Platform Played On: Mobile (iOS)
Rating: 7.5/10
Verdict: Wayward Souls is a completely solid Roguelike RPG but it doesn't quite live up to the apparent hype that it's getting in other reviews.
I don't often review mobile games, and that's mostly because I don't play that many. There is a lot of crap on the App Store, and it's hard to sift through that and find the gems. The other day I was looking for a good game to play on my phone at work (when I'm, ahem, on break), and Wayward Souls had just come out and was getting rave reviews. I thought, "Awesome, an RPG to sink my teeth into." After hours spent dying and restarting, clawing my way through the game, I've come to the conclusion that it's a very good Roguelike RPG, but I feel like I'm missing something.
I have a built-in dislike of touch screen controls, and that's the first thing a lot of iOS games have going against them right from the beginning. Perhaps that sounds unfair, but I just don't feel like certain genres are ideal for the platform. Games like Sword and Sworcery work fine, same with Year Walk, but any game with action is less than ideal (though I'm sure there are exceptions). Wayward Souls has a few hiccups in the way it controls, like sometimes when you're trying to do one thing and you do another. I rarely feel like touch screen controls are intuitive.
Aside from that though, there's a lot to enjoy about Wayward Souls. You spawn as one of three characters intially -- a Mage, Warrior and Rogue -- but you can unlock others as you progress through the game. It's a paid app, which a business model where the price increases with each update so grab it now, and there are no in-game purchases to unlock the characters... which is a relief. These characters play differently than one another, but not in any substantial, original way. They have generic names and handle in ways that we've seen before. The warrior is a tank who can block, the Rogue uses quickness and backstabbing and the mage blasts from afar -- these aren't innovations or anything, but they're solidly implemented. The variety is nice because when you die, you lose everything and being able to switch your play style up is refreshing.
As you progress through the stages, you collect money and items. The money sticks with you even when you die so you can purchase upgrades that you will always have. This is a welcome addition because even when you die you're still building your character, but I've been seeing this feature in Roguelikes these days anyway.
The items you collect are mostly there to give you special powers, but health potions do drop infrequently. The Warrior has an ability where health potions heal more but it's useless because you rarely get any anyway. The only real way to get health back is by completing each level -- each time you proceed to the next level you get a little health back.
There are checkpoints, but you have to defeat the boss in each area first. This is also a welcome addition because I have a hard time constantly replaying areas, so just to know that there is a light at the end of that tunnel is nice.
The combat can also be pretty intense, even if it is held back slightly by the touch screen controls. Like I said above, each character has a different set of strengths and weaknesses, and due to the random nature of both the enemies and the dungeons, things can get pretty hairy quickly and you never know what to expect. You could walk into a room and get swarmed, while something else throws giant rocks at you. Since they chucked the turn-based genre conventions in exchange for real time battles, the action makes you adapt on the fly and this is where it shines brighter than a lot of games within the same stratosphere.
The visuals and music combine to create a pretty forboding atmosphere as you travel to the depths of the multiple dungeons. They have put care into making the areas seem more populated than a lot of mobile games would. There are lamps and other objects all around, mostly just to create that sense of atmosphere, but you can break them for coins and whatnot. Where the game shines though is in the soundtrack. It's a joy to dungeon crawl because every track is quite good. There's a lot of polish in this, and RocketCat Games should be praised for that.
A lot of Roguelikes don't offer much in the way of story. It's not the appeal, generally, but RocketCat Games have gone the extra mile to rectify that. Scattered throughout the game are plot moments that try to flesh out the reasons why the characters are doing what they're doing. I'm not going to sit here and say it's the most memorable and well-told plot since The Last of Us, but I appreciate what they have done to try to add more substance to the tried, tested and true formula.
Wayward Souls is a very good game. I said it above and it was worth repeating, but I saw one reviewer state how this could be confused as a lost SNES era Square RPG. That's way too lofty a claim for this game, but it is a solid experience. It's possible that I should be judging this more on the fact that iOS doesn't have many games like this, but games like Year Walk, Sword and Sworcery or even Code Runner succeed as not just great mobile games... but great games in general. I'm not sure Wayward Souls can make that claim, but it's definitely worth buying.
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