Souldiers is a decent concept, held back by poor performance and unbalanced combat.
Singleplayer.
I love difficult games as much as anyone else; however, even I found Souldiers far too difficult, to the point of no longer being fun.
And I am not alone in thinking this, with roughly 37% of all steam reviews being negative, and many of those reviews listing sluggish controls and frustrating difficulty as the reason for leaving a negative review.
While the developers have released several patches addressing the sluggish controls, as of January 2023, the problem remains even though improvements have been made.
While I feel choosing souls-like combat was a mistake, and it does not work well for the genre, If done correctly, souls-like combat can be very rewarding and make even mundane encounters far more rewarding.
Unfortunately, Souldiers have been unable to perfect the formula. While combat is fun and boss battles are incredible, even on the lowest difficulty setting, random mobs hit too hard and appear too often, forcing players to engage with nuisance enemies, which serve little purpose beyond padding out each zone and increasing the overall time to complete.
While I appreciate indie developers feel they need to offer a lot of content to “prove” they are good value for money, many excellent titles such as Metroid Dread come in at less than half Souldiers’s runtime and, for the most part, are beloved by players and critics alike.
Frequent mob encounters aside, unlike traditional souls-like and Metroidvania titles, Souldiers does not feel well optimised. Combat, at times, can be sluggish, resulting in poorly timed attacks and difficulty parrying blows even on high-end hardware. This problem is worse for those forced to play on less powerful consoles such as the Nintendo Switch or launch model Xbox One and PlayStation 4’s.
Souldiers is one of the most authentic-looking 16bit Metroidvanias on the market, and I love looking at this game; as a child of the 90s, my first real experience with “serious gaming” was the Sega Megadrive II (Sega Genesis), and as a result, 16bit games, especially good looking 16bit games are always something that will catch my attention.
That being said, while Souldiers looks like a high-quality game from the 1990s, it also has the benefit of modern technology and storage, allowing for crisper visuals, cinematic audio, and a massive map that would have been near impossible given the limitations of 4th generation consoles.
Souldiers is a action video game developed by Retro Forge and published by Dear Villagers, it was released on 2 June 2022 and retails for $19.99.
Souldiers is available on the following platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
On average Souldiers takes between 25 and 65 hours to complete.
Estimated completion times are derived from various sources and may vary based on the skill level of each player.
The following peripherals are officially supported:
Souldiers is rated PEGI 12+ and contains:
Souldiers is not a bad game by any means, and fans of the Metroidvania genre eager for something new will get their money’s worth.
However, Souldiers is not that enjoyable or polished for the average gamer. There are better titles on the market at similar prices, offering a more immersive and, honestly, enjoyable experience.
