SOMA BRINGER

SOMA BRINGER is a fascinating piece of MONOLITH SOFT history, y'know, the guys behind Xenoblade Chronicles. It feels exactly like what you'd expect from a handheld action RPG cooked up by those guys right after they got acquired by Nintendo. The whole thing plays out like a Diablo-style hack and slash but with that signature anime flair and a dense sci-fi plot cooked up by Soraya Saga, the writer behind Xenogears and Xenosaga.

Let's talk gameplay first, since that's clearly where the devs put most of their energy. You pick one of eight characters, each falling into classic classes like beefy warriors, speedy ninja types, gunners or mages, and then you just dive into sprawling dungeons and fields. Combat happens in real time and I'm talking proper button mashing fun where you chain attacks together to trigger a Break state, stunning enemies so you can really lay into them. The buttons map to your special moves and you can zoom the camera in and out, which sounds cool until you realize zooming in makes the backgrounds look pixelated and blurry. Still, the 3D character models are impressively detailed for the hardware, so there's that trade off, and you've got two AI buddies tagging along and while you can set their behavior, they're pretty basic, they'll tank hits and sometimes heal but don't expect any brilliant strategies from them.

Enemies drop weapons and gear constantly and you can slot orbs into equipment for extra buffs, similar to how Xenoblade's gem system would work later. The problem is that you'll find mountains of gear your class can't even use, which feels pointless playing solo but that's because the game was clearly designed for multiplayer. When you've got friends, all that extra loot becomes tradable and the combat turns more cool. Playing alone tho, you'll hit a weird rhythm where you're selling 90% of what you find and the difficulty spikes will just force you to grind or curse bosses by dying, respawning in town and returning because enemy health stays chipped away, that's certainly a design choice.

Story-wise, don't expect Xenogears levels of philosophical depth, but it's more ambitious than your average DS RPG. You're part of Pharzuph Division 7, a military squad dealing with monsters called Visitors that corrupt the world's magical energy known as Soma. Along the way, you find an amnesiac girl named Idea in a cocoon and she's connected to some ancient conspiracy involving a collective alien consciousness, orbital rings, and betrayal, kinda like Shin Megami Tensei flavor which combines technology and spirituality. The problem is the pacing, the plot drops huge exposition dumps between chapters, and the characters, while charming, don't get enough room to breathe because any of them could be your main protagonist, that design choice waters down their individual arcs. Still, the worldbuilding sticks with you and you can totally see the DNA of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 in here, especially with themes about technological hubris and existentialism.

Yasunori Mitsuda handled the music and yeah, it's as gorgeous as you'd expect from the CHRONO TRIGGER composer. The opening track with those layered vocals is haunting and each area has its own distinct instrument flavor, sitars for deserts, electric guitars for mechanical zones. He fought tooth and nail with the DS's sound hardware to make it work and honestly, the soundtrack might be the game's most universally praised element, even critics who trashed the gameplay admitted the music slaps.

Download