SOULVARS

I went into SOULVARS expecting a JRPG that would scratch both the narrative and the mechanical itch at once, and the game delivered decisively on exactly one of those. The combat system is the real headline. At its core it uses Soulbits, randomized action units drawn from a hand each turn, and your gear loadout determines which Soulbits appear in that hand. The loop is tighter than the word 'deckbuilder' might suggest: you are not constructing a Slay-the-Spire engine over a long run, you are making sharp tactical reads on a limited hand, chaining Soulbits into combo strings, and exploiting enemy weaknesses to earn extra actions in the same turn. That last mechanic carries a clear SMT Press Turn flavor, and it means every random encounter has a small puzzle inside it. Redrawing Soulbits when your hand is cold costs HP, which adds a genuine risk layer even on normal difficulty, and the Break meter on enemies rewards aggression: pump their Burst percentage up fast enough and they stagger, opening a damage window. It clicks after a couple of hours, and once it does, the combat is genuinely hard to put down. The build variety holds up reasonably well for the length of the game. Each party member runs their own Souldriver, which levels independently based on equipped gear and feeds into stat growth and new Arts unlocks. There are over 100 Arts and Abilities to find, and experimenting with different weapon and armor combinations to reshape your Soulbit pool is where the systems depth lives. The main campaign runs roughly 10-15 hours depending on difficulty, with some post-game content for players who want to push builds further. Multiple difficulty levels are present, and the gap between easy and hard is meaningful: on hard mode, reloading a depleted Soulbit hand can cost up to 50 percent of a character's current HP, which turns resource management into an actual survival concern. Here is where I have to be honest with you as someone who thinks character writing is load-bearing in this genre: SOULVARS has almost none. Yakumo is a freelance Soulbearer working for the DDO, searching for a missing friend named Ibuki while fighting rogue Soulbearers from an organization called Izanami whose members have had their memories altered. That premise has real potential. The game does not develop it. Dialogue is sparse, characters are introduced as though you already know their backstories, and the in-game lore glossary covers too little ground to fill the gaps. Reviewers across the board flagged the same thing: the story takes a back seat and never really reclaims the wheel. If you have played Disco Elysium or BG3 recently and your tolerance for thin characterization is low, brace yourself. The presentation compensates somewhat. The pixel art battle animations look sharp, the soundtrack shifts convincingly between moody urban exploration cues and high-energy combat tracks, and the port itself is clean with no significant technical complaints. The game was built for mobile originally and it does show in session structure: it plays better in focused 30-to-45-minute bursts than in three-hour marathon sittings, and the repetition of random encounters accumulates over a long session in a way it does not over a short one. The menus take some adjustment before navigation becomes second nature, and the tutorials are static text rather than guided in-combat teaching, which steepens the initial learning curve more than it needs to. SOULVARS is a compact, mechanically confident little game that solo developer ginolabo built with real care for its combat systems. My honest recommendation is that if you are a JRPG fan who can compartmentalize and enjoy tight tactical combat without demanding that the story rewards your investment, you will find something genuinely satisfying here. If you need both columns to be filled, the narrative column is going to frustrate you enough to overshadow the mechanical wins.

Monika · Scout Team

RPGs

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