Soulframe is not an MMORPG

Starting a journey into a new game

 I put a couple of hours into testing the pre-alpha version of Soulframe yesterday. I was impressed with the state of the game and how it ran on my computer. If this is truly a pre-alpha build, then this game has a bright future—it felt better than some games that are fully released. However, I came to the realization that Soulframe is not an MMORPG, and that’s unfortunate.

 So if Soulframe isn't an MMORPG, what is it? It's a single-player RPG with optional multiplayer co-op and online social hubs. Some may argue it will be "massively multiplayer" because there will be thousands of players online at any time that you can group with and interact with, but I don't buy that argument. I'm still a firm believer that a cornerstone of an MMORPG is a persistent open world that 1,000+ players inhabit at the same time. Unless you choose to, you won't see another player in Soulframe.

 MMORPG or not aside—how is the actual gameplay of Soulframe? As I mentioned in my opening remarks, they are advertising this test as pre-alpha, but they would have fooled me, because the game feels far more complete than most pre-alphas.

 When you first log in, you go through a unique player creation phase where you select your mother's physical traits, which then pass down to your character. This was interesting, but it did feel like I had limited control over my character's visual appearance. Also, it's awkward picking character traits with a half-naked, recently-regnant woman standing in her underwear in the background.

 Once in the game world, I was surprised to find there wasn't a tutorial. I don't know if that is the long-term plan or not. It didn’t bother me, and I sort of liked it. Instead of some predetermined route, I was free to check out the nearest thing that caught my eye. I saw a nearby enemy camp and ran over to get into a fight. The combat wasn't explained, but it was obvious that left click attacks and right click blocks. The UI indicated that I had some health potions and abilities tied to keybinds, and while it wasn’t obvious what the abilities were doing, it was easy enough to know I had access to them.

 The game does not put any indicators over enemy heads until you attack them. Once attacked, a health bar of sorts appears with a number that I assume indicates the enemy's level. There is no name or indication of what type of enemy you're fighting, so it’s left up to what you can visually see. This is sort of irritating when Enemy A is level 1 and easy to defeat, and Enemy B—who looks exactly the same—is level 10 and going to send you to an early grave.

 Combat itself was enjoyable and smooth. The controls are responsive, and timing dodges and attacks is rewarded with defeated enemies and a full(er) health bar. Potions take time to consume and put you at risk during combat, which was nice to see compared to the instant restoration most games offer. I'm still not sure what my skills do, but I have two of them now. The game could do a better job explaining or showing me what they are doing, because they aren’t any form of attack but seem like some sort of buff. Confusion aside, I see a lot of promise for this combat system!

 It was after my first combat that I caught on to my bird guide, who points you in the direction of a quest. It wasn't clear if this was the default starting quest or something I came across, but nonetheless, I set off to complete the objective. It was nice that I could activate the bird over and over again to have it direct me where to go, because the quest descriptions were not enough. Also, there is inconsistency in the world—two doors will look exactly the same, but one will give you an interact icon for the quest and the next door will not.

 I get that some folks think it's immersion-breaking to see floating icons over quest objectives and names over the heads of enemies, but unless the game goes out of its way to make every last door, chest, bottle, etc., interactable—and every enemy uniquely distinct visually—the game falls down on communicating to me, the player, what I’m dealing with. This is a similar complaint I have with Dune Awakening as well, as it does the same thing—no indicators for the player to clue into until you're standing directly over something.

 Another discovery I made was that pressing Tab took me to a camp area in a pleasing visual of my character falling backward into the ground, only to reappear in the camp. The camp seems to exist in some suspended reality, and after my first quest I was rewarded with a new station in the camp. I'm not sure what all of this does, but I did find I can change equipment and do some other camp-related things. I assume this is where I’ll do crafting in the future as well.

Discovering my camp for the first time

A new station was unlocked in my camp

 

 The best part of going to the camp was that there is no load screen. Your character falls out of the main world and appears almost instantly in the new world. The same goes for exiting back to the open world, and I was surprised to find it puts me right back where I exited. I had assumed maybe it’d drop me at some sort of teleportation stone. I'm hoping this means I can skip the runs back to town when I fill up on inventory and instead just tab in and out of my camp. I'm very curious to learn more about what I can do there.

 The “no loading screen” experience applies to the open world as well. As far as I can tell, everything is seamless in the open world. If there are loading screens out there, they must be tucked away somewhere, because everything I've done in my first couple of hours has been loading-screen-free. A huge technical win for the game!

 The only real gripe I had with the game was the UI. The menus, settings, and such are fine, but the UI while exploring the world and during combat needs work. The main issue is that the two core elements are hidden on the bottom left and right of the screen. With larger monitors, this means I have to take my eyes off the center—where the action is happening—to see things like health status or ability cooldowns. They need to let us move these elements closer to the center. Personally, I'd also prefer to turn off the "artsy" frames around the UI elements and have just clean lines. Oh, and make the health bar horizontal instead of curved.

 As you can tell, I'm still early in my journey with this game. I have not followed it closely (which is evident by me not realizing it wasn’t a true MMORPG), so I'm genuinely getting to experience some things for the first time. Again, for a test marketed as pre-alpha, this is a very polished experience. I had zero performance issues, zero bugs, and I'm really enjoying running around to whatever catches my eye and seeing what it has to offer. I'm not sure the game will be right for me in the long run, but it has enough going on to keep me testing it a bit longer.

Note: this post was edited with the help of AI (ChatGPT). The thoughts are my own.  The grammatical correctness and em dashes (—) are the AI.