What I’ve placed in my reviewing spotlight today is Souldiers, a 2D, high-fantasy metroidvania with a few Souls-like elements and a light sprinkling of Norse mythology added in for good measure. I shall now prepare a concise field debriefing about what makes up the “heart and soul” of Souldiers. Your character is enlisted in the military of Zarga, one of three major countries that rule the continent of Ascil. The King of Zarga has just concluded a meeting with his war council as his trusted military leader, General Brigard, prepares to lead Zarga’s army to war against Dadelm.

The king concludes the meeting by declaring that the army will follow General Brigard’s battle plan to the letter. Right as the council is preparing to leave the meeting chamber, the group is held up by Arkzel, a powerful sorcerer and fellow adviser to the King of Zarga. Arkzel proposes a change of strategy; how he convinces the king and the rest of the war council to go along with his plan isn’t explained. Considering the meeting was already over when he did this, I guess Arkzel must be as skilled in persuasion as he is in the magical arts.

If I were the king or anyone else in that council, I would compare Arkzel to that annoying classmate who reminds the teacher that they forgot to assign homework right before the dismissal bell rings on a Friday, and retaliate accordingly. Regardless, Arkzel’s new plan sees General Brigard and a company of his best troops wind up at the edge of a cave waiting for an enemy force to appear. Right as Brigard and his troops take their positions, an earthquake collapses the ground beneath the lot of them and sends them falling into the cave below.

General Brigard quickly shakes off any effects he had from the fall and takes stock of his surroundings. He and his troops are now stuck underground with no sense of direction, but at least they’re all alive and unharmed. At least, that’s what the situation looks like to them. The group is suddenly blinded by a pillar of unearthly light, from which a Valkyrie appears before them. If you’re familiar enough with Norse mythology to know that Valkyries are charged with escorting the souls of fallen warriors to their afterlife in Valhalla, you know that’s probably not a good sign.

The Valkyrie declares that you, your fellow troops, and General Brigard have indeed perished in battle, even though the battle you expected to fight never actually started. General Brigard argues that the Valkyrie must have made a mistake, since he and his troops all appear perfectly alive. The (incredibly patient) Valkyrie explains that “[it] is not only rocks and earth that separate you from the outside. There is something else, more powerful than any attempt you can make to escape.” There may be a powerful sorcerer among the troops, but not even they can save the group now.

The Valkyrie presents all of you with a choice: Accompany her into the pillar of light from whence she came, or stay behind and “fade into dust with the passage of time.” That’s enough to convince General Brigard that the Valkyrie truly isn’t mistaken. General Brigard and the majority of his troops, including you, take the Valkyrie up on her offer. Once you emerge on the other side of the Valkyrie’s portal, you meet Liandris, Matriarch of the Valkyries. Liandris instructs you to “forget everything you thought you knew” because “you are now in a very different place from whence you came.”

Liandris explains that the world upon which you now stand is ruled by “a worldly God, a Guardian who awaits your arrival.” Your main quest is now to overcome every challenge that stands in your way and find that Guardian, wherever he may be. If you manage to pull that off, “you will pass into the next plane where you will be named a champion in the great battle of the Gods, Ragnarok, and be granted unimaginable powers.” That brings me (at long last) to Souldiers’ core gameplay loop. You can choose one of three character classes to play as.

You can be a Scout, an Archer, or a Caster, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. If you’ve played virtually any similar RPG, you’ve probably got an idea of what each class is all about. Scouts are melee fighters with large health pools and high attack power, Archers are agile and can attack from range, and Casters are fragile “glass cannons” that can deal tons of ranged damage so long as they don’t get hit often. In the vast majority of class-based games I enjoy, I prefer to be a “tank,” so I chose to play as a Scout.

Souldiers presents itself as a metroidvania, which means its campaign features a lot of exploration and eventual backtracking to previous areas once you’ve acquired certain new abilities. The main thing I like about Souldiers is that its gameplay manages to be challenging while avoiding being unreasonably difficult or insulting the player’s intelligence. I also like that Souldiers’ gameplay rewards the player’s intuition pretty often. Even though the process of exploring environments in Souldiers can be confusing at times, you’re often rewarded for making logical deductions and “properly putting the pieces of the puzzle together,” so to speak.

For example, I encountered a part in its first dungeon where I thought, “I’ll take damage if I jump into this deep water, but the map shows there are areas directly beneath here that I haven’t been to yet. That must mean I’ll eventually either find a way to get around the water, drain the water away, or gain the ability to swim.” Speaking of the map, you can’t view your map or use consumables when your character’s hands are occupied, like when you’re climbing a ledge. While this makes logical sense, it can be annoying in certain situations.

It’s frustrating when you only die because you were at low health while being attacked by out-of-reach enemies, but you couldn’t use a health potion because you had to climb up to a new height. The topic of combat leads me to suggest that you might want to turn down Souldiers’ in-game sound effects, especially if you’re using headphones. As an example, a sound effect plays every time you hit an enemy, and the loudness of this effect stacks based on how many enemies you hit at once. That can make combat and its associated sound effects uncomfortably loud, or perhaps even painfully so.

Souldiers also often requires at least somewhat precise jumping and climbing. I had a fair amount of difficulty playing Souldiers with a keyboard and mouse because of this. I’d highly recommend using a gamepad if you can. In both cases, though, this aspect of Souldiers makes me concerned that the need for some degree of precision could present an accessibility issue for some players. Even though I understand the developers’ decision to keep the user interface clutter to a minimum, I think Souldiers should have made better use of available screen space when designing the player’s HUD.

Souldiers has RPG elements that mean you gain experience and level up by defeating enemies. The only way you can see how close you are to leveling up is by pausing the game and looking for the experience bar within one of the pause menus. This feels like a minor complaint, but having an experience bar somewhere on-screen that could be checked at a glance would have been nice. With all of those complaints out of the way, some unexpectedly nice design choices caused me to look more favorably upon Souldiers than I otherwise would.

My favorite example of those is as follows: You’ll frequently encounter statues where you can save your progress, and saving at a statue fully restores your health and stamina (or mana if you’re a Caster). You can also fast travel between these “save statues” to get around locations more quickly. That mechanic is great to have on its own, but that’s not the extent of it. The animation that plays when you fast travel, which shows your character being escorted to the destination fast travel point by two Valkyries, really puts the metaphorical “cherry on top” for me.

I quite enjoy Souldiers even though I’m not the most stalwart fan of metroidvania games. Since the games that originated the term “Souls-like” are notorious for their high difficulty, seeing the phrase “Souls-like” used in association with any game is usually enough to entirely dissuade me from playing it, or at least make me much more hesitant to do so. However, I never encountered that or any similar issues with Souldiers. If you’re a fan of metroidvania games and/or Norse mythology to any degree, I’d recommend giving Souldiers a try.

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Souldiers

$19.99

7.5

Score

7.5/10

Pros

• Enjoyable infusion of Norse mythology in the story.
• Challenging gameplay that’s neither unfair nor insulting.
• Small, pleasant aesthetic design choices.

Cons

• Control methods could be an accessibility issue.
• Many important UI elements are hidden in pause menus.
• Sound effects can be much too loud.