Play This One For the Story

Gameplay: Soul Historica features a branch point where the story has the potential to go into different paths depending on the decision you make at said Branch Point for some replayability on future playthroughs.
This is the 4th Magitec RPG I’ve played and another common theme w/their games that I’ve noticed is the repetitive and too-frequent enemy encounters, with no way to adjust encounter rates from menu options unlike later Kemco RPG’s. In addition, the game’s ultimate weapons/armor are locked behind IAP dungeons. Soul Historica also features a couple of optional superbosses that show up on the world map towards the end of the game. By the way, there’s no full screen support for newer Android phones as w/the other Magitec RPG’s I’ve played so expect to be stuck w/black borders on both sides of your phone screen as you play.
Controls: Controls were bearable but somewhat janky, possibly because of me playing this on a newer phone than when the game was released (this game was from 2012 I believe, my phone is running Android 14 which as of the time of this review is the most recent version.)
Story: The main attraction and the best part of Soul Historica is it’s story, which has varying events and endings depending on the choice you make when you reach the Branch Point some ways into the story. Our main character, York, is a member of the Lord Prophet Nemesis’ Order of Knights who defends his city (and his one true love, Eris) from monsters. When Eris tragically dies from a monster attack while York and his fellow Knights return back from an extermination mission, he sets out on a quest for revenge that leads him down a rabbit hole of twists and truths regarding the very world he lives in. If you wish to experience Soul Historica to its true conclusion, however, you must play through the game not once, nor twice, but THREE times if you wish to see the True Ending and Postgame. You will definitely want to play this one if only for the story. Soul Historica comes in around 20 hours w/all content completed including the True Ending and Postgame.
Battle System: Battles are your usual turn-based Kemco RPG fare, and you have 3 characters to use in a battle (w/1 or 2 characters in reserve at some points throughout the game.) Your party is positioned on a 3×3 grid w/front, middle and back row positions. Depending on the weapon type your character(s) have equipped and their position on the grid, they may either be able to do decent damage, little damage or not be able to do normal attacks at all. Your characters also get to move to 1 position per turn across the grid, and you will need to do this during certain boss fights to avoid some Game Over-inducing attacks. There’s also a tension meter for each of your characters that increases/decreases depending on actions taken during battle. High tension will increase the damage you deal and take, and vice-versa with low tension. This creates an interesting level of challenge for the late-game boss fights.
Skill System: Characters start out preset in a basic job as either a Fighter, Scout or Wizard type w/jobs becoming available depending on what Souls you equip to their Soul Cages (Attack-oriented souls will give you, say, Fighter, Scout, and Wizard jobs more oriented to attack, while Magic and Defense soul orientation will give you jobs appropriate to said inclinations.)
You level up their classes through skill experience accumulated in battle, and when they hit max rank in a class, you can change Soul Cage orientations to get them to learn a new class and skills. Unfortunately the rate you gain skill EXP at is pretty low throughout the game forcing you to do a bit of grinding at points as characters will leave/join your party in places.

A Soulful Story-Driven Experience

Story: It starts off as one man’s quest for revenge after his girlfriend gets sacrificed in a war against monsters, but builds into a nice non-standard RPG plot that brings in themes of human evolution, sacrifice, and an overall concept similar to “The Matrix”. The unique feature of the game is dividing its story into 3 possible endings, which all start the same way up to the halfway point. There, you’re asked to choose between 2 possible paths each leading to one of the 2 bad or bittersweet endings. After completing both paths, you’re offered the option of a 3rd path leading to a good ending with some added post-game content.

Characters: The story is very character driven, and I found the 4 central characters York, Eris, Fiora, and Arioch very memorable, struggling with complex motivations and human emotions.
Each story branch (including the “good ending”) involves 1 or more of the main characters permanently dying, which although sad, makes the story stronger.

Gameplay/Battle: Apart from the one story branch point, the game is very linear, with the world map reflecting this, you move from dungeon to town, and repeat. The dungeons themselves are a standard linear maze as well for the most part, though some of the later dungeons involve some tricky one-way conveyor belts and portals.
The highlight of battle is the souls system, where each character has two slots to equip souls collected in chests or in battle. Each soul gives bonus attributes / passive effects and is assigned a number of colors which affect the class system.
The classes available to each character differ for each character, but include 3 branches, each with 3 progressive classes, each with 3 class levels. The branches open depend on the souls. Each time a character levels up a class, they learn a new skill permanently.
For example, a “magic” character like Fiora can progress through a pathway focused on attack magic, a pathway focused on healing, and a pathway focused on support skills. Mastering all the classes requires a full 3 playthroughs. Although it’s tedious to repeat the whole story 3 times to see the true ending, the fact that everything except character level carries over from each playthrough makes things tolerable.

Once you beat the game’s 3 challenge bosses and obtain free IAP points, you start getting the game’s most powerful souls which when used in the right combination, allow you to survive the tough final battles, and allow you to switch classes freely.

Overall, I would highly recommend this game for its fantastic, unique, story-driven experience with a creative battle system that keeps the gameplay entertaining to the finish.