are, which go up in "synchronisation" slightly per battle, higher sync unlocks the ability to spend resources to "purchase" abilities and stat upgrades. These abilities take the form of new combos of soulbits in battle like "flame" + "sword" = "flameslash" etc. This system ends up resembling both in mechanics and in its names the mantra system from digital devil saga, the plot gives a lot of atlus games some looks too, mainly DDS, Persona and Devil Survivor.
This system is in short, a blast. This game very quickly sunk its hooks into me as it hits that sweet spot of being just complicated enough to not be trivial to optimize whilst not actually being hard/discouraging. Its a good thing the combat does work because that really is all the game has going for.
Up until this point I was under the assumption that I enjoyed most RPGs for its story and setting and roleplaying and its gameplay second but this is honestly the opposite. The story, if you can even call it that is told in really brief dialogue exchanges very sparsely (like honestly 5 or 6 dialogue scenes in this 10/12 hour game) and basically a glossary of lore. Then almost at the end I think there is a twist? Im genuinely not sure the exchange was so brief and I think were not even told the actual information. Maybe the glossary updated with that idk. The music is good but I wish there had been more of it and more to the point another alternate battle theme.
For all the insubstantiality of the plot and the characters/party members having only theoretical personalities I quite like the setting. I really dig urban fantasy and its always been one of the main reasons why Ive been attracted to Persona and games like that. And at the risk of going all "Im not a JRPG guy but" most of the turn based RPGs Ive ever gotten into have settings like these or well, just not the standard fantasy stuff. Its part of why I dont have any interest in that new Hashino game. Maybe I just havent been shown the right examples and hell WRPGs go for the tolkien-esque fantasy too much for my tastes but I was kind of heart broken when I found out there was a hard scifi RPG for DS but it sucked apparently.
Personal tangent aside I quite liked Soulvars. If it had had a more substantial plot and didnt start to get samey towards the end (and also if its ending wasnt hilariously abrupt) It would be a personal favourite. It very wisely chooses to end itself after 10 ish hour.
Soulvars is an RPG. I guess a JRPG since its published by Shueisha (who apparently publish games now?) and all the screenshots are in japanese. It also describes itself as a deckbuilder but I am not sure I agree. Superficially its combat system of having a set of individual basic attacks and spells which you combine to make even greater spells and techniques are semi randomly loaded on your list of available spells in battle in a way reminiscent of a deckbuilder but I think advertising it as such will leave some disappointed.
Your skills are mostly determined by your equipment, which has the traditional RPG stats but also "soulbits" which act as essentially the games' cards. For example a flame sword might include 2 sword soulbits and 3 fire ones; if you had nothing else on that would be your "deck". Curiously for an RPG however, there is no levelling system. Its substitution for progression is a set of bracelets which I forget what the made up name for them are, which go up in "synchronisation" slightly per battle, higher sync unlocks the ability to spend resources to "purchase" abilities and stat upgrades. These abilities take the form of new combos of soulbits in battle like "flame" + "sword" = "flameslash" etc. This system ends up resembling both in mechanics and in its names the mantra system from digital devil saga, the plot gives a lot of atlus games some looks too, mainly DDS, Persona and Devil Survivor.
This system is in short, a blast. This game very quickly sunk its hooks into me as it hits that sweet spot of being just complicated enough to not be trivial to optimize whilst not actually being hard/discouraging. Its a good thing the combat does work because that really is all the game has going for.
Up until this point I was under the assumption that I enjoyed most RPGs for its story and setting and roleplaying and its gameplay second but this is honestly the opposite. The story, if you can even call it that is told in really brief dialogue exchanges very sparsely (like honestly 5 or 6 dialogue scenes in this 10/12 hour game) and basically a glossary of lore. Then almost at the end I think there is a twist? Im genuinely not sure the exchange was so brief and I think were not even told the actual information. Maybe the glossary updated with that idk. The music is good but I wish there had been more of it and more to the point another alternate battle theme.
For all the insubstantiality of the plot and the characters/party members having only theoretical personalities I quite like the setting. I really dig urban fantasy and its always been one of the main reasons why Ive been attracted to Persona and games like that. And at the risk of going all "Im not a JRPG guy but" most of the turn based RPGs Ive ever gotten into have settings like these or well, just not the standard fantasy stuff. Its part of why I dont have any interest in that new Hashino game. Maybe I just havent been shown the right examples and hell WRPGs go for the tolkien-esque fantasy too much for my tastes but I was kind of heart broken when I found out there was a hard scifi RPG for DS but it sucked apparently.
Personal tangent aside I quite liked Soulvars. If it had had a more substantial plot and didnt start to get samey towards the end (and also if its ending wasnt hilariously abrupt) It would be a personal favourite. It very wisely chooses to end itself after 10 ish hour.