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PC | RPG | Soulbringer

There is no Boxart for - Soulbringer
Soulbringer 9 screen shots
  • GRAPHICS: 3.0
  • SOUND: 3.5
  • CONTROL: 3.5
  • FUN FACTOR 3.5
  • AVG USER SCORE n/a
  • AVG CRITIC SCORE 3.5

Review: Soulbringer

Review by Brian Wright | 11/24/2000 | 14:47:41 PM PST

Soulbringer has all the makings of a fantastic adventure/RPG, including an intriguing story, thrilling combat, and a 3D engine, but it's a few flaws prevent it from achieving true greatness.

Soulbringer has all the makings of a fantastic adventure/RPG, including an intriguing story, thrilling combat, and a 3D engine, but a few flaws prevent it from achieving true greatness.

Soulbringer casts you as a young man on your way to visit your uncle. Along the way, you discover that evil is spreading through the land and it's up to you to put a stop to it. Thus, you begin your quest to hunt down six evil demon kings, known as the Revenants, and cast them into the Well of Souls.

The 3D world of Soulbringer is easy to navigate thanks to the easily controllable camera and the point-and-click interface. Attacking enemies can be a little tricky sometimes, though, as clicking on them will sometimes cause your character to simply run toward them and not attack. Running can also sometimes be a jerky affair due to the limited field of vision.

The motion-captured animations add a sense of realism to the game and bring with them their share of ups and downs. On the plus side, the combat looks great. You can wield each weapon in a variety of ways (slash, stab, underarm swing, etc.), and as your character gains combat skills, more powerful moves become available. Your character will also learn to block and dodge attacks as you gain more experience. Hand-to-hand combat soon becomes an Errol Flynn-style swashbuckling affair and is a lot of fun to watch.

On the downside, picking up objects is a chore as your character goes through the motion of bending over for each item you want. This may be realistic, but it's also tedious. This tedious realism crops up in other parts of game, like having to remove each individual piece of armor to have it repaired. Also, travelling by foot can bog down the game, and coupled with some long load times, going back to town to buy food can be quite a trek. An automap would have been a nice feature, since many of the areas look the same.

Like much of the rest of the game, the graphics in Soulbringer are a case of hit and miss. The game looks quite good from a distance, with detailed buildings and some beautiful snow effects, but when viewed close-up the chunky textures begin to show. The blocky 3D character models sometimes warp and distort like images from a bad dream.

The sparseness of the sounds combined with the halo-like field of vision can make the game feel claustrophobic at times, but this adds to the feeling of being a stranger in an unknown land. Music creeps into the game only occasionally, but when it does it brings with it a nice cinematic quality. The voice-acting, while not the greatest, is good enough to not be annoying.

With some more tweaking, Soulbringer could have been a truly great adventure/RPG. As it is, it's a pretty good game with some great ideas. Patient gamers willing to invest some time will be rewarded with an intriguing story and an epic gaming experience.