Souldiers begins with dying. Your dying, the truth is. However fortunately it’s not the tip of your story.

Killed by an earthquake after ready in ambush at a mountain deadlock, a Valkyrie seems and affords you an opportunity to dwell as soon as extra. For what function is unknown, however what have you ever obtained to lose? Apart from, aren’t you no less than a bit intrigued by the entire affair? The one factor on our minds was discovering out if we’d been betrayed by the King’s adviser who’d stationed us in such a precarious place.

However that’s the place your time with Souldiers, developed by Retro Forge, begins: within the darkness. You’ve obtained an essential option to make – whether or not to be an archer, caster or scout – earlier than heading right into a pillar of sunshine to see what’s on the opposite aspect. It seems it’s a land you’ve by no means been to earlier than, and so begins an journey into the unknown.

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The character class you select will decide your fundamental skills, however the gameplay stays a lot the identical regardless. This can be a metroidvania, and so a lust for exploration will serve you properly. The early hours of the sport had us transferring from a lush plain right into a darkish, dank tunnel stuffed with spiders and different nasties. However from the very get-go, the gameplay had us hooked.

With one button you may carry out a light-weight assault, with one other a robust assault. Mix them and you’ll create your individual combos. However Souldiers additionally helps you to block, dodge, and make use of quite a few expertise to beat your enemies. We quickly gained entry to bombs, for instance, helpful for blowing up each our adversaries and partitions. And ultimately we additionally gained the facility of a fireplace orb, permitting us to show up the warmth on our foes and in addition burn environmental objects comparable to thick spider webs.

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The controls are crisp and responsive, and the fight – described as being “crunchy” and “soulslike” on the sport’s Steam web page – is participating. Don’t fear when you don’t like tough video games, nevertheless; Souldiers does have three problem ranges to select from, and on Soldier – the center of the three – we discovered the gameplay not precisely a walkover however removed from what we’d name difficult.

Like in most metroidvanias although, it would pay to go off the overwhelmed path to hunt out secrets and techniques and upgrades. There’s gear to seek out, and a levelling system that may see you develop stronger as you overcome enemies. There are masteries to study, too, supplying you with entry to new skills and different boosts. The extra you set into Souldiers, the extra you’ll seemingly get out of it.

Nevertheless it’s not simply all about exploration and fight: typically you’ll additionally want to make use of your mind. Throughout our time with a preview construct of the sport, a couple of puzzles blocked our progress. They weren’t significantly tough to resolve, principally revolving round transferring blocks or massive boulders to permit us to achieve entry to new areas, however they properly broke up the motion. And little question you may anticipate extra of them as the sport progresses.

With its lovely retro-styled graphics and gameplay that simply attracts you in, we predict Souldiers is shaping as much as be a mighty nice metroidvania certainly. We are able to’t wait to go hands-on with the complete sport, and the excellent news is we don’t have to attend too lengthy, both. It launches nineteenth Could not solely on PC but additionally consoles. So, when you’re hankering for a brand new metroidvania to play, you’d be very clever to maintain it in your radar. And when you’re a PC gamer, you may strive a demo for it proper now on Steam.

Souldiers launches nineteenth Could on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Collection X/S, Swap and PC

Add Souldiers to your Steam wishlist or play the demo