With the creation of Metroid and Castlevania in the mid-’80s, a new sub-genre of the game was born, creatively named Metroidvania. Many game franchises tried to dabble in the genre, with most notably and recently the addition of Hollow Knight and Ori. Souldiers is willing to follow in the footsteps, but can it or does it get lost along the way.
Battle for Terragaya
Souldiers is the debut title of Retro forge games, a team of six veteran game makers from across the industry and is based in Madrid, Spain. In Souldiers you will take control of either scout, caster or archer, battling for freedom in Terragaya. Terragaya is a mystical land on the border between life aka the living and death aka the fallen. Hone your skills. While out fighting for the glory of your kingdom, you and your fellow soldiers have been whisked away to Terragaya. Your task is to locate the Guardian and moving on to the next world. The hitch? You and your compatriots never actually died.
What is a Metroidvania?
Souldiers, as mentioned before falls in the Metroidvania sub-genre. But what does this mean? This sub-genre falls in the action-adventure type of games but has specific troupes. The games are focused on exploration in a guided non-linearity, large interconnected world. You are guided through the game by collecting power-ups that unlock new areas within the game. These games typically are 2D games with some platforming involved all in a. Souldiers adds souls-like gameplay and environmental puzzles into the mix.
Because of the nature of a Metroidvania, it’s sometimes hard to find out where you need to go. This however is what is expected of this genre of game. Use of the map regularly is definitely recommended.
3 distinct characters
The game boots up with an epic animation intro. The rest of the game however is portrayed by pixel art and dialogue. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing. You can choose from 3 different difficulty modes. Explorer, Soldier, and Warrior, playing the roles of easy-, medium- and hard mode. You can always change the mode, so if you pick hard and really can’t beat it, you can lower the difficulty. This however will disable some achievements. I must say however hard mode was not that hard, it had me wishing for a harder game mode.
As mentioned before you choose from 3 classes, scout, caster, or archer. Each has there own stats and abilities. The scout has balanced attack and defense and can absorb several blows with their shield. Unleash quick combos or strong attacks. The caster is focused on magic. The attacks need to be timed properly, however. The Archer shoots from afar and is really agile. The bow can be used as a boomerang to collect the arrows again. The class can’t be changed throughout your playthrough. There are however multiple saves so you can complete the game multiple times to experience all the classes. Each character also has different stats, being health, mana, attack, and stamina.
Deeper than it looks
Besides this, there are also elemental stats, fire, sand, water, wind and electric. Attacks using the corresponding elements cause burn, blindness, frost, bleeding and paralysis. These effects will be blocked if you have the corresponding elemental defense. Besides these, there are a lot more altered states like asleep and stunned to name a few.
Do not keep avoiding combat with the enemies you encounter. Defeating them with earn you experience which can lead to a level-up. This increases your stats and gives you mastery relics to enhance your abilities. This system works like a skill tree, each unlocking after the other. The skills give you either passive buffs or new moves to perform like the ability to parry. Slash, dodge and parry your way through the world. Use an assortment of potions, weapons, pendants and skills. Collect coins to upgrade your weapons and buy potions to name a few. Explore a sprawling handcrafted landscape filled with treasures, tough-as-nails bosses and secret pathways.
Graphics and sound design
Souldiers ops to go for the 16-bit art-style, arguable the golden age of the Metroidvania genre. I think this is a smart choice, from a historical standpoint as well as a developer’s view, especially for indie developers. This however doesn’t mean the graphics are bad, far from it. I would like to call this more of an HD-2D type of deal. The animations and lighting are really nice and push the game beyond a simple 16-bit game. All the characters and monsters you encounter also have their own piece of lore you can read about for those who really want to know it all.
The game played really nice with no waiting or loading screens and quick saving as well. The FPS was very stable with nothing to complain about there. I played the PC version so maybe the other versions differ, but seeing the 16-bit graphics style, I suggest it will be ok. The game is available on Switch, Xbox one/Series and Playstation 4/5 besides PC.
Conclusion
Overall I enjoyed the game. I loved the ecstatic of it all but I miss some of the magical feel and charm games like Hollow Knight gave me. The fighting mechanics and exploration feel very smooth and nice. The game however became a bit of a slugfest because I felt the difficulty was too easy, even on the hardest setting. Hopefully, they add a higher difficulty mode.
