Soul Stalker is a bullet heaven roguelike where you assume the role of a steward of ghosts bound to eternal life on earth. Wield 4 to 6 weapons simultaneously to fend off waves of apparitions determined to defeat your spirited friends.
Developed by: Radhood Advance
Played on: Nintendo Switch
Length: ~ 25 minutes per run (6-8 hours for completionists)
A review key was provided by Soft Source Publishing.
The first thing that caught my eye about this game is its Paper Mario-like aesthetic, that really made Soul Stalker stand out amongst the sea of similar games that often utilise a pixelated artstyle. The game plays very similarly to Vampire Survivors, with additional roguelike elements such as a branching path at the end of each level to choose your preferred enemy to face or upgrade path to take.
Most people who have had any experience with roguelikes, bullet hells or ‘auto-battlers’ of a similar nature would feel right at home playing this game. However, unlike most of the mainstream titles, Soul Stalker seems cosier and simpler. Its difficulty curve felt like the opposite of similar titles; starting out extremely easy, before gradually becoming harder with the use of a difficulty modifier to make the game tougher.
The easy difficulty is great for introducing new players to the game and the genre, but it leaves roguelike fans coming into the game looking for a challenge disappointed. On that note, I suspect that the difficulty might be too easy even for newbies of this genre. There were too many runs where I achieved a build that allowed me to stand in the middle of the map and do nothing for pretty much the entire run at times.
This should be achievable only rarely as a power fantasy, but I was able to achieve this too often and too easily. This issue is most likely a combination of some skills being too powerful and enemies that are too 1-dimensional, as well as the fact that most enemy ranged attacks are nullified by any melee attack, making most threats irrelevant with the right build.
While the game might be too straightforward and easy for fans of the genre like me, it makes up for it with its incredible variety of weapons, trinkets, and characters. The fun of the game is no longer found in trying to complete a run or survive the longest, instead it is found in trying to build the most broken character during each short run with the huge variety of attacking options given.
Even then, the enjoyment found in building a truly overpowered character is short-lived as well. Every time you reach a level of power that is truly considered ‘broken’, the run has ended with the final boss before you are given any significant challenge or enough time to really test the limits of the system.
I also had several nitpicks regarding the Nintendo Switch version of the game:
- Menu navigation feels clunky; you have to move the cursor to select everything instead of a single button press or the D-pad for menu navigation.
- In handheld mode, the view feels too ‘zoomed-out’ to fully enjoy the aesthetic of the game and see ‘big numbers go up’.
- A huge game-breaking bug is found not too far into the game when you interact with a turnip in the overworld. The game fails to load a dialogue or button prompt, forcing you to exit and close the program to reset the game.
Verdict
The game’s overall aesthetic is delightful, and the very straightforward, simple gameplay makes this a perfect ‘pick up and play’ type of game. However, its lack of a much more challenging option early on felt like a misstep to capture the hearts of its genre’s fans.
Wishlist or buy Soul Stalker on Steam, and top up your Steam Wallet on Codashop.
