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Introduction

Soul Shepherd is an RPG/strategy game made by zombero. I call it a strategy game also because there's a large emphasis on planning your team and making sure all your roles are filled. This is due to the unique Soul system, which I will cover later on.

Story

The plot is simple, but nicely presented. You are a Soul Shepherd, which means you can create servants and equip them with stolen souls. The High Templar is determined to eradicate the Soul Shepherds because they used to cause havoc on the world.

You hide your abilities until thieves try to kill you, at which point you summon three golems to fight them. The high templar chases and catches you and sends you beyond the Black Gate to the labyrinth where they put their enemies.

You find yourself in a small village of others sent beyond the Gate, and have to work your way out of the labyrinth.

The game is not centered around the plot, but it does set up the game nicely, and is not unbelievable. It's presented nicely in a short cutscene that gets the information across and doesn't bog down the game.

Gameplay

The unique feature of the game is the soul system. When you kill an enemy, they have a chance of dropping their Soul. For example, a bat will drop a Bat Soul. When you equip this to you, or any of your three golems, they take on the stats of a bat and gradually learn a bat's abilities.

This allows you to fully customize your party. Do you want a healer? You can make one. Want to try four tanky soul-types or four mages? Go ahead and make them. The soul-types are restricted by level and you can only have one of each type equipped to the party. They can be shattered to make Soulshards which can be equipped to give you special benefits too.

This makes the game very much more than just an RPG. Plan out your party wrong and you will fail. If you don't know your enemy's weaknesses and your own weaknesses, you will fail.

I have only one complaint, and granted it is a fairly large one. There's a large emphasis on luck based skills. For example, an enemy has a skill that has a chance of confusing your entire party. If it hits everyone, it's probably a teamwipe but if it misses everyone it's worthless.

Missing an attack at the wrong time can be game over. Or the other way, if you hit all your luck based skills you can turn a hard battle into an easy one. The incredible amount of luck based skills does take a lot away from the gameplay here.

Difficulty

This game is hard

This game is hard like a brick of steel

You will probably get crushed your first fight. You will probably get crushed your first 10 attempts against the first boss. No, farming for 10 hours won't make it easy, in fact it may make it harder because as you level, healing at the Inn costs more money.

Do not try this game unless you consider yourself really good not only at RPGs, but also good at planning out a party and observing enemies to see what they are like, and adapting to beat bosses.

There is a high emphasis placed on farming, but not farming in the usual sense. Leveling up does very little, but getting new souls and new abilities for those souls does a lot.

The high difficulty also makes beating the bosses and enemies very fun, because you actually feel like you accomplished something. Anyone with half a brain can play a farming RPG, level up, and then autoattack bosses to death. The same cannot be said about this.

Summary

Overall, this is the type of game that if you can't get used to it and play well, you will probably not like it. So, this is my warning: this game is only for a specific audience, the rest will not enjoy it.

That being said, if you get the hang of it, it is very fun to play. There's a lot of content here and it will keep you busy for quite a while. It's also extremely carefully balanced. The enemies are ridiculously strong, but they're ridiculously strong in a fair way.

4.5/5

Posts

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Thanks for the pretty accurate review!

I do realize that the luck basis is an issue, and have plans for addressing it. This will most likely come in the form of giving the player stronger rallies sooner. For instance, moving the Tranquility rally, which resists ailments, to near the start of the game, and giving it the property of nullifying the first ailment attempt against each party member that round. As is, rallies tend to not see much use until halfway through the current game.
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