We’ve all done things we regret doing. For some, the things they regret are unthinkable. Gauly is a mercenary with a grim past – a past of killing.
Gauly is a mercenary who has a habit of killing people. This has caused him to be wanted by the church. Well, it turns out that very church also wants to recruit him to escort a maiden to the Holy Temple. What Gauly doesn’t know is that this job will lead to a mission of saving the entire world.
Fated Souls is an RPGMaker title that really shows it. The character models are, well, not too pretty. In fact they remind me of Final Fantasy VI on Android – and that’s not exactly something one wants to be reminded of. Enough of that though, I’m not here to talk about FFVI on Android, I’m here to talk about Fated Souls.
When you first start Fated Souls, you are very likely to be confused. You’re going to remain confused for the entire game. Sometimes you’ll get extremely lost. Oh, and you know how you move extremely fast until the first boss? Oh, yeah, that’s wonderful. It doesn’t last past the first boss though, and that turns the dungeons into a gigantic drag, especially near the end. As soon as I lost that movement speed I was incredibly sad.
Why was I sad? Well, at first, you’ll noticed fields and dungeons are only a few screens long, perhaps with a sidepath or two to go down. I didn’t mind the slower movement speed as much then. Then you get into the later dungeons where you’ll not only get extremely lost, but you’ll have about 5 choices of paths to go down at once with an incredibly high encounter rate. And THEN you have the backtracking.
Fated Souls is absolutely awful about backtracking. Not only is it bad backtracking, there are a few points in the game where it’s backtracking with absolutely no clue as to where you’re even supposed to go. Boy did I level up a lot at those points. One of these points wanted you to go back to the first town in the game from one of the later towns.
Let me just point out the battles here, on the subject of why backtracking is so incredibly awful to have to do in this game. Battles are extremely hit or miss to actually run from, even if they’re from areas you were in 20+ levels prior. Battles are also extremely slow paced. My suggestion is to quickly learn how to use and abuse magic, because that’s your best damage. Well, okay, except for Grant and his slow hit-like-a-truckness. Even then there’s times he’s better off using magic. The battles made for an incredibly slow and grindy playthrough, and made me dread getting into battles every single time they happened.
Now surely the story could help the game out here, right? Yes and no. On one hand, the story is a bit intriguing and will pull you to see what happens next. On the other hand though, religion is thrown in your face so heavily in this game to the point of becoming unbearable. Even when you start working with an evolutionist or two, the religion aspect is so heavy at times it hurts. I get that we start out escorting people from the Church, but it still could’ve been toned down at least a little bit.
Good luck finding items on the ground in Fated Souls. Instead of nice and easy to see treasure chests, items are hidden as tiny little sparkles on the ground. Throughout the game, you’ll visit a desert and a snowy place. You can only imagine how much of a nightmare it was to see the items here. I’m sure I missed around 90% of the on-the-floor items in the game, but you know what? I’m not going to strain my eyes just to try and find them.
You can pretty much forget about trying to even do side quests also. While they do “exist”, there’s no quest log to be seen and no indication that you actually “started” a side quest. While I did talk to pretty much every NPC I found, I couldn’t be bothered going back to one if they might have happened to have a quest for some item I’d found. There was just no incentive for me to do so, especially when you take into account the previously mentioned backtracking issues.
Fated Souls struggles to make you want to keep going halfway through, and even up until then it can be tough. I found I was having to force myself further until I finally hit a point on an extremely late-game boss that I just got utterly annihilated by status effects that I just said, “I’m done” and closed the game. I was also getting extremely agitated at the amount of typos present in the game, and this was supposedly after a patch that fixed a bunch.
I really do not suggest the game unless you want to just struggle to find things and even just make it through the game. So much of the game is just confusing – including even figuring out how far from a level you are – that it becomes a gigantic headache to play. If you don’t mind dealing with all of this though, perhaps you can find some enjoyment in here. Otherwise, there are better RPGMaker titles to be found on Steam.
Fated Souls Review Score
2/5
I would like to thank the publisher for providing me with a copy of the game to review.
