Soulmask

Yet another large, bland, open world, UE5 slop survival-craft title with extreme amounts of grind because these devs, much like the V Rising and Palworld devs, keep trying to chase trends and force PVP and balancing around PVP in a game that does not need it. No, I do not want to sit around for the unreasonably long vanilla craft timers. Yes, I can tweak them to my liking, but they cap out 1 second MAXIMUM. This means if I craft a few hundred iron ingots after clearing a large mine, I still have to wait 20+ minutes for that ♥♥♥♥ to finish unless I have a dozen of them operating simultaneously. And as someone who wanted to have an airship base with all my essentials, you have very limited space to do the latter. You can argue that it's "zero downtime" by having a worker assigned to it leaving you to do other activities, but when there are almost no reasons to explore because the open world is bland and uninspired with no notable points of interest to visit and the only camps in there area have no unique loot to make it exciting; you're effectively playing an idle game. Let's talk about the combat now. Soulmask tries to lean into an Action RPG feeling with heavy emphasis on parry/dodging/stamina mechanics. Notice how I didn't include block in there because god forbid you negate damage when you block an incoming arrow. Fighting an elite enemy with a bow across the room is miserable since you're also stuck to fighting these kinds enemies in a tiny radius bombarding you with projectiles else they will disengage and reset their position. Okay, so then you may be thinking the next logical approach would to be to close that gap as soon as possible while tanking as few hits on the way over - elite or not. The enemy will then swap to one of their melees (pray that they don't have a whip) and start spamming their annoying ass power attack moveset (which cannot be interrupted unless their resilience bottoms out) that also deals insane damage through block - some of which you can't parry. So now you're left to dodge, but oh wait, enemy projectiles have HOMING, yes HOMING PROJECTILES so you can't even simply strafe those causing you to waste stamina to dodge or hold block and eat free damage - and even worse some of the mechanical constructs have a hit-scan laser beam that cannot be avoided unless you take cover (you're in a hallway/corridor with no cover most of the time when encountering these guys so good luck). Dodge works fine in melee until you realize that all of the enemies are equipped with ultrasonic hearing so unless you're clearing out a tiny camp or abusing the spear ability to single out targets, you're pulling EVERYTHING. If it weren't for playing in co-op to cycle deaths/abuse aggro to cheese I doubt we'd have gotten very far. And top this all off, the animations are laughably bad. Nothing screams "low quality" to me more than combat animations that aren't fluid, especially so when you're forced to play in third person. I get that they're trying to make it look nice, but sometimes less is more. I would much prefer simplistic, polished combat animations versus over-the-top action movie/anime inspired attack animations/moves that don't flow well into one another, even more so when the hitboxes are terrible. The 2nd dungeon was the final nail in the coffin for my group due to the introduced poison mechanic as an environmental hazard and numerous centipedes. With over 90% (assuming the percentages are additive) poison resist you still have to worry about wasting bandages every 20s so you're not slowly getting chipped away by the damage over time and almost the entire dungeon is covered in a poisonous fog minus the boss rooms (thankfully). Now, normally this wouldn't be a problem; I don't mind these dungeons being challenging. However, you cannot take your time with these dungeons, or even in general with some of the bigger camps since the enemies eventually respawn. And guess what happens if you die deep in that dungeon and have to retrieve your gear when the only checkpoint you unlock was BEFORE the poison started? Yeah, have fun. Granted, you do get a 3 minute environmental immunity buff on respawning at that checkpoint, but an entire minute of that is WASTED running back to the point where the poison actually starts so you're left with 2 minutes remaining. But again, imagine having to do this for every death deep within that dungeon, while also having to worry about respawning enemies which will one shot you with no gear on. The problem is further exacerbated by the fact that there is a timer on your grave. Disaster. There's numerous other gripes I have with the game - such as terrible AI pathing, especially for workers trying to navigate around your ship, but I'll end with my questions to the devs: Why is it that enemies get to deal 200 damage THROUGH BLOCK when my maximum HP with equivalent gear for my current progression is only at 1.5k with food buffs. WHY OH WHY is it when I try to heal, my bandages are CONSUMED IMMEDIATELY ON USE instead of when they are actually, I don't know, CONSUMED?

设计角雕的那个，你是个纯煞笔 追我他妈的半个地图，卡模型，格挡无效，不脱战，真是可惜了这么全面的游戏性，战斗系统是哪个弱智做的？

Runs good on Steam Deck OLED, but lacks any real controller support making it an absolute nightmare to play, I tried for an hour to get the keys set up correctly to no avail. Until they add support, I can't really recommend this to anyone on deck. With the Deck being available, controller support should be mandatory on games now, there's no real excuse honestly. I requested a refund, maybe I'll buy it again when controller support is added and change my rating.

This is a truly bad game, but bad in a way that you play past your refund window before realizing there's nothing here to it and it's little more than any of a thousand asset flip titles. I reached the point where I confirmed that this is irredeemably bad when I turned on creator mode to see what kind of things I could build, and I couldn't connect a straight stair to a stair corner, because they just hadn't though to let those two types of construction pieces join up. Awful waste, don't be tricked. This review is partly for myself to remind me why this thing is garbage. Set aside the piss-poor combat and recruitment mechanics, you can't actually build much of anything and building is not enjoyable.

‘Soulmask’ is more or less ‘Conan Exiles’ in a different dimension. But it has practically no storyline, is much less extensive, has almost no mods available, the movement and above all the building mechanics are clunky and exasperating, and the game isn’t available as Early Access on Steam but is being sold as a finished product, which is the most baffling aspect of all. The latter point is probably down to the fact that the developers have lost the will to finish the game.

Советую, Soulmask как минимум стоит тех денег, которые затребованы. Я бы, наверное, назвал Soulmask. амбициозным аналогом Conan Exiles, хотя в представленный проект более похож на смузи из нескольких популярных игровых проектов. Должен заметить очень хорошее и на сей день качественное и вкусное. На мой взгляд эта игра обладает потенциалом стать отличным ли даже выдающимся продуктом в жанре выживания если не будет заброшена и, если Soulmask будет уделено достаточно внимания. Игра в раннем доступе, но несмотря на это уже является качественным продуктом с множеством механик и Миром устроенным, без всяких преувеличений — великолепно. И все же не стоит ожидать чего-то совершенного у игры есть огромные минусы, которые пока не исправляются: 1-я не особо важная, но неприятная - Кастомизация персонажа небогата, но вполне сойдёт. Есть мужская и женская "настраиваемые" модельки настраиваемые, громко сказано. А вот последующие может убить игру (а точнее убьет) - Интеллект ИИ просто на уровне дна (особенно животных). - Слабое наполнение мира, в особенности водного биома (водный биом просто пуст и бесит своей пустотой). Уверен Soulmask, несмотря на имеющиеся недостатки, затянет не на одну сотню часов ка самое меньшее и доставит положительные эмоции.

tldr: conan meets factorio The game looks nice, no mater you watch the foggy sunset, distant dust storm, or the buildings on a rainy day. But.... the game runs fine...ish, sometimes huge power hog areas and some menus, like the tribe-view make GPU 99% load for no good reason for year+ You harvest, build fight and ...tame? Less bonk, more soul syphoning? Story is kinda...odd...you dig ancient ruins full with leftover angry geometries, what you loot, so you can beat your primitive foes with high-tech stuffs what you use as ungabunga? Not sure what I missed, why are we actually doing this? And who am I actually? Later you will ask same, because whom you control is not the question, but what is the purpose of anything? Lot of server configuration for your own taste! Make it chill or punishing, it's up to you alone, or with friends, or with nonfriends. Progress is fun, but difficulty jumps can be extreme. Scaling is pretty wild like "you 1 shot everything or you get 1 shoted by everything" range. Combat is much more rapid than conan, you either hate it or love it for this. Boss fights are pretty epic and cool, and yes, you CAN DIE by snu snu!!!! In case it's important to anyone: I played on an unofficial public PVE server What is the point of the wiggle wiggle boob and butt physics, if there is no nudity? Building and farming much more explained, good snapping and tools than conan, way better Ui and tooltips (if you can skip the mirror translates from chinese or missed ones hehe) The tribe Ai-life is pretty decent, maybe best aspect of the game. Even alone you feel less alone than in most similar games. Ofc path-finding isn't the best, sometimes funny, sometimes comedic, but I really liked to turn my home into a fully self-sufficient factory. If you can manage trough all the Ui and settings and figures out the "why it doesn't work again" then you really can manage all the crafting without stepping outside. Once you get deeper in the mask-system and how you can transfer power, change mask, and even body, train and upgrade your perfect build, is where the real game begins. Lot of options how to play, what you wanna be strong at and at what price. Nothing will be perfect, will see always new build ideas what you wanna try. Pretty big plus they gave 1.0 DLC as free for a limited time, sadly still unfinished at this writing. Other big plus was the training ground, so it's less like an RNG ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ to find the right skill/talent/face (plus the golden legend mask to see what you can get). Also love the hunting ground, so you can send your pals to an explore/completed dungeon and you not have to grind, just make sure they get enough snacks for it. The flying ships are awesome (if you not play on official server where they heavily reduced how much you can build), but the desert map is... less like. First map is much more fun, diverse and complete. Sadly you can't bring DLC stuffs to there, even if you play alone :/ I hope they will change this in future. Map-travel is kinda...funky, it could have been made better. And final enemy in the game: geometry Some bossfights are really unrewarding, like the death sandstorm compared to the effort needed for it, or the CORE, meanwhile other bosses can greatly boost your strength with much less hasle. Overall: It worth it's price, no mater if you play alone or with others. I hope it get more fixes and QoL patches and shifting sand map gets proper endgame. Also maybe more animal/mount content same as tribemen.

I won't repeat the many positives in the feedbacks you find here, and although my critique only highlights a negative aspect, I still believe the game is good. It's not for me, I couldn't get past that, but I acknowledge it as a solid game. My main, and essentially only, issue with the game is: The RPG Agency Contract: In traditional Action-RPGs, survival games, and MMOs, the character creator is an explicit promise. You spend 30+ minutes customizing a face, choosing a body type, and forming an emotional attachment to "You" (your digital avatar). The avatar is designed to be the primary vessel through which you inhabit the virtual world and grow in power. The "Disposability" Trap: When Soulmask lets you create a specific vessel, but mechanically tags that vessel as sub-tier trash compared to a randomly generated NPC, it causes cognitive dissonance. The game asks you to make "Yourself," then penalizes you for actually playing as yourself.