[quote][b]Note: Dead PvP game[/b]
This game contains no meaningful single player content. There's no viably populated servers/active player population. This game cannot be played as intended.[/quote]
[quote][b]Warning: Third Party Account[/b]
This game requires you to create a third party "Soulbrave" account... there's no valid reason for this in a PC game when SteamWorks is available. This is often done to harvest private data and profile you, with potential sale and transmission of your private data to third parties. The developers will probably argue that you can trust them, but if they were trustworthy they wouldn't demand you create a third party account.
This represents a considerable risk to gamers due to the privacy and security implications of developers that wish to bypass Steam and harvest user data. Remember, sometimes if the product is free, YOU are the product.[/quote]
[quote][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_slop][b]Warning: AI Slop[/b][/url]
This game is partially or completely made with talentless, soulless AI generated content.[/quote]
Here we have a crappy abandoned Early Access PvP exclusive mobile app made with AI slop. It's like the developers looked at everything that should never, ever be done in PC gaming and did exactly that. Then walked away.
This was supposed to be an anime/weeaboo themed 2.5D platformer brawler designed for iPhones, but the developers gave up presumably because they couldn't get the AI slop to work. They didn't even get as far as the cash shop, which we can assume they intended to infest this AI slop garbage with.
Yeah, the developer "promised" to remove all the AI slop, but did they? Nope. They also promised to finish the game but didn't do that either.
If you do try to play this, apart from having nobody to fight against, you'll discover a broken, janky mess.
So, "Soul Brave" is a dead PvP game. Why did it fail? It's video game autopsy time!
[i]Almost every PvP exclusive game on Steam fails.[/i] Only a tiny proportion of them "go viral". This game failed for many of the same reasons those others fail. The chief of which is the developer thinking that their game will "go viral" without actually creating any reason for it do so.
Competition amongst PvP centric games is extreme, and there's only a finite player base to appeal to. This game failed to reach any kind of critical mass and died as a result. Let's go into some of the reasons this particular game failed to appeal to gamers, despite the zero up front cost.
This game lacks any meaningful solo content. The developer tried to use other players as a substitute for real work like level design and story, gambling that just because their game exists, it's going to magically pull the entire player base of Counter-Strike 2 over to this failure instead. They lost that unwise gamble. A game with no players and no solo content is a dead game. Developers need to stop relying on players as a substitute for real content, just because they feel creating genuine narrative, level design and so on is "too hard".
The "developers" walked away from this 6 months ago. This is never getting finished. This unfinished game is just polluting the store and making it harder for people to find real, actually finished games. This isn't good for gamers or for developers who do the right thing.
There is no English support here, but it isn't necessary. The language of bad games is universal.
This is clearly a mobile app... it makes no difference if this hit PC before the app stores, or if it never even launched on a phone. This code was written for the weakest possible gaming platforms and has to be critiqued as such... it isn't going to offer a modern PC gaming experience. That alone is enough to disqualify this from any recommendation. We don't invest thousands into bleeding edge gaming PCs so we can treat them like iPhones and play mobile apps.
As mentioned, this features really godawful, "wrong" looking AI slop instead of genuinely and sincerely created game assets. It's hard to say if this was because the developer didn't have the skill to do the job of creating real game assets or couldn't afford to hire someone who does, but it also doesn't matter. What matters is that this looks bad because of that decision. AI slop sticks out like a sore thumb... and it comes across as insulting.
There's also the old adage that those who lack the budget and talent to make their own game assets usually lack the budget and talent to do the rest of the job of game development properly, too, and that's glaringly obvious here.
The graphics are lacklustre because this was designed for mobile phones, not gaming PCs. Whenever a product is designed to run tolerably on 5 year old iPhones, it's obviously not going to come close to the minimum quality standards that PC gaming enthusiasts except on their cutting edge gaming rigs. One more, mobile devs have made gaming worse for everyone. PC gamers don't spend thousands on their gaming rigs so they can pretend they're iPhones. That alone is enough to disqualify this for recommendation.
Let's look at the price and what kind of value this actually offers gamers.
This is "free" enough (not every "free" game in the "free" section is truly free, there's usually some hidden price tag), at least you won't be expected to spend any more money after you download this, but just because something is free doesn't mean it's good, and the cost of a game is more than just financial, your time is valuable too.
In terms of player counts and popular reception, this couldn't even crack 100 players at its absolute peak. For a free game on a platform with 130 million players, that is a spectacular failure, mostly due to the reasons I've supplied here.
All other issues aside (any of which would disqualify this from being worth your time), this is a game that relies on other players for it to be viable, and because there's not enough players, it's not viable. I can't recommend anyone downloads this, it's basically dead.
The use of AI slop is a direct insult to gamers and real, ethical content creators and artists everywhere.
There are over 140,000 games on Steam, not every one of them is a hidden gem. I'm here to help gamers find the ones that actually matter in that sea of Steam Direct self-published mess. If you don't agree with my findings in this review, you should definitely download it and play it to see for yourself. I'm happy to have helped you make an informed choice, regardless of the outcome.
