I had a lot of hope going into Finding the Soul Orb. We were promised combat, beautiful visuals, and collectibles galore, plus a fun storyline involving a magical orb and werewolves. And, to be fair, this is probably one of Tony Bodur's best games to date because of the inclusion of these elements.
The crossbow combat is relatively frequent in the game, and it's mostly functional. Sometimes your arrows should hit and they go screaming off into the ether, but normally they hit. If you have trouble aiming, the point of impact is the left edge of your targeting reticle. The reload animation is long, but usually this doesn't matter. You normally just snipe the wolves from half a mile away because they don't react to you at long distances, even when injured. One might say that they're not very self-awerewolves.
There is even, supposedly, a crossbow upgrade in the game, though I did not come across it. You can shoot while walking but not while running, which makes sense. Honestly, the combat made this a much more pleasant experience than a normal walking simulator. It's not that I'm out for blood (though certain people on the dev team could be forgiven for thinking that I am)--I just want things to do, and if you don't get close enough to aggro the enemies, you can pretend like it's a fun stealth game.
When you do aggro an enemy and then shoot it, it does an about face, runs a couple of paces, and then performs another about face before running towards you once more. I found this endlessly hilarious, as though the werewolf thought, "Ouch!
Attacking this guy was a terrible idea! But what nerve! Why I oughta--" So even when this happened, I was entertained.
There is some variation in the enemies, though you could be forgiven for not noticing it. They're even placed decently in the maps: sometimes they sneak up on you, and sometimes one will be somewhat difficult to find when you're clearing an area. The combat segments really made me want to play Senua's Sacrifice again, which is as positive as I've felt playing a TB game in a long time.
The graphics of FtSO, as usual, are nice, though this game is the only TB title so far that has required me to turn down a graphics setting. I would get 30-40 FPS whenever there was dense foliage nearby. Turning down the Effects setting solved this problem for the most part. It appears that one of the effects is to have all the grass and trees cast shadows, which is pretty taxing, I guess. Another couple of graphics notes: there is one very misty area, which looks great, there is a very wonky glass-breaking effect that looks terrible, and once again Tony relies on his trick of using huge assets in the background to make you go "Oooh! Ahhh!" This is like a pesticide--it gets less effective every time you use it.
The story is a little sad. There is an orb, which is 100% good. There is a tyrant, who is 100% bad. I won't spoil anything that happens after that, but the exposition given is incredibly repetitive, and about 2/3 of the way through, the story starts becoming vaguer and vaguer until you're not sure what's going on. I feel like this is perhaps an attempt at a horror story for dementia patients. You get drilled time and again with the same starting information, only for the plot to completely lose you later on, inflicting terror of the unknown over and over again.
The dialogue of the game is also problematic. This game takes place in ye olden days, but the dialogue is almost all anachronistic. You have people saying "Yep," "On it," and giving each other high fives. I would not expect complete period authenticity, but I would like it to sound a little more LOTR and a little less Die Hard.
Another little detail of the story that I can't wrap my head around: the game's protagonist does not seem to play as any one of the story's characters. It seems as though the story happens, reaches its happy ending, and then civilization collapses sometime later, and you arrive on the scene in the post-apocalyptic aftermath of its demise, only able to find clues as to what had happened previously. I wish that you would play as the story's protagonist, who gets to interact with other characters, develop as a character himself, and complete specific objectives. It doesn't seem like that much of a stretch, what with combat already implemented and all. Maybe someday we will see a real game from the TB team. Seeing as this is not that game, I cannot recommend it (mostly due to the disorganized, uninteresting writing), but it comes closer than I expected.
If you are looking for a budget game title on Steam that adds actual story interest and/or gameplay while still remaining in the broader "casual" category, I would recommend the following: Antihorror, Life of Griether, and Only If. These games show what a team like TB could accomplish with limited and pre-fab resources, just with a little more creativity. Antihorror is a black comedy walking simulator, Life of Griether is a medieval combat game that's just hilarious and bursting with energy, and Only If is a surreal experience that largely defies categorization, but none of these incorporates any programming genius that would be out of the reach of a team that can make FtSO.
