SOULVARS

Truly a hidden gem on steam. Perfect combination of deckbuilding and jrpg, although the story aspect is quite weak. But if you are looking for a creative jrpg focus on fluid and enjoyable combat you should give this a try. Also the battle music is the best. I still listen to it sometimes.

I picked this game up after watching a friend stream this for the music. After trying it out myself, this game does have some challenging moments but this game is also fun and enjoyable to play through.

It's not Yu-Gi-Oh, but it has a card based battle system and it is like an anime; including, a giant amorphous blob villain, psychic powered teenager mercenaries working for an organization, a Top 10 anime betrayal, a Metropolis city, and an ambiguous finale in which the protagonists watch the sunrise.

SOULVARS is a refreshing take on the role-playing genre that successfully merges strategic deck-building mechanics with traditional JRPG progression. Developed by ginolabo and SUCCESS Corp. and published by SHUEISHA GAMES, the title places players in a futuristic world where human souls have been digitized and weaponized. You assume the role of a Soulbearer, an elite fighter capable of battling powerful entities known as Dominators, while uncovering a larger mystery surrounding the fate of humanity. The cyberpunk setting immediately establishes a distinctive atmosphere, combining neon-lit technology with philosophical themes about identity, consciousness, and the relationship between humans and machines. The game's defining feature is its inventive Soulbit combat system, which replaces ordinary turn-based commands with customizable decks of combat abilities. Every battle revolves around arranging Soulbits into effective combinations, allowing attacks, support skills, and devastating special techniques to flow together in carefully planned sequences. Rather than relying on chance alone, victories are earned by understanding how different abilities interact and by adapting your deck…

Soulvars is a highly customizable and fast-paced turn-based battler that seems to draw inspiration from games like Megaman Battle Network, Kingdom Hearts:CoM, Baten Kaitos, and Shin Megami Tensei. It claims to be a deckbuilding game but that's only true in the sense that you do, in fact, build a deck. Players build decks by equipping armor, weapons, and accessories to their characters in classic JRPG fashion. This loads Soul Bits into their decks. Soul bits are like cards that each hold a move a character can perform. They can use them in various combinations to create combo skills that deal massive damage and hit multiple times. Each character gets a hand of 5 Soul Bits per turn and you can use them to hit weaknesses and earn extra actions for the next turn or combine them into a more effective attack that might not net you that bonus round and consumes those points you banked last round. The battles are deeply strategic and the customization system feels genuinely rewarding. By the end of the game, every soul bit you play is incredibly important to your overall gameplan. You can overcome weaknesses with consumables you can purchase from various shops around the map but the econ…

This game wasn't engaging enough for me to finish beating it. The combat is okay, but it's just not for me. I'm not fond of the very idea of attacking being related to RNG, as it makes strategy a mostly moot point. The only real strategy there is is building around specific equipment/skills, which is just utilizing combo skills, which are reliant on RNG. The art style is decent. To me, the music blows, and the level design is bland, ugly, and boring. The story is essentially non-existent. There's very sparse dialogue, and the dialogue that does exist is just asinine garbage that amounts to nothing. The characters basically don't even have personalities. The only thing to this game is the combat, but the enemies that I ran across in the time I spent playing, were just boring. There was never any strategy outside of just trying to spam combo skills. It's no SMT or Etrian Odyssey. This game just ain't for me.