Swords & Souls: Neverseen

This game brings back times where I didn't care about what I played as long as I was entertained. A game that I could play without spending a dime to remove a boulder in the middle of my progression. A time where flash games on Kongregate ruled over my playtime of video games. Launching this game filled my head with memories of grinding my stats in between homework, or class work. If I could go back in time and relive the original flash game, I'm not sure if I would, but I sure as hell would enjoy it just as I did back then. It's everything the old game is, and even more. If you've played the original, you'll be pleased with this game just as you were back when you tried it out. It's a game that helped me feel like a kid again, even if it were just for a couple hours here and there, once a week or so.

Overall 7/10, but the game is fun so read on if you want a more detailed breakdown.
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❤ Audience ❤
☑ Beginner
☑ Casual Gamer
☐ Normal Gamer
☐ Expert
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This game is very beginner friendly, would honestly do better as a phone game than PC setup.
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☼ Graphics ☼
☐ Bad
☑ Alright
☐ Good
☐ Beautiful
☐ Fantastic
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Graphics needs aren’t intense. The game is alright looking, nothing amazing.
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♬ Music ♬
☐ Bad
☐ Alright
☑ Good
☐ Beautiful
☐ Fantastic
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Music is actually fairly decent. Worth playing with the music on. Some of it reminds me
of Legend of Zelda. Battle music is pretty good as well as training music.
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☠ Difficulty ☠
☑ Ultra Easy
☐ Easy
☐ Average
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Hard
☐ Unfair
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Going to be honest, the game is really easy. The fun aspect comes from the mini games mostly. They are fun and addicting and a good time waster. Fighting is fun, but it’s not where the main draw of this game came to me anyway. Could this game be hard? If you purposely set up handicapping rules like no training and just fighting, probably. You would be cutting out a core aspect of the game that way.
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§ Bugs §
☐ Bugs destroy the game
☐ Lots of bugs
☐ Few Bugs
☐ You can use them for speedrun
☑ Nothing encountered
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Not a single bug encountered while playing. Doesn't mean you won't, mileage always varies.
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☯ Story ☯
☐ There is none
☑ It exists
☐ Bad
☐ Alright
☐ Good
☐ Fantastic
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The plot exists solely as a way to introduce new areas to explore and beat up new enemies and collect equipment. It’s silly at best. They try to be humorous with puns here and there. It’s the type of humor aimed for children honestly and that’s okay.
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⚔ Gameplay ⚔
☐ Frustrating
☐ Sleepy
☐ Boring
☑ Fun
☐ Challenging
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If you enjoyed flash games that had you do mini games to get bonuses or to complete tasks, you will enjoy this game. If you are looking for in depth mechanics with a lot of nuance and tons of balancing in the fighting aspect, this game is not for you. This game is one meant for you to enjoy through casual play and feel powerful. The game is not meant at a serious attempt at battle mechanics. The game is Fun if you enjoy the mini games and the options given to you while fighting and trying to pick the best combos you can make. Is the game hard? No. But difficulty does not equate to levels of enjoyment. First time playing a game in this series and I enjoyed myself.
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۞ Game time / Length ۞
☐ Really short (0 - 3 hours)
☐ Short (4 - 8 hours)
☑ Few hours (10 - 20 hours)
☐ Long (40-60 hours)
☐ Very Long (61-100 hours)
☐ Extremely Long (101+ hours)
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The game length is not long. You can beat the game in a day of sitting down and hashing it out. Probably best enjoyed over a course of multiple days with a few hours. Meant mostly to be very casual. Can you farm for longer and get better stats, all the pets and stuff? Yes. Is it needed to beat the story? No. If you enjoy the collectathon in games then the game will be longer. I don’t enjoy collectathon so I’m rather glad it’s not forced.
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$ Price / Quality $
☐ Full price
☑ Wait for Sale
☐ Don't buy
☐ Refund it if you can
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Definitely wait for a sale. It’s not worth the full asking price. You can get better more quality games for that price. At 50% off so around $7-8 is what this game should originally retail anyway. You could honestly tell me this was a port of a phone game and I would believe it. It’s aimed at a very casual gamer audience, which is not a bad thing, but the amount of enjoyment you can get from it in terms of hours to the amount being paid for long term is almost about a dollar an hour. There are better games with better ratios for the same pricing. Definitely pick up on sale.
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This is sort of a tough recommendation, because it comes down to one thing: Did you enjoy the previous Swords&Souls games? If so, congratulations! It's the best one to date, and it's not limited to a browser. Better systems, better training (minus a few grievances per usual), the same style and sort-of-plot you've come to expect.
If you haven't played those games... Well, imagine a light-weight RPG combat system with timed reactions for things like criticals and blocks / parries. Dodges and blocks are a resource you can deliberately choose when to use, that sort of thing. But the key source of character growth isn't from grinding fights, but from a mix of semi-idle progression mechanics (taxing the museum that holds all your monster logs, achievements, etc) and mouse-and-keyboard minigames. Directly train your melee skill by doing a psuedo-rhythm game, boost your magic through a weirdly fluid mouse-trail Break the Targets mini, etc. If you think that sounds cool? 100% go for this.
A finishing note for those who not only know the series but already have this very game on Kartridge, the standalone Kongregate game launcher? Your save is automatically carried over to the Steam version if you switch, and vice versa.
TL;DR -- Weird addictive microgames train the stats for a fun slightly-silly RPG.

Good game. It might come off at first glance like an idle game but the farther you progress through the main story the more mechanics are revealed. Most parts of the game feel like there own mini game as well which keeps the game fresh as you switch up between combat, training, fishing and what have you.
I've heard it gets super grindy if you're going for 100% completion but 10 hours in I haven't felt that, I'm also not going for 100% completion so I don't know.

Credibility: 28 hours played 100% achievements 100% completion Multiple top 50 ranks on leaderboard
This is the sequel to the flash game Sword & Souls. I recommend you to check it out on Kongregate to see if you like the general gameplay before picking this up. It makes for a very good demo. A lot has changed between the two games, but if you find you don't like the "endless" grind or the minigames, you're definitely not going to like this one.
Now if you want to get into the nitty, gritty or just want to read rather than play a demo...this game is all about the journey, not the goal. A concept that seems lost on other developers. As such, the grind is effectively endless, however it does get "tougher" (read: more interactive) as you (as in the person sitting behind the screen) improve your skills. Just as your character grows, you will also grow. You may find some of the challenges posed by the game to be impossible, and they may very well be at your current skill level.
So how does the grind work? Well, the main grind is broken into 5 sections: Melee, Ranged, Magic, Defense, Agility. You do not need to grind up all of these, you can technically clear the game by only grinding one of these in fact. Though I would heavily recommend you at least put some focus into each. Each training is broken up into ranks (wood, bronze, silver, gold, platinum, soulmaster) and at each rank, the training introduces a new mechanic. As an example, the melee training puts you in the middle of the screen and you need to defend yourself from apples being thrown at you from the left, the right, and from above you. Attacking those apples at a certain distance, earns you a star which increases your combo that you've been building from hitting the apples by 2 instead of 1. When you successfully earn a high enough combo, high enough star combo, and complete enough missions (collect stars, get a combo of x, don't screw up for y seconds, etc), you'll advance a rank. The next rank will introduce bladed chakram being thrown into the mix which at low combos will throw 3 of them at you in quick succession (significantly faster than the apples), but will provide a lengthy break between each set of 3 and before returning back to apples. At the next rank, you'll be introduced to magic apples, which will float around on the screen and take a very roundabout path towards you. There are additional mechanics that will continue to be introduced as you gain additional ranks, but that's the basic gist of it. In addition to earning the medals/ranks, you'll also be gaining stat points as you hit the objects flying at you and complete missions. In this case, you'll be gaining melee points which will boost your melee damage. You'll also occasionally earn a clover which you can feed to a mushroom that will give you something random in return (money, potions, free training points, etc).
The training is the core of the game, but the game still has other features including a multiple chapter story, mercenaries (and their stories), pets, fishing, and even the ability to build your house. The story is nothing special, but it does at least give you a goal to work towards. For those of you that remember the story from the first game, you'll find a similar twist in this one, but they take it up a notch on you. I won't spoil it more than that. The fishing is actually kind of disappointing. After seeing all the work and care that went into the other mini-games, it was demoralizing to find out that the fishing mini-game was about as generic as they come.
One thing I've yet to talk about though is the combat that you'll be doing during the campaign and endless mode that unlocks afterwards. The combat is some kind of bastardization of real time and turn based. Turn based in the sense that every character will take their turns in that order and real time in the sense that you don't need to enter a command for action to happen. The way you interact with the combat is pretty interesting though, you have ways to interrupt the flow of combat (something the other characters do not have the ability to do) allowing you to get in a large amount of attacks. And when it comes time to defend yourself, instead of there being some chance to block or dodge, you have to actively perform these actions and performing them perfectly will allow you to counter your opponent on their turn too. This can even result in sending their own attacks back into their faces saving you from massive damage and/or making them deal with their own nasty debuffs.
Last thing to talk about, the endgame. I've mentioned endless mode already, which is effectively a string of combat scenarios similar to the main story except the enemies chosen are "random". Random in the sense that it can be a mix/match of every type of enemy but everyone fights the same enemies on the same level. For example, on level 105, the boss fight is against a boss version of every faction's healer which can be very tough if you've not trained a LOT for the encounter. To achieve 100% achievements for the game, you will need to complete up through level 120 which the leaderboards tell me only about 390 people have managed to do so far. From what I remember, being good enough to complete the campaign was only good enough for maybe level 30 in endless mode and by level 50 in endless mode I could beat the final boss in the campaign with the starter gear. So the grind is pretty intense at this point. This is definitely where the majority of your time will be sunk as you go for 100% completion. The trash enemies of level 120 have just over 50 million health so once you get your hands on the game and reach endgame, you'll be aware of just how high the mountain to the end is.
Overall, I recommend this game for anyone that wants something to just kill time with or to train their reactions/mouse control. The game really is completely about the training and that training can be used to help you train your physical self too. Something that's rarely a result from other games. At least not to the degree that this game allows.

great game, also feels great to finally support creators that entertained me for months when I was a child

Recommended with 50% discount for the main campaign
When does the funny and enjoyable grind become a tedious grind that is no longer fun? I think Swords & Souls: Neverseen manages that around 6 or seven hours in right after the story ends. The problem with that statement is if you want to get 100% achievements you will have to grind for several additional days ... doing the exactly same thing over and over again ...