Official Launch Video (English)

Latest Kakao Mobile RPG Eversoul is now live and available on Android and iOS devices

Produced by game developer Kakao Games Corporation and the new Korean-based studio Nine Ark, Eversoul is an anime-style, mobile RPG set in a post-apocalyptic, fantasy realm. Since its global launch day on January 5, the game has already topped the charts in the Apple and Google play store.

Mobile RPG @Eversoul_EN has topped the charts on release day! 📈

▶️ https://t.co/iLqIA2sBVC pic.twitter.com/5pfhcyLDru

— Pocket Tactics (@PocketTactics) January 5, 2023

This is the first maiden game for the DRAKAN studio at Nine Ark, while other mobile games produced by known MMO publisher Kakao include Hello BT21, Guardian Tales, Moonlight Sculpting, World Flipper, and Friends Popcorn. Kakao is also known for PC games, including Black Desert Online, ArcheAge Unchained, and their MOBA game Eternal Return.

Here’s my personal take on the latest addition to the hyper-growing realm of mobile MMO and RPG titles.

• Plot Synopsis
• Game Analysis
• Story Mechanics and Character Development
• Art Style and Music
• In-Game Community Experience
• Final Score

Eversoul Plot Synopsis

As a story-rich mobile RPG, Eversoul‘s story takes place in a futuristic, fantasy world called Eden. You are the Savior, pulled from the past and possessing the power to summon powerful Souls. Together ,you battle through a series of dungeons and battlefronts in your quest to protect the world of Eden from the evil forces coming through the “Gate,” threatening its peace. All the while, you form friendships and continue to learn more about this future world you have been called upon to save.

Game Analysis

Upon first loading the game, players are immediately pulled into the story elements that slowly introduce the games core features. As players go through the storyline and become more familiar with the simple player control system as different sections within Eversoul‘s hub area (the “lobby”) become unlocked through gameplay.

Learning Speed: Quick and Easy

When it comes to how quick it is to learn and navigate, Eversoul‘s system is easy to grasp and there are useful information tabs strategically placed to help describe the game’s core features. As a new player, I was able to quickly figure out the controls and what to expect with each new game feature that is introduced.

Gameplay System

It soon became clear early on that the game has many idle RPG elements. For example, the characters are deployed using an auto-battling system so a majority of the strategy happens through the selection of souls that will make up your team and their placements before jumping into battle. During battle, you occasionally need tap the souls when their individual or the Ultimate MP bar is full to deploy a main skill.

There is also an idle offline mode with a loot rewards system that allows players to passively collect exp and crucial resources.

When it comes to adventure or battle gameplay modes, the mobile game has a decent mix of solo dungeon crawler elements and PvE/PvP arena content. Monster grades range from Normal to Elite and Boss, and players are able to engage in dual or single battles.

For players who love competition, the game has ranked leaderboards that track everything from Soul collection rankings to player rankings across various battle arenas.

Town Mode

Eversoul‘s territory management system is one of my favorite game elements, adding a more casual, immersive RPG feel. The town has day and night modes, and helps really set the stage for the character story building features that exist in the game.

One really interesting aspect is the ability to send souls on to part-time jobs to earn additional rewards and resources. This introduces yet another idle element, as souls continue the tasks they’ve been assigned offline. Each Soul also has unique “job” passive skills that can be leveled up, in addition to their battle ready skills.

Stability and Controls

As I played through the game, I felt some of the selection buttons were very small on my iPhone–even for me. This meant I had to be very mindful of how I tapped the screen, and can imaging for individuals with bigger fingers it may feel clunky. I found myself needing to hit the options several times before registered a selection.

In addition there are moments where it was clear the game glitched and simply would not register the tap. On one occasion, the game even crashed and close out, resulting in me needing to reload the game.

Multiple fixes have been deployed to resolve server instability, but the still unreliable tapping after a few days of gameplay remains a sore point.

Story Mechanics and Character Development

Soul Summoning and Leveling

When it comes to main character customization there is none. The focus seems to be more on “summoning” (i.e. collecting) as many beautiful souls as possible and leveling them based on your personal battle strategy, with the RPG elements connected to Eversoul‘s storyline and soul bonding system.

If you are looking for diversity, this game is definitely not it. There is some light customization on the Souls in the form of limited edition costumes. That being said, every player is stuck playing the same male hero, with the souls being represented by femme-presenting spirit archetypes.

The leveling system itself is very straightforward, with the ability to enhance Souls through a standard resource methods, in addition to merging soul types and even syncing a soul’s level to higher ones.

There are currently 6 Soul types, with each type containing soul characters ranging from common to rare and epic summons. Each Soul possesses their own exclusive skills and battle animations, allowing players to build top teams for different battle types. You can also “release” the more common Souls, which frees up inventory and gives you resources for leveling up the ones you actually prefer to keep.

In regards to diversity, all spirits are fair of face and maiden-like in appearance. This trope continues throughout the storyline, with the Savior being the typical hero persona.

Narrative Style

From the moment you enter Eversoul, it is clear that there are very strong world building elements. You are immediately pulled into storyline after storyline, learning more about the world the more you play.

Some of the story line felt rehashed at multiple points during the starting levels and I found the first person narrative voice used for the Savior character broke the ability for me as a player to feel like I was part of the main storyline.

This is possibly intentional in order to ensure the story moves forward in along the same direction for every player. In essence, during the story elements players feel more of an observer to the main story line than an active player.

The repetitiveness does ease up as you learn more about each soul character, their story, and their role within the overarching Eversoul storyline. The more souls you collect and stories unlock, you can feel the story really begin to expand out.

One thing to note as that it’s important to remain active readers when playing through the story scenes. Especially as the game voices themselves are only available in Korean, with text translations in English and Chinese.

Good news is that whenever I found myself starting to auto-skim through, I was able to go back to the archives and rewatch the scenes for anything I may have missed.

Soul Bonding System

Eversoul‘s relationship bonding system is very unique, combining interactive story content with a highly intriguing lore for each soul character. Taking place within Eversoul‘s town instance, players have the ability to engage with and learn more about each spirit in the form of short love and event narrative content, in addition to the main story.

This system allows player to form closer “bonds” with soul they collect, serving as another way for them to level up and gain additional in-game rewards. This fostering system also hints at the potential to even romance Souls.

Art Style and Music

One of the most alluring aspects to the mobile RPG is its stunning 3-D visuals and fluid battling animations. The game really maximizes on the players attachment to the music and the character visuals, with the lobby allowing you to select your favorite song, as well as display your favorite souls in rotation.

Stories have a very anime-style treatment, allowing you to get a true feel for each Soul’s personality. All the while, the music adds to the beautiful art style and serves as a backdrop to each story element.

Eversoul In-Game Community Experience

As with any RPG, friendship and community features are core to every game. In Eversoul, there are two community-building options in the form of Friends and Guilds.

Friends

Once unlocked, I was able to randomly cycle through a list of existing players and send friend invites. There are no real chat features in-game, as the friend functions more as another summoning and character leveling element. It feels more like “collect a friend”, with the goal being mainly to gather friendship resources in order to collect more high-level souls through friendship summons. There is a cap of 30 friends, so while you can send out as many invites as possible, once you hit 30 others are unable to accept the invitation.

I did discover that you can also visit your friends town, engaging in more daily quests and taking a peek at how their own town is progressing.

Guild

Guild options also become available after hitting a certain Battlefront stage, and similar to the Friends search function, player are left to randomly cycle through a list of Guild names with little details and minimal search function.

Instead, players would need to jump in the Eversoul Discord channel or gaming community channels in search of Guild recruitment threads to learn more about the guilds that exists and regions they support.

Cash Shop Mechanics

Eversoul does use gacha mechanics, including random soul summons and resource loot boxes. It was interesting to see that outside of standalone boxes, the mobile RPG offers unique in-game monthly subscription options.

At a first glance, this doesn’t seem to introduce any game breaking benefits, in part due to the robust active and idle reward systems that already exist across every aspect of the game.

In game currency such as Everstones are rare, but can be obtained when completing different game stages.

Gold drops appear as common loot within various gameplay features. Other unique in-game items such as Normal Summon Tickets and Type Summon tickets (which are used to collect more Souls) are also easily found through quests rewards.

Overall, as with many gacha mobile games the cash shop provides a variety of purchasing options for base resources, while the randomization of various soul summon types serve as a key balancing element. However, this does mean that this can easily become a money-pit for highly competitive players looking to max out their teams and collect as many souls as possible. (And lots of prayers to the RNG gods.)

Final Score

4/5 Stars

Overall the Nine Ark Inc.’s maiden Eversoul mobile RPG game is a solid contender with strong world building, a stunning fantasy world backdrop and beautiful animations. The mobile game is filled with a wide array of solo and party content to keep you entertained, whether you prefer fighting in arenas or relaxing in town assigning tasks and going into town decorating mode. If you’re into romance and dating sims, the game’s relationship system will also be right up your alley.

Overall the Nine Ark Inc.’s maiden Eversoul mobile RPG game is a solid contender with strong world building, a stunning fantasy world backdrop and beautiful animations.

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While its has gorgeous graphics and strong world building, as with any newly launched game Eversoul does have room for improvement. The responsiveness of its UI remains a big sticking point for me, as does the occasional connection slow downs. It is a great side game for its more idle play mechanics, but admittedly can start to feel very repetitive as a main depending on your play style.

I would also hope that as the story expands, so do opportunities for greater inclusivity with expanded languages and more diversity in it’s trope-heavy lore. Still, I found myself surprisingly impressed with what these two studios have put together. To date, the game has been hard to put down.

What do you think? Share your thoughts on how this stunning title compares to other mobile RPG’s below.

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