While issues have slowed down a bit because the Great MMO Glut of 200X, free-to-play Korean titles are nonetheless a reasonably widespread sight. The newest to land on Steam and open itself as much as a western viewers is SoulWorker, an especially Teen Anime co-op hack n’ slasher which can scratch any Devil May Cry/Dynasty Warriors itch you’ve been feeling.
The present beta appears to be of the ‘soft launch’ selection, with no deliberate server wipes earlier than launch. To all intents and functions, SoulWorker is out on Steam now, with quite a lot of European servers accessible.
Despite the arcadey-looking gameplay within the trailer, SoulWorker is a recreation constructed round mouse and keyboard management, with most particular strikes being mapped to the quantity keys, and the essential melee combo routinely biking should you maintain the left mouse button. That’s to not say it’s devoid of talent or involvement; the very first boss hits like a truck, able to shaving off practically a 3rd of your well being per assault, though rank-and-file grunt enemies appear to be virtually as expendable as Dynasty Warriors’ faceless soldier hordes, and practically as quite a few.
Set in an overbearingly anime magical post-apocalypse, 4 teenagers (properly, three and a literal baby) discover themselves imbued with magical powers that enable them to wield glowing outsized weapons with which they will smite the demons which have taken over a lot of the world. So far, so generic, however there’s nonetheless one thing to be mentioned for wiping out a dozen monsters in a single combo from a magic spirit-summoning guitar. Your dodge transfer additionally has a beneficiant quantity of invincibility frames, which means that expert gamers can keep away from harm completely.
While city hubs are dense with chattering gamers, this isn’t an MMO. Gameplay is for small teams of gamers or solo, all set in instanced environments. Effectively a single-player or co-op-with-buddies recreation, somewhat than some sprawling social sandbox like Black Desert or ArcheAge, and all you actually need to concern your self is what number of monsters you may splatter, with every stage being ranked and scored in traditional character-action type.
From the little bit that I’ve performed thus far, it’s a pleasing sufficient little bit of co-op hack n’ slashery, though the localization isn’t fairly full. I’ve noticed chunks of Korean textual content right here and there, and there’s the occasional little bit of dialogue that isn’t absolutely subtitled but. It feels a bit like a throwback to a less complicated time when new on-line co-op video games had been ten a penny, though this one does look and sound slightly extra polished than others which have come and gone. Some are reporting a nasty bug that forestalls the sport window from being resized from its default, though this looks as if one thing that ought to be patched quickly.
SoulWorker is available now via Steam. While microtransactions are undoubtedly going to comply with earlier than lengthy, the sport is free to play.
