SOUL COVENANT Review: Uninspired, repetitive action RPG

SOUL COVENANT offers an intriguing action RPG premise with poor melee combat and a repetitive campaign. Read on for our full review.

RPGs have been one of my favorite genres for decades, long before modern VR came into existence. They can be time-consuming, and my free time is no longer what it used to be, but the rich stories you often encounter there continue to fascinate me. Combine that with the hack-and-slash combat and you have the potential for a compelling film. VR adventure. Unfortunately, SOUL COVENANT is not that game.

SOUL COVENANT takes us to a post-apocalyptic near future where a genocidal AI-led army has destroyed Tokyo using robotic weapons known as the 'Deus Ex Machina'. You represent the last bastion of humanity struggling to survive. It's not a particularly original premise, although SOUL COVENANT interweaves this with the ever-present and often gruesome interpretation of death and rebirth.

This is especially evident with Avatars, soldiers imbued with memories of past heroes. Everyone wields a 'scapegoat', one of several main weapons crafted from the bones of your fallen comrades with some amazing designs. The religious symbolism continues throughout, best exemplified by the main antagonist, Adam, and a female-gendered android who assists between missions named Eve.

This could be impactful if the story wasn't so poorly structured. Whenever the game drops you into these short missions, it pulls you away soon after to continue telling a story that isn't particularly compelling. Each mission is sandwiched between two narrative segments that make poor use of the medium, giving you 2D cutscenes like a stylized theater mode. It's a very formal approach, and my interest quickly disappeared.

Things don't get better once missions start, thanks to shallow melee combat that rarely involves more than moving your hands. The variation between each scapegoat is interesting and traits such as attack power can be improved using 'Monad Points' earned during missions. I like how they transform into more powerful variants when wielded with two hands.

This creates what should be an interesting trade-off. You cannot access your shield when using two hands or using the ranged weapon 'Demonic Burst', which is gradually charged by collecting Monad shards. These are all nice ideas that don't mean much if combat feels unsatisfying. I would have liked more physicality in fights.

My other major concern is that SOUL COVENANT's missions are quickly becoming repetitive. They all have very similar objectives that involve little more than killing all the robots on each wave. Bosses have some additional moves and help progress the story, but these don't offer anything exciting. There is very little challenge and I achieved high marks on every first mission. Playing with friends in co-op doesn't make this any more interesting either.

While the visuals look significantly better on PSVR 2, the Quest version of SOUL COVENANT feels like a significant downgrade. Many of the character models look rough, and the dialogue that didn't match the animation was very distracting. However, that doesn't seem to be a problem with the localization. Even when the characters weren't speaking, their mouths often kept moving.

SOUL COVENANT Review – Final Verdict

It's hard not to feel disappointed by SOUL COVENANT. Thirdverse has created a somewhat intriguing premise here that is completely squandered by unsatisfying combat, repetitive gameplay, and a flawed story that screams of wasted potential. If you're looking for an anime-inspired fantasy action game, you better check it out Ruins magus; SOUL COVENANT is not worth it.

UploadVR uses a 5-star rating system for our game reviews. You can read an overview of each star rating in our view guidelines.