But unironically. Souldiers is a stunning looking metroidvania that could've been cut in half and it would've done great.

Let me get this out of the way first -- Come ON, man, those dungeons are ridiculously bloated with so many indecisive paths and 'secrets' that are mostly some random coins and potions I ended up not even using. It was such a frustrating experience but I stubbornly continued just because the artwork is wonderful and the gameplay loop is actually cool, but very, very repetitive with the exception of the wall-jumping upgrade; that thing straight up sucks.
How many times I caught myself realizing I spent 4~5h still in the SAME DUNGEON. Listen, I love playable content that keeps on giving but this is sincerely lazy; a multitude of gorgeous, but copy-pasted scenarios with a few changes here and there. The game drags on and on and on! So much of Souldiers could've been done in so little time; this game should've been a 12~15 hour game and I'd honestly look past most of the rest of the bullcrap that I will talk about now.

The story is ok, your character is just some dude with main character plot armour plus everything feels like an acid trip after a while so it doesn't matter-- it's all over the place. The characters are really charming and the sprites for both allies and enemies are amazing but that's about where the 'fun ends' because the game doesn't want you to have any.

Let me explain-- Souldiers starts really charming, it gives you time to get used to your character's moveset and such; I chose the archer and I liked it, did not look back even with the somewhat clunky ammo system we have for arrows, but it's alright, we can still throw the bow as a boomerang to deal damage. The first dungeon is the Spider Lair and it's really simple and straight-forward for the most part but boi... at the end of the dungeon I thought aloud "if the first dungeon is this long... imagine the rest." and not only imagine I did, I also experienced it.

There's a ton of exploration but like I mentioned before, the secrets are hit or miss; sometimes you get a nice secondary weapon and other times... coins. Coins are used to upgrade your items and weapons together with a few different ores we also get on chests, which is fine but wow, the game disrespects your time so much with how terribly paced the dungeons are. I would've prefer to grind enemies to get these rocks, not having to get inside dungeons with terribly placed checkpoints, which mind you, IT'S THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN SAVE THE GODDANG GAME. Yep, I did a fcuky wucky, needed to restart my game and guess what? I lost 2h~ of exploration because I didn't want to save since it respawns enemies. It's my fault but still, what a lame mechanic.

Now, the "Floating Whatever" (I forgot the name) was the dungeon that almost made me give up because it is that frustrating. Not only there are some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ZIPPY ZAPPY RATS that TELEPORT ON YOU and can PARALYZE you, there's also some very annoying birbs summoned by an invisible 'birbmancer' that go through terrain just to kamikaze you to inflict paralysis; yep, they're 'those' kinds of enemies that die in one hit but if they hit you, it's just infuriating if you're far away from a save state or out of paralyze heal or whatever -- my point is that the game does almost everything in its power to anger the player, at least it annoyed me to no end. It felt these obstacles were only testing my patience and not giving me a challenge or that thirst for progress; they were just being a nuisance for the sake of being one.
Ok, I get it, Souldiers is one of those harder games but hard doesn't mean stupidly annoying-- you think the toxic dart dudes in Blighttown are bad? Check out the poison, frozen, paralyze status and such in this game, some even stop you in motion to take damage and/or have to redo an entire platforming setting because 'get wrecked mid jump loser lmao'.

In short, the game is beautiful but terrible to look past its awful decisionmaking which sucks because the artwork is pure eye candy... what isn't is the game design; not everything has to be a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ maze within a maze within a maze in a metroidvania, guys. Seriously that pyramid is terrible.

I find it funny the achievement for finishing the game on its hardest difficulty is called "The Impossible". Even the cheeky devs know the game is a slog to go through. I'm a bit disappointed I will not 100% finish this one, it is simply not worth my time... man, to think even ELEX 2 was worth my time, holy shid.

Anyway, best avoid it if you value your time. I wish I did but alas, we live and we learn... who am I kidding, I'll probably play something worse than this eventually. lmao