"Souldiers is a decent concept, held back by poor performance and unbalanced combat."
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. Roughly 37% of all Steam reviews are negative, and many of those cite sluggish controls and frustrating difficulty as the reason for leaving poor feedback.
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 rewarding and make even mundane encounters engaging.
Unfortunately, Souldiers has 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. This forces players to engage with nuisance enemies that serve little purpose beyond padding out each zone and inflating overall playtime.
While I appreciate that indie developers often feel they need to offer lots of content to “prove” value for money, many excellent titles such as Metroid Dread come in at less than half of Souldiers’ runtime — and for the most part, they 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 issue is even worse for those playing on less powerful consoles such as the Nintendo Switch or launch-model Xbox One and PlayStation 4 systems.
Souldiers is one of the most authentic-looking 16-bit 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 Mega Drive II (Sega Genesis), and as a result, 16-bit games, especially good-looking ones, will always catch my attention.
That being said, while Souldiers looks like a high-quality game from the 1990s, it also benefits from modern technology and storage, allowing for crisper visuals, cinematic audio, and a massive map that would have been near impossible on 4th-generation hardware.
Souldiers is an action game developed by Retro Forge and published by Dear Villagers, it released on 2 June 2022, and is available on Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, 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.
Souldiers supports the following peripherals:
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, it is neither polished nor enjoyable enough for the average gamer. There are better titles on the market at similar prices that offer a more immersive, and honestly, more enjoyable, experience.
We found Souldiers to be a poor game, meaning that while it has some redeeming qualities, it's ultimately disappointing and not recommended for most gamers.
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