Should you bother trying to find the Soul Orb?
The high wizards created the Soul Orb and it served the kingdom well. Now it is time for Alexander to find it where it hides. It calls to Alexander in his dreams. Finding the Soul Orb is a medieval fantasy game. In it, you use your crossbow both as a weapon against werewolves as well as a tool to solve puzzles. It is a story-driven game of twelve chapters.
Finding the Soul Orb is a strange game. It’s a first-person game that feels like a walking simulator but there are times you get to use a crossbow. Across your journey you will come across glowing platforms that pop up with text to explain the story in text and you’ll see a lot of these. You pick up a crossbow shortly at the beginning and it seems to have infinite ammo, but the weird thing is that it only becomes usable in areas where you need to use it.
For example if you are coming up to an area with enemies, the crossbow will pop up to let you know that they are enemies nearby and once you’ve killed them all, the crossbow will vanish until its needed again. It’s bizarre and really destroys all tension since you’ll always know if you have enemies left or not. You can also use it for certain puzzle situations like using it to hit some explosives on a bridge or to randomly shoot some gargoyle that isn’t any threat, but you’ll get a nice trophy for it.
The game just follows this pattern of walking forward, read story text, walk forward, shoot some werewolves, move forward, read text and so on. There’s even difficulty options that are even weirder “Easy, Very Easy and Extremely Easy”. What game has ever had that and not even a Normal mode, let alone a Hard one? The visuals are a mixed bag but the art style is nice. The soundtrack is impressive with some unsettling tunes to add to the creepy atmosphere of the game, but like I said because of how the crossbow works you won’t ever feel truly on edge.
The Verdict
Finding the Soul Orb is an odd one. It has tons of text to read, plenty of walking, a few puzzles are combat that is laughably easy and despite trying to create tension and dread, the game takes this away by letting you know when you’ll be in a combat situation or not. Truly one of the strangest games I’ve played this year.