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A better moral system than most games.Looking at you Bioshock.

  • todpole
  • 10/21/2017 08:24 PM
  • 822 views

One concept I became interested in the last couple of years the idea of light and darkness. I just find it very interesting that someone who’s pure darkness may be a pretty nice guy while someone uses light might have evil intentions. And here’s a game that tells a story about light and darkness.

Story:

Long ago, the Sun King ruled over the world of Soma. But soon he became corrupt and used everyone as his plaything. After he was defeated by a pair of heroes, the world was split in two. One a world of Joy. The other a world of Sorrow. These worlds are protected by a the optimistic Heart and pessimistic Soul and after obtaining a strange orb, they go on a series of adventures to save both worlds from disaster.

While there is a story here, it’s more a bunch of small adventure that lead to a finale. It’s good that Heart and Soul are such a great duo. I had a smile on my face when they have conversations since Heart’s love of everything around him was a delight and is balanced by Soul’s blunt and to the point nature.

On thing I thought the game did really was those short adventures and the moral choices in them. Yes, this game has a moral choice system. In each story, you meet someone who’s having a dilemma of some kind and you have to figure what what would be the best solution to deal with it, either to remove their Joy or Sorrow. And there’s no wrong answer, it’s purely based on what YOU think is the best idea. The highlight for me has got to be the Freezing Fjord which I won’t spoil but it felt like even if neither choose matters to the game, there is an impact to the area.

If I had to nitpick something, I had to mention that I found Evil Heart to be pretty bland. I mean Evil Soul was pretty unsettling and felt natural to his development while Evil Heart’s development felt sudden and his personality was just dull.

Gameplay:

Ahem. NEW GAME +!!

In order to get around the dungeons, you have to switch between the two worlds as some paths or puzzle elements are blocked off in each world. like a dead end might be near a portal and when you go through it, there might gone or there might be stairs.

The combat is unique as it’s just two people with one main attack and one supporter. Who’s who. That depends on the world you’re in. In the Joy world, Heart is the fighter and Soul is support and in the Sorrow world it’s reversed. And like the worlds themselves, they are the same but different. They both have two elemental attacks, a buff and debuff and a status effect to name a few of what they can do. Yes, most enemies are the same between worlds but you can’t use the same strategy as for example if you fight a joy enemy weak to ice, Soul can’t use his ice magic so he has to give Heart ice powers to hit them with is regular attack. You also get SP ever turn to use spirit powers which are are like limit breaks that can deal star damage or drain MP to name a few.

Presentation:

I didn’t really talk about the worlds in story cause I wanted to talk about them here cause the art and music both show the difference between the two. The Joy world is very bright with lots colour. Everyone has a happy face and the music is very joyful to a psychotic degree that even the boss track is happy and upbeat.

The Sorrow is the complete opposite. All the colour is grey, you can’t see anyone’s mouth or are either sad or angry. The music sounds more like a regular RPG but as a more downbeat tone that even the intro to Soul sounds harsh.

I was reminded of Gloria’s Teather from Psychonauts with how the music and set represent the two moods. If I were to pick favourite's, I have to pick the Joy world, mainly because I love bright colours and I prefer the fun music. But that’s just personal taste.

I also want to add that the first time

Verdict:

This is a really good game. It’s not long and even does morality better than Undertale (There I said it.)

10/10