Wayward Souls

I did enjoy playing the game, but I cannot recommend it to the average gamer. It's challenging, but frustrating, charming, but hollow, and ultimately unrewarding. Let me explain. The game is difficult, to put it mildly. At first, the dungeons are relatively easy and inviting. You can try every class and make progress. Very quickly, from the 3rd dungeon onwards, the difficulty ramps up exponentially and only the sweatiest of players can hope to keep up. You will face the following: [list] [*] swarms of enemies in confined rooms that you can't hope to defeat without taking damage [*] enemy combinations that are downright unfair and ridiculous [*] enemies that can resist or ignore your abilities (such as stealth, or stun) with no indication [*] an impressive grind for passive buffs for each character that offer minuscule benefits against the towering horde [*] a frustrating lack of progress with each death [*] cheap deaths that are unavoidable through no fault of your own [/list] The game is terribly unbalanced. It seems like the game is trying to model souls-like levels of difficulty, but since this is a rogue-lite, it just means a lot of retrying and frustration without a sense of progress. Some tweaks would make it more bearable, such as: [list] [*] a difficulty setting to make the game more accessible [*] longer invincibility frames on hit to reduce the chance of getting chain hit and losing half your health in 3 seconds [*] higher rates of money drops from destructibles, or reduced upgrade costs to lessen the grind [/list] But alas, you have none of these. Dying in a game for unfair reasons is not fun, so when you have to do it over and over in order to grind your way through the cash upgrades, it's just compounding the lack of enjoyment. It's a shame since there is a lot to enjoy in the game. The artwork is charming, the music is engaging, and clearly a lot of effort was put in to tell the story. It's unfortunate that most people will not be able to access that story as it's hidden behind the crippling difficulty.

[h2] It pains me to say it's one of those games that i enjoyed but cant recommend. Let me explain:[/h2] - it's a grindfest and upgrades barely have any impact - enemies are designed to OP you. To the most parts, the game doesnt test your skills but your willingness to continue grinding. - exploration is unrewarding. You will not find anything useful or lots of coins when you explore. Instead, you will be swamped by enemies and probably die early. - certain skills attached to certain heroes are pretty much useless so you will probably stick to playing the same one or two heroes [b] The good: [/b] - the dev nailed it in the atmospheric department. i loved the vibe. - the art work is charming - combat is simple yet fun [u] the game has artificial difficulty to test players' patience and frustration. [/u]

I played this game originally on mobile after playing Mage Gauntlet by the same company, Rocketcat Games. I fell in love with it then, and it still holds up today. I just finished getting the last achievement for it and wanted to write this review. The difficulty is just right, the story of all 7 Wayward Souls is unique and refreshing, more than enough so to not make it feel tedious when going through the dungeons again. Each character has distinctive playstyles and abilities and have to all be utilized differently. When I played it on mobile, the Gallus storyline had not yet released, and I can wholeheartedly say it was a fantastic and much needed addition, including both a few twists that I absolutely did not expect and a great ending that wraps up the entirety of the lore and adventure very nicely. 10/10

Bought it despite the red flags from bad review, cuz i recently discovered my love for combat and the story element looks inviting. Absolutely love it so far. I'm kinda bad at it at first since as other reviews said, the combat style of every character is very different. But if you stick to one character for one dungeon at a time and actually learned to play with their power, it's super enjoyable. I personally enjoy taking my time with looting since it's satisfying as hell. But i can see how people can get impatient if they are not into it. Here's to hoping there'll be updates of the game that are not just hats lol

Warning: I booted this up again recently and got a weird visual glitch which made all the text disappear. Game hasn't been updated in a while, so if this is becoming a problem for other people, don't count on it getting fixed. Good art, good music, story. This is technically a roguelike, but the focus is much more on getting to know the combat and learning enemy AI than it is on choosing the correct upgrades or on luck. Combat is slow and deliberate, about managing multiple enemies at a time and minimizing health loss. You will never end up feeling overpowered, this game doesn't let you ascend to godhood, even on the best possible run. Good room variety but no branching paths. Great variety in playable characters, they have very different styles. Relatively low variety in upgrades and items.

Такое впечатление, что завышение сложности направлено исключительно на затягивание процесса, и это не недоразумение, а обдуманный выбор разработчика. Может, я чего-то не понял, но по ощущениям это игра о бесконечной беготне по кругу от толпы в ожидании подходящего момента для атаки.

I really want to like this game, as it is a somewhat competently made game. However some game aspects I think either are cheap tricks, or fundamental issues with combat or progression. The first issue is combat, it has some unfairness that is emphasized in Catacombs specifically. While majority of enemies' attacks can target player in any direction, the player's attack locked to four directions, up down left right. Which is a fine restriction, if not for a couple hazards that punish the player trying to work around it, especially when they are coupled together. Those are invisible, invincible bombs and an enemy type that spawns in Catacombs and I will call Stalker. Stalker is an enemy so absurd the game has to account for its behaviour, breaking its own rule to allow you to leave a combat area with it still lurking because its Surge attack is so inconsistent. And because it is so inconsistent, there will be many times when you supposedly cleared a room only to be stuck there because Stalker is too busy wasting player's time. And if it desides to attack, its Surge attack that it preforms after leaving invisibility is in some situations unavoidable. It is very fast. While you might be dealing with other enemies in the room, the character will be locked into recovery animation from attacks, the Stalker's Surge very often will catch you off-guard. And there is a limited amount of abilities that can either interrupt it, or save you in some way. This enemy alone forces you to play passive and defensive, instead of fighting enemies to run around the room trying to bait its Surge in the hopes that its janky AI will do it, and if the room allows it. If it is a double-room, its over. And more than that, present to you - invisible bombs! Some rooms, sometimes, will have those. And they are not generous, if you trigger one trying to, say, evade some attacks, play around your combat limitations, if you are not anticipating it being there, they will hit you. The cheapest, most annoying "just take damage" type of inconsistent hazard that you cannot even disarm because they are invincible. Enemies don't trigger them either, so they are the player's excluse headache. And there you have it, Catacombs, the "screw the player" area that you have to be either lucky to have only one of the aformentioned hazards, or try to game the system by luring enemies out of the combat rooms abusing their aggression distance, which is defeating the whole purpose of combat rooms that close you into encounters. When encounters are unfair, I feel it is the only solution, which sucks the fun out the game. And while I am at it, for the most part the combat rooms are just an enemy group put in the middle, waiting for you to trigger their attention. There is no interesting placements that could generate interesting routing. Which is why a lot of the time combat encounters feel repetetive, because it is. Some skills and abilities make these encounters trivial. The second issue is with progression is the meta-progression, buying upgrades for characters. I detest rewarding player's "progress" with permanent easement of gameplay. Which I feel is self-evident why that is a bad idea. In this case, as you progress through sections, game difficulty is ramping up really fast, which at least alleviates this easement. But then, the since the game can never be sure that you are at the certain power level (because the player may or may not buy upgrades, they are technically optional), it has to be beatable. I want to believe that is the case, hovewer with how much nonsence Catacombs introduces, it seems luck based at best. At which point upgrades become necessary. But then, if you don't have them, you are playing an incomplete character. So this meta-progression either a fluff that is completelly unnecessary and only harms the "true" difficulty, or a necessity that you have to grind to even have a chance to beat this game. I reached a shadow boss, died, and just have no more patience to suffer through this slog. When the game is too hard, and the antitode to the poison it gives you is grinding, I am no longer intersted.

This is one of those games u buy, play a few games, find it repetitive with no progression and put it back on the shelf hoping the dev would make some QoL changes in the future. But alas, another disappointing game after all these years. Sometimes I ignore the negative reviews just to see for myself what the negativity is all about. (It can't be that bad, right?) Yeah, turns out the negative review are right on the money with this one. Shame.

Incredibly addictive. It's hard.... as it should be. Stop whining.

Lovely nostalgic game from the 2010s emulating the art style of the early 90s. Played it a bunch on mobile in the past beating the Labyrinth. Soundtrack is a pleasure to listen to. Gameplay is acceptable however the meta of using ranged projectiles before triggering the door locks to pick off enemies is tiring. Trying to take on the swarms of enemies in the latter dungeons in suicidal. Painful grindfest for coins that should've been reworked for the PC release. Truly a difficult game to recommend, but if you have the patience, try it out. For the devs: I truly hate how much you cranked up the spawns in the final boss in the Laybrinth compared to mobile. Look at me in the face and tell me you beta tested this and won the fight. Putting necromancers on top of the increased spawns immediately ruins every multi hour run.