While SOUL COVENANT captures the anime aesthetic well with its intriguing sci-fi dystopian setting and stylish giant weapons, it ultimately falls short of truly engaging gameplay
On paper, what SOUL COVENANT offers sounds really exciting. Hearing things like "an anime-inspired VR tactical action game" will excite pretty much every anime fan out there. And yet, while it still captures the anime aesthetic well with its intriguing sci-fi dystopian setting and stylish giant weapons, it ultimately falls short of truly engaging gameplay, more on that later.
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In the near future, the world is under the control of a quantum artificial intelligence known as "Adam," attempting to assume the role of a god. So it's up to you along with other remaining enhanced humans called "Avatars" to fight against legions of cybernetic monsters aptly named "Deus Ex Machina" and put an end to Adam's rule as a false god. You see, I love this stuff. I love it when animes go "full-on anime" in an unapologetic way, and if you love watching them as much as I do, you will understand what I mean by that.
SOUL COVENANT delivers massively on this front. You will hear a lot of weird, but ultimately cool concepts and words as you play through the game. You get tons of biblical references and namedrops like Adam, Thanatos, Messiah, or the whole concept of reincarnation, or even how some of these terrifying mechs are also labeled as angels. Or how the oversized weapons you'll use throughout the game, called "Scapegoat", are crafted by the bones of your fallen friends... siiiick! I mean, the line "I will pick up your bones" sounds metal AF, right? Did I understand whatever the hell was happening? Absolutely not, but I absolutely loved hearing all of it.
This is where I start talking about the "bad" stuff of this whole experience. Now, I used 'hearing' as that's what the game does, unfortunately. It dumps a ton of, again, cool exposition in your ears without actually showing it to you in an interesting visual way. The way the game is structured doesn't really help with that last part, too. SOUL COVENANT is not like an open-world or even a linear corridor-based anime/JRPG game. Instead, this is more like a level-based game. You appear in this space called the 'Cerebral Limbo,' and there you navigate through the menus and select the level or mission you want to play. Before you go into the small, closed-off arena where you fight monsters, you have to get through the mission log. So you select the log, there's a loading screen, and boom, you appear in another limbo space where you get the mission briefing/exposition dump. A giant screen displaying static images appears while characters talk about what happened or what needs to be done.
But here's the thing, while you hear what is happening to the characters as they fight against the machines, try to run away, or even get cut in half in some sort of heroic sacrifice, there are no animated cutscenes; you just see static images up on the screen, which, by the way, on the Quest 3, are heavily compressed and don't look that good. I understand that making fully animated cutscenes is very expensive, but how cool would it have been for me, the player, to see the captain get cut in half and not just told that it happened or the supposed "God Slayer," you know, slay gods in full glory? Once the log ends, you go back to the limbo space, you have to select the actual mission, loading screen, and boom, you are there. Once you complete the mission, loading screen, and you go back to limbo, select the second briefing, loading screen, and you hear about what happened next, and only then you can move to the next mission to do all of that all over again. This is basically how SOUL COVENANT is structured. Sorry, chief, but unfortunately, this ain't it. As I said, cutscenes are expensive, I get it, but couldn't they have just skipped the whole going back and forth? You just press a button to start a mission, and you go through all three steps automatically, no downtime.
Now, the combat. It pains me to say this, but it gets repetitive very quickly as you repeatedly face waves of the same enemies in confined arenas. You simply slash away with your oversized weapons, occasionally dodging attacks, until all enemies are defeated. There is little sense of danger or need for skilled timing of attacks. The combat, or better say your weapons, although they look like they weigh a ton, are basically weightless, so what you end up doing is just wiggling the weapon as fast as possible to kill the waves of enemies. There's no challenge, and most of these fights last only a couple of minutes. The boss encounters do offer more complexity, with highlighted weak points to target and dangerous attacks to avoid, but contrary to the normal fights, these boss fights tend to drag on way longer than they actually should. So you'll just move around them, wiggling your arms, hitting them a million times until they die, as there's no HP bar for you to see.
There are a few moments of brilliance, though. Grabbing your left arm with your right hand to fire your giant laser ultimate ability makes you feel cool. Or, for example, using the dual swords properly, not just wiggling them around, and launching air-based cross projectiles made me feel like Roronoa Zoro. That's so cool, and I wish they had implemented some systems to "force" me to play more like that.
Another thing that also disappointed me was the lack of character progression and build variety. While you can upgrade your stats and weapons, there are no meaningful skill trees or playstyle options to experiment with. You essentially just become a stronger version of the same character, even though I must say that I didn't really feel any more powerful after upgrading. More RPG elements could have added much-needed depth and replayability.
As for the presentation, Soul Covenant is hit or miss. The sci-fi weapon and monster designs are creative and fit the anime aesthetic well. However, the worlds themselves felt small and empty, lacking detail and on the Quest 3 textures are compressed and do not look all that good. The music is cool and the voice actors do a great job with their vocal performances.
In the end, while Soul Covenant has flashes of potential, it left me wanting more from the gameplay. The story had an intriguing premise but was poorly told through tedious exposition dumps between battles instead of being explored interactively during gameplay. The simplistic combat becomes repetitive all too quickly without deeper mechanics or progression to drive repeated play sessions. It incorporates some anime tropes well but fails to capture what makes games in the genre truly memorable and replayable. I don't recommend getting the game at full price. Maybe when it's on sale, it might be worth it, or better yet, if there's a free trial on Meta Quest, try it and see if you like it. Thanks for reading!
The game was reviewed on a Quest 3 via a promo code provided by the developer. SOUL COVENANT is available on Meta Quest, PSVR2 and PCVR.
