So it wouldn’t really be an NIS title without a load of stuff to do on the side. Though it feels somewhat out of place because Soul Nomad doesn’t take itself seriously, so it’s kind of odd to see the music going in the opposite direction and towards a more serious tone. The Tenpei Sato soundtrack feels a lot less hokey than in previous titles and it’s pretty good, a definite switch up from the swing sounds of something like Makai Kingdom or Disgaea 2. Why they included a system voice to notify you of turns and actions is beyond me and to save yourself the trouble I would say just keep it off, and don’t ever bother to turn it off. It’s the NIS standard to include an English and Japanese voice track which is always welcome.
I’m getting critical about this now because Disgaea showed up on the scene four years ago, and to see that we haven’t really gone anywhere graphically, it’s becoming a little distressing. The game is nice to look at when battles are going on because of all fun and crazy stuff going on during the fight, but for the most part this game is fairly plain looking, and it’s getting to the point where NIS should really start to step it up. At the very least Soul Nomad took from the graphical styling of Disgaea 2, so the characters are larger and slightly more detailed, but they aren’t terribly animated, the move set per character feels fairly limited, while the special attacks are fairly over the top and fun to watch, but they grow stale after a while, thankfully NIS included an option to tone that all down so once you get sick of it, you can turn it off. Let’s face it GrimGrimoire and Odin Sphere looked fabulous, and unfortunately for Soul Nomad, it has to live in the shadow of these other games. So NIS and Atlus have both released a Vanillaware title, and in doing so, they have kind of doomed themselves in terms of how a 2-D game looks these days. Or if you require more structure then place a healer in the back row and at the start of each attack he will dole out some healing light to the whole unit. While this is randomly generated it still allows them to hit units that are located beyond the reach of your frontline tanks. If you place an archer in say the middle row, their attack will allow them to attack all the units in a row. Placement of your units is key in this regard, for where they are located in the room will determine their attacks. This is also true for your enemies, if you take out their leader then the unit falls. The first person to go in to the room is the leader, and if they fall then the whole unit falls. Each unit is made up of a room, that has specific spots on a three by three grid that are randomly generated, and units can be placed within the available spots of the room. Each unit that goes out on the battlefield is actually a collection of members of your army. Taking a sharp left from most of NIS’ strategy RPGs, Soul Nomad goes back to a battle system that is fairly akin to something from the SNES era, though I doubt many people remember the Japanese RPG Albert Odyssey. So while the story may not be the strongest that NIS has ever delivered it is still a fairly fun romp to save the world, and the game play is rock solid in Soul Nomad. The dialog unfortunately also suffers from an excessive amount of degenerative swearing, mostly coming from Gig, which I guess makes sense, and it’s good that it only comes from him or else I wouldn’t make it past three battles. Hell the comparisons between the personalities of Danette and Flonne from Disgaea are staggering.
A lot of these types of people you’ve seen before in previous NIS titles. Your army will continue to grow as you progress through the story to unlock new warriors and bolster your ranks. You can also create new allies through some of the powers that Gig has given you access to. Once people have surrendered to your dominion they are permanently your allies. So a good portion of the story is spent roaming the countryside looking for people as Gig likes to put it, dominate. So in order to take down these World Eaters with your new soul-mate you’re going to have to assemble a ragtag group of likeminded individuals who also want to get rid of these giant monoliths of death.
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