Vambrace: Cold Soul
The King of Shades has cursed the great city of Icenaire. Now cast under a permanent blight of frost fall, its former residents have returned from the dead as mad Wraiths. Survivors take refuge deep underground where they lead a desperate campaign against this unearthly power. Woefully outmatched, they are forced into hiding as the King of Shades amasses an army of the undead above them. One fateful day, a mysterious stranger appears in the city with an enchanted vambrace. She may now be their only hope… You are Evelia Lyric, bearer of the Aetherbrace and the only human capable of entering Icenaire. The survivors now look to you as their best hope against the King of Shades. Only one problem…you’re woefully outmatched, and survival is not guaranteed. Vambrace: Cold Soul is a narrative-driven game filled with memorable characters, brutal challenges, and deep strategy. To succeed, you must choose perceptive party leaders, camp to recuperate, navigate strange encounters, and survive deadly combat. Will you scavenge for supplies to sell or use them to craft new items for your next expedition? The surface of Icenaire is cold and unforgiving. So, prepare your party well before departing…lest you join the cursed city's undead.
Game Discussion
Steam User 13
What a beautiful game. To those who are on the fence. Buy it. Enjoy the story, enjoy the torture of making choices you can't save scum. Enjoy it for what it is. If you're looking for a battle sim, look elsewhere. Otherwise, enjoy getting all her outfits!
Steam User 6
I HATE THE AUTOSAVE! I HATE THE LONG INTRO BEFORE YOU CAN PLAY THE GAME! I am now trying to 100% the achievements, sadly, you can not save the game before making a choice. You have to stay with whatever choice you make. Once you finish the game once, you can restart the game (deal with the long intro AGAIN) and select a chapter. The story is good, the gameplay is kinda fun, RPG-like. I like the alternative outfits I have gotten so far.
Steam User 5
It was a fun game, I got it on sale for $3. My first playthrough took 18.7 hours. Definitely worth more than $3, but I probably wouldn't advise paying more than $20 for it if you can. I enjoyed the combat system. Also, the dungeons at the end of each area had unique and interesting designs, though in some dungeons options to interact with seemed to appear only when backtracking through an area. There are also several hidden areas, which were cool to discover, I know there are still some left so maybe I will do another playthrough at some point.
Steam User 6
A short, exploration-focused dungeon crawler with turnbased combat. The story was deeper than expected, and there's many interesting mechanics that may come as a surprise. The worst thing you can do is go in thinking this plays exactly like a different game just because of how it looks. Accept it for what it is and you will find the mechanics are very streamlined and forgiving, with no minmaxing or number crunching, and combat is extremely simple and fast. Many side quests with decisions that determine your ending. Most importantly - changes to the protagonists outfit are reflected in their dialogue CG as well as during gameplay, and you can unlock a lingerie outfit after the first dungeon. Many other tasteful character & armour designs to be found too :^)
Steam User 5
There's a exploit where you load the last level and obtain almost all achievements by beating it.
Steam User 4
This is one of those games that's not amazing but does the job well enough to be worth the time, especially considering the deep discount when it's on sale.
The gameplay is a position-based turn-based RPG with a story that you progress by talking to NPCs and beating stages. The lore is pretty cool, the artwork is fantastic, and the overall aesthetic is very good. There's 3 endings influenced by the choices you make at a few key points. There's a selection of characters with different abilities for each class so you can customize your team to your liking.
Most of the negatives are QOL things. Some complain about character balance but i would argue that every character being interchangeable would just be boring. Min-maxing is boring. I play the Hedge Mage and had no problem beating the game. The QOL things for me were just not knowing what the status effects are actually doing, how to cure them, and figuring out what each character's abilities actually do without going to their character sheet all the time.
Positives are most definitely the artwork. It's absolutely beautiful. I also love the overall aesthetic, the lore, and the main story. I find it very interesting and there's a lot to read in the in-game codex.
The combat is a bit mid for me; not bad but also not great. My biggest problem with the combat is there just isn't a lot of variety to each battle. It can be a bit frustrating at times when you get too many debuffs on your team or keep getting critical fails. But it's good enough overall.
The absolute biggest disappointment with this game is that they didn't make a proper sequel. There's a new game in the same universe but it's a completely different genre of game. This game deserves a true sequel since there's tons of player feedback for them.
The TLDR is maybe a 6/10, just above average and carried by the artwork.
Steam User 4
Likes
- Incredible artwork.
- Decent story, though nothing great.
Neutral
- Music is okay but nothing memorable.
- The game is too easy. Once I understood the camping mechanics, I finished the rest of the game without any wipes or retreat on Cold Soul difficulty, starting from Chapter 2. This is primarily due to the oversimplification of battle stats into a single Combat stat.
Dislikes
- No keybinds.
- UI is clunky at times. No tooltip for enemy status effects. After a major conversation, Evelia kept getting auto-swapped to the front row.
Conclusion
Overall, the game feels more like an RPG than a Roguelite, which I don't really mind. I would still recommend getting it when it's on sale. It might not be the best game out there, but I think it does deserve to have better rating than Mixed reviews.