Vambrace: Cold Soul – PC review

Review by Richard Winstone

The latest game from Devespresso Games an rouge style RPG set in the mystical city Icenaire you control Evelia, traveling to complete her father codex, you stumble into the new tyrannical reign of the King of Shades, Specters, resistance, turn based combat, what’s not to love.

Firstly there is a reasonable degree of difficulty to this game, there is no easy mode, don’t get me wrong its not Darksouls difficult but there is a good degree of challenge, I haven’t played many RPGs in recent years and I had to re-learn the fundamentals and the game punished me into submission of getting out of the old charge forward you got this routine we have become used to in modern gaming.

As you begin your adventure you struck down due to the extreme cold temperature, where fortunately the resistance find you and bring you to safety, you a suspect a traitor as no one can pass through the king of shades barriers, well that until you showed up with the vambrace that allows you to break down the barriers.

Your introduced to a world of conflict, magic and mystery, take your time to listen as the background story is pretty compelling, civil wars, evil dark lords all tied into the current power struggles with faction holding a fragile peace to survive. Lyric an outsider, a born leader and with the power of the Vambrace is likable character and this heroin role is reinforced as you progress through the game.

The visuals are great, how they marry up fantasy with the environments and a strong anime influence. With a wide variation on attributes and looks of the races on your side, team selection is key which brings us neatly onto gameplay. The room by room progression heralds back to JRPGS and the turn-based combat brought back found memories of the older Final Fantasy games.

The combat system is challenging with position and attack abilities of your team being key to victory, long range weapons being able to hit everyone where as hand weapons having the ability to only reach the first two slots. The encounters don’t last long but with the length of the expeditions efficiency is key as damage can rack up very quickly, there are some lifelines, a Friendly specter that will trade goods, the occasional camp site where you can replenish some of your hp and stamina, coupled with crafting and relics all of which are vital to your survival in the hostile frozen wastes on Icenaire. My only real criticism on the game play is it could do with a little more variation in enemy’s, abilities of your party but this is minor and with the emphasis on efficiency keeping the moves list to one attack and one special may actually be key to the game play. 

My Final Thoughts

With the game being visually good looking, challenging which makes it rewarding and it’s fun to play. Devespresso have done a great job, even making me change the way I play games in general and learning the meta of the game, and once it clicked once I made it past the second level after hours and hours of trying, it gripped me, I wasn’t making progress but I didn’t care I was enjoying the whole experience. I’m looking forward to a few more play through and I will be watching for future publications from the South Korean Studio.

Hive Approved 8/10