Soulance, The Lancer of Today is a recent RMN video game. I had the pleasure of playing the early demo of this possible gem and wish to share some of the pros and cons. Please be warned that this demo is very young in development, and any criticism may become void soon. With that said, let's get on with it.

Story & Writing-
The story follows Frail and his efforts to fend off the nation of Juchiar from a surprise attack. Along with this, we get some fairly interesting exposition on Frail's past, and what to expect in later cutscenes. Indeed, the beginning plot threads are fairly interesting. Unfortunately, the main plot piece, The Soulance, is not touched on in the early demo. Overall, Soulance sets itself up fairly well, and the writing is decent.

But one main problem I see a lot is the spelling mistakes. It seems as though the creator could benefit from a simple spellchecker. It personally didn't bother me, but I could see it ruining a future scene.
-overall, 3.0.

Characters-
In the early demo, we meet two characters who show importance- Frail and Kyle. While Frail has a detail plot thread from the word "go," Kyle still comes across as a nobody. However, this is not an issue- only a warning. When talking to the NPCs, you find a few who have some fairly interesting dialogue. Some who stick out are Crazy Ryan/Sarah, with their dialogue pieces running well with each other.

With this said, I've found one fairly huge issue in that when I get control of Kyle, he is now named "Frail;" same abilities and spell sets. This is a easy fix, but it still bothered me after realizing the issue.
-overall, 3.0.

Gameplay-
In the first half of the demo, the player is free to roam around the encampment. Apart from the somewhat enjoyable NPCs, the player can get a glimpse of some town features, like the Pawn Shop, which was a simple, yet fairly interesting way of selling trash items.

But one problem I see in the game's design was a scripting error when picking up one of the few items in town. Needless to say, this item was right next to the prologue cutscene which took about 5 minutes to go through, and is not skippable.

Now onto the second half of the demo- the dungeon. Firstly, I want to credit the creator for having map-teleport markers, a save crystal (which will heal you for free) right next to the dungeon, and the interesting concept of the Riddler's Gem- a collection puzzle with a small riddle to be solved for the crystal to be destroyed.

With all of that said, there are some major problems that lie in the dungeon design. Firstly, all of the trash monsters take about 1 to 2 minutes to kill. This in and of itself is an issue, but with the fact that the character will be spamming attack for most of these fights, the trash battles are almost painful, or, at the very least, grindy. The whole dungeon felt as though it was painfully rushed. I couldn't even escape the map, even if I wanted to. The teleport would only take me back to the dungeon, with nothing telling me why it did so.

And last but not least is the missing teleport to the next area. This was either a bug, or the creator telling the player that the demo is done. Whatever the situation was, this left me puzzled, and it didn't quite hook me into playing later demos or the full game, which is the prime reason for a demo.

...Also there are random battles. I hate random battles.
-overall, 2.0.

Aesthetics-
The game is quite pretty. The maps are detailed and not cluttered, the building structures are nice to look at, and the game feels alive with all the NPCs around.

Unfortunately, the game's graphics leave something to be desired. The title screen is pretty. The problem is that the creator did not change anything about the script, other than the name of the game. The easy fix to this is simply adding in-game maps to the background, or requesting an artist to draw a background for you.

Like I said, the mapping is good—for the first half of the game. After this, the quality shifts to the bad side. Before entering the dungeon, I found that the water could be walked on, along with a small missing tile that is nigh impossible to miss. And then I entered the dungeon. It was as though the entire end-demo map was made with the dungeon generator.
-overall, 2.5.

Music & Sound-
The game's soundtrack is decent. I found myself enjoying all of the beats given to me. My only issue was entering the shops in the encampment. It went from "oh my god surprise attack" to calm and peaceful. It was jarring and weird to teleport in between these two maps, and it really took a toll on one's immersion.
-overall, 3.0.

Overall-
The game needed more testing. Most of the issues I posed would be easily fixed if the creator tested more of his game before releasing it. But I will say that once the bugs are handled and the gameplay is tweaked, this game could be pretty awesome.

I'll keep an eye out for this game.
N/A for now because this is not a complete project.


*This is my first review, lol. So if there's something wrong, please do tell me and I'll fix it.
Also, if you want to watch a Let's try of this game, please click here. The video will also gave insight on certain game elements.