Review Detail

This is an absolutely amazing little action / strategy game that isn't easy to categorize. It combines the best elements of Shining Force / Final Fantasy Tactics with dungeon crawling and tower defense games, and it all comes together with great results.

You control a little wizard who runs around but cannot attack enemies directly. You are able to place "images" of three heroes down into fixed positions, and the heroes attack the monsters that thwart you on your quest. There's a warrior who is strong and takes a lot of damage, but can only attack monsters directly next to him. There's an archer with excellent range but weak hit points, and a bomb-thrower who can hit enemies behind teammates or walls (but who explodes when he dies, possibly damaging you in the process!).

The game's style and aspects are super, excellently retro. It looks, feels and sounds like the best Commodore 64 game you never played, right down to the awesome midi soundtrack. If you have an arcade joystick for your Xbox 360 (I recommend the Hori Real Arcade Pro EX-SE personally!), the game can be transformed into the best strategy / arcade game you never played. The menus have nice, large text that's very easy to read and navigate, and the font is very old school. The game is simple without being too simple in its basic premise, but complex as you get to the deeper levels of the game.

My only complaint stems from one retro aspect where I really think the developers took it too far. The save system. As mentioned by another reviewer, you actually need to get a pencil and paper and write down a 24-digit code in order to save your game. Originally, I was going to rate this pup a 9 out of 10, docking it a full point for the save system (retro though it may be!). In fact, when I went through the process to save once, my save code didn't work fully and my restarted game wouldn't allow me the use of one of the three heroes (making it useless; I had to start over...).
However, this is such a great game I'm going with a 10 out of 10 despite my issue with the save system. If you don't want to save, just play the whole thing through, it's worth it and takes about an hour and a half to beat.

And hey, for $3, you're not going to find a better, more thoughtful, more rewarding retro treat than SoulCaster. Sequel please!!!