Soul Saga

So...okay. I remember when I added this game to my wishlist. A LONG time ago, almost a year now I believe. At that time, it came across like a standard RPG. It seems (at least according to the developer) that based on a desire not to go with the traditional mechanics, the game has now changed to something more resembling a visual novel with occasional airship-ness. I believe the airship-ness is what they wanted to use as the selling point. Normally this would be okay, except that (at least from what I did play) the game has become absolutely dry. Instead of a fully explorable 3D world, you are basically just advancing text like a visual novel. A visual novel is NOT what I wanted, else I would have bought that kind of game. Things just "happen" - here's a guildhouse for you, here's an airship for you, here's your first guild member, etc. There's no real "build" to any of it and the story isn't enticing to go through. I could forgive the pacing issue, if it weren't for the horrible airship parts. Controls are clunky (in my opinion) and it's just an exercise in fetch quests. Looks nice, but not fun compared to what originally attracted me. Sadly, I did ask a refund because this isn't at a point where I even see potential to get better. Not without a complete rewrite (which I know won't happen). I am always willing to forgive developers that get it wrong when they fix it. And he appears to be course correcting. But he maintains a very smarmy, very arrogant attitude about it - like he's offended that so many people dislike his current direction. Maybe, sir, you need to understand that your vision is your vision, but you then will reap what you sow if people don't like it. Worst case, release two games - the original game you put out AND this other Frankengame that you developed and see which is more popular by sales numbers. Because at the end of the day, that's all that matters - what's going to sell, not necessarily what YOU like. Here's what we ALMOST got, by the way. Now, if the below video is an insta-buy for you, let the developer know this. Please. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUn2KX-bppQ But in the bigger picture of a thing, if you choose to try this game, be forewarned of how you will be treated by a developer that will happily take your money and not respect you as a customer. He'll ban you for challenging his design direction and threaten you for trying to help him understand that he got it wrong. It happens. The difference is - as with No Man's Sky, for example - instead of going dictatorial, they FIXED their game and welcomed criticism, instead of asking for an echo chamber.

I don't know what happened to the game I originally wishlisted this for eons ago, but this aint it. I also don't know where the recommended votes for this game are coming from either, but I suppose to each their own. -The game was originally billed as a "Classic JRPG experience" only to bait and switch people with an official post saying it was now a Rogue-Lite apparently?? -Even viewing this game under the current lens of what it is and what's there, it's currently a menu driven, short on story, character, and world building breeze through that gave you zero attachment to any of the individuals or events on screen. Everything from the guild, to the members, to the airship are just given to you. -The aforementioned airship desires it's own footnote since it's such a high selling point of the game now. "Skill based airship exploration" is short hand for controlling what feelings like a flying whale on roller skates as your ship bounces around, crashes, or just generally slides with every movement. Throw out any semblance of exploration either since every map is dry for content aside from a few nodes to maybe collect some resource, but mostly just contain highly unbalanced battles (we'll get to that in a minute). Topping off this problem of exploration is the fact that if you even for a moment leave the safety of flying over land, or fly too far over it even, a massive enemy swoops by to put an end to that pesky freedom and exploration. -Combat was probably one of the only surviving aspects of anything even remotely jrpg which is unfortunately the highest praise I can give it. Turns revolve around waiting for timer bars to fill before you get to take your actions, but it's combined with this turn by turn modifier system which basically determines for you what you'll get to do, because if you aren't matching with it then you'll do piss all. This modifier also applies to enemies, so at times largely out of your own control enemies will just get to chain attacks on you with back to back damage increases, sometimes before you've even gotten to react, creating an intensely upsetting experience. Nothing about it felt consistent or ever in my control, and that's one swift way of killing any remaining interest. TLDR; Don't go into this thinking it's going to be an RPG, because after waiting so long it breaks my heart to see what the game has become.

After hating the game and deciding to give it a second chance, I embark on my journey in my bumper car to go on my quest to bump into a glowing area to indicate a quest for my boring battles [at least I assume as nothing is explained]. I'm doing okay, progressing. Avoiding the flying monster that previously irked me, in spite of being unable to control the bumper car well at all. I'm safe, I've got an island between me and the monster and there's an item floating there so I go for it. Only for the monster to clip through the island, send me flying and I then blow up. Dead. Equally dead is my desire to play this game. It's comical. I would highly suggest against buying this game. Not just because it's painfully unfun, with horrible controls, ugly graphics, bland combat, and a pointless story that gets in the way and serves no purpose other than to tell not show the things you might find interesting. But mainly because this developer has a really bad track record with keeping communication up with a community. I am a kickstarter backer of "Soul Saga, the first 3D J-RPG on Kickstarter!" that this was at one time supposed to be. The fact that I learned it wasn't a JRPG from an announcement on here and nothing on kickstarter about that should speak for itself on how well the developer is at dealing with a community. [which he's trying to backtrack on on Kickstarter saying it was a kneejerk reaction and that it's still a JRPG even though it plays nothing like one other than bland battle system]. I was somewhat looking forward to trying an indie JRPG when I had time. Only to see that which pushed me to try it now out of shock and confusion. And if that's not enough, the last post on kickstarter prior to Early Access was in October 2018. Granted, that post is about how he'll not update kickstarter with every update and instead you have to follow him on patreon. And while the updates were 'free'... why should people have to do that at all? And I think making the game an entirely different genre of game is worth updating as many of the people who already paid you rather than the tiny fraction who wanted to follow you on a different website. I don't know, call me crazy. I don't see that changing much, just look at the Steam Forums. I can't imagine things going that well here. And my personal interactions with the developer on twitter were not great. And not to get too into that, what the issue was ultimately stemmed from my disagreeing with something he said. How it went after is largely irrelevant to how it could be applied to an Early Access development cycle. But not being able to handle a disagreement in a respectful way, not being able to keep a community who already gave you money in the know about your game, and not being able to keep more than one post per page on steam forums open... it does not bode well to me. [edit; currently he's unlocked threads, but I don't think it really changes the overall concern any potential consumer should have about this title in Early Access]. If you are interested, wait. Wishlist it and play the long game. Wait until the game is finished, then see how well it is. If it is ever finished, and if it's not a cooking simulator by then.

TL;DR: This is not the RPG game you were hoping for, like it was originally described to be. I could be entirely wrong and, in the future, it may be a great RPG game, but I HIGHLY doubt that. Steam will not refund this scam, er I mean, game. I’m out the money, you don’t have to be. Take caution. Full Review: Ok, I don’t know what happened to the original concept of this game. It took a major turn for the worst and south. It feels like a lifetime ago I put this game on my wishlist and waited for it ever since. It was supposed to be a classic JRPG, this game is not. I wanted to love this game. I really, REALLY did. Originally this game was everything I wanted it to be and I was beyond excited for it, I truly was. The original concept from images, video, the promise of the classic JRPG is all gone. The gameplay is incredibly clunky, and I can’t even begin to start on the dialog. Not just the text choice looking ugly, but the dialog is just painful. I really don’t want to assume this was a cash grab by putting it in early access, but the game is just utterly terrible. Saying this was almost a decade in the making is a total joke. I WISH I COULD REFUND THIS. A little backstory on this development. This started in Kickstarter in about 2013 receiving around 200k with thousands of backers if I remember correctly. The “delivery” of the Kickstarter was supposed to be sometime in 2014, which never happened. After that, Kickstarter updates stopped entirely. But it wasn’t just that, Patreon advertising started to come to get more money and patrons to get updates. This song and dance continued even from steam comments pointing to Patreon. It just started to scream scam if you investigated it deeper, I unfortunately did not look in deeper until I had contact with others experiencing the same issues with the developer and game. I am so disappointed I can't even get my fully thoughts out there on this. Read the other honest reviews like this one and I'm sure you'll get to understand the community frustration.

Unfortunately the game is too unpolished, even for early access. I thought it was going to be a 3d JRPG but instead you fly around in an airship and then just use menus to explore the town? The airship doesn't control very well and there's no option to reverse your Y-axis. The little story I saw so far is pretty barebones and stuff just kinda happens? Gameplay mechanics aren't explained at all and I kept dying in the level 1 quest area. Maybe I'll come back to this but probably not due to a) it not being what it was described as previously and b) lack of polish. I'm not sure this was ready to be put out in Early Access yet? Some pluses: the artwork is nice and the music is good. I think the battle system could go somewhere interesting. I liked how different turn bonuses would come up (similar to Trails in the Sky but with less variety that I could tell) so you'd have to decide if you wanted to attack right then when the ATB bar was full or if you wanted to wait for a better bonus.

Abandoned game. No more updates or fixes. Wasted a Kickstarter on this.

Kickstarted this in 2012 and all I can say is, imagine taking 8 years to put something like this out. The moment I got through the opening exposition and started moving around in the first room I knew that this was in a sad state. The character starts moving in a direction before his sprite has even fully turned in the direction he is moving. I may bother to check it out in a few months to a year if the developer doesn't abandon it after this public reception. Right now I can tell from the first 10 min that it isnt remotely worth it. UPDATE: Tried in august 2021 and no progress has been made. Not worth your time. Furthermore, the developer bans anyone who may say something negative in the forum posts due to a fragile ego. Apparently it goes against "ability to follow rules." Only forum I have ever been banned from, so it should give you an insight as to how bad the silencing of negative criticism is for this game. Seriously avoid it. Worst money I have ever spent on a game. I should specify that I was banned for answering someone in a forum who asked if this had been abandoned. I replied that there has been no new updates since 2020 and the twitter account was silent. Dude is either a megalomaniac or a child. Legitimately was posting on his official game account about his divorce, completely unprofessional. I also checked and he deleted the topic of the person asking if the game had been abandoned rather than just reply "no it hasnt." Twitter quotes for proof. https://twitter.com/disastercake/status/901643344794664960 https://twitter.com/disastercake/status/907043724194017280

I feel bad for the developer as he had to go through a lot but I'm sad at what the game has turned out to be. I'm a backer and I was looking forward to a JRPG with towns to explore, not this. I hope this finds an audience, but this game has affected how I approach KickStarter projects from now on.

Where to begin... This is the culmination of close to a decade's worth of work.. supposedly. The developer started by kickstarting this as specifically the "first 3-D JRPG on Kickstarter" way back in 2013. He received almost $200k from thousands of backers. With an original estimated delivery of mid 2014, we blew past that. Updates on kickstarter stopped in 2018, where he tried to funnel people to Patreon... rofl, presumably to try to scam more money by getting people to become patrons by making that the place to go for any updates. Cut to this week, and the game finally "releases" to Early Access. Years of waiting, hundreds of thousands of backers money, and the JRPG that gets released to "Early Access" (what a laugh).... isn't a JRPG. It's a crummy mobile game masquerading as a rogue-lite, having abandoned any trappings of either JRPG or quality. The worst thing is, any negative feedback given to the fraudster..errr...developer is met with smarmy angry comments, or just outright deleted if the platform allows it. This game is junk and based on the attitude of the developer will remain so. Steer clear.

SOULESS SAGA Been looking forward to this game for years, refunded it within an hour, what a "Disaastercake" this turned out to be. I'm just really glad I did not back this game all those years ago, bet there's MANY people wishing they hadn't now either.. I feel sorry for them and bet they feel cheated out of their cash with this VERY DIFFERENT game than what was advertised. DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME !! keep your cash for Trials of Mana or/and Crystal Chronicles.