Welcome, young gamers, to the game I'm bringing you today: Soulslinger Envoy of Death, a very special shooter, and I'll tell you why it's so special. It tells the story of a man who, after suffering a painful loss and experiencing the most tragic moment of his life, finds his soul trapped in limbo, between life and death. Without knowing how or why, he finds himself at the mercy of death. Death has hired him as a soulslinger with the goal of thwarting the Cartel, a clandestine organization that seeks to harvest the souls of the dead for its own purposes.
Telling you more about the story would be a bit of a spoiler, and I think, given the way the game unfolds, it's worth it for you to discover the rest of the story for yourself as you play. At specific moments, you'll discover fragments that will allow you to meet various characters, with whom you'll have brief conversations that will shed light on your character's dark history. This prevents the narrative from taking over too much, since we're here to shoot, but at the same time it gives the game a special touch, making the action and narrative converge seamlessly, enriching both aspects. Returning to the shooting, I must be honest and say that, at first glance, I was expecting a different game. I thought Soulslinger was an adventure shooter with a story or campaign, like Doom, or, to choose another game with a similar story, something more in the vein of Painkiller.
But it turns out that Soulslinger Envoy of Death has nothing to do with the aforementioned titles, except for a few licenses that have more to do with the plot. However, this new title has shooting, high-speed crafting, and a very special component that I'm going to tell you about now because I'm going to tell you everything and show you some of the best confrontations you can experience in the game.
Soulslinger Envoy of Death is a first-person shooter, but a very special one, as it contains elements of Row Light, which makes it unique. Therefore, although it's a first-person action game, with shooting and enemies from the underworld or the afterlife, it's a far cry from Doom or PainKiller. We'll begin each of our journeys in a neutral zone, where we can choose one of three perks. These perks can be active or passive; if they're passive, they won't be active. We won't have to do anything to use them. If they're active, depending on the one we choose, they'll occupy a skill slot that we can activate with the 1, 2, or 3 keys, but we'll get to that later.
We'll move normally with w asd. We'll jump with the spacebar on the keyboard, and we'll have a dash or quick movement that we can activate by pressing the Shift key. This will be great for dodging enemy attacks or reaching positions that give us an advantage in combat. We'll shoot with the left mouse button, aim with the right mouse button, and alternate between our primary and secondary weapons with the Tab key. The objective of each encounter is to eliminate all the enemies that appear in each of the Arenas we enter, defeating them all.
We'll receive a reward, and several portals will open, from which we'll have to choose one to reach the next arena. Each portal will have a mark indicating the type of reward we can obtain if we defeat the enemies waiting for us on the other side. These marks are usually elements such as shadow, fire, poison, electricity, or blood, or even portals where the reward will give us some of the materials needed to craft weapons or special items. And yes, I said crafting because we'll have that too. But wait, I'll tell you. On some occasions, we'll also be able to see special marks, such as the mark of death, a forge, a peddler, or a pirate, which will offer us passive buffs, health-recovery items, and special abilities. The story behind the portals is that we'll have to be skilled enough to go through several of them, eliminating our enemies and opponents to obtain rewards—rewards with which we'll gradually create a kind of bull with which to face the two final bosses we'll encounter on each of the routes we take. The different Arenas will follow one another, and with each one, the number of enemies we'll encounter and their aggressiveness will increase. If we die, we'll lose all the advantages gained in the different Arenas we overcome and will appear in Limbo, just before dying, waiting for us to grab the souls we've recovered. And if everything you've seen so far makes you think that Souls Linger is a fairly simple proposal and could offer much more, it's because Souls Linger offers much more. But the real game, the party, the fun it hides, and the very essence of it all begins when you die for the first time. The first time you appear in Limbo, right between heaven and hell, you find yourself. In a small patch of forest, you'll speak with several characters. Some will be fleeting spirits who appear at specific times, and others, like Lady Valery, will be inhabitants who, similar to yours, are part of the ecosystem through which you move. In this ecosystem, you'll find the Well of Tears, the Totem of Power, and the Workshop. You'll also be able to visit a locker room where you can earn a reward for each new enemy class you discover and defeat in the Well of Tears.
We'll be able to activate permanent upgrades for our character. These upgrades will appear even after death and will allow us to recover health, increase our firepower, and even improve our resistances and shields with significant bonuses. The currency we'll primarily use to activate these passives will be the Tears of Oblivion, an item we'll also use to craft the Totem of Power, which will allow us to permanently improve our character's attributes and grant us advantages at the start of each game in exchange for other materials. The crafting table or workshop will be used to craft the different items we discover. Among these items, we'll have a total of five starting weapons, all with unique characteristics, seven relics to discover, and the keys to two types of secret portals: one that hides a unique encounter and rewards, and another that will take us directly to the forge, where we can improve one of the skills we have equipped at that time.
The skills we can receive as rewards in the different Arenas we participate in can transform Dash's movement by applying an element such as poison, shadow, fire, electricity, or blood, or even directly change it to a double jump. In skill slot one, we can equip a modifier for the ammunition of our equipped weapon, also with elements such as shadow, electricity, fire, poison, or blood. In slot two, we can equip other types of offensive skills, primarily area damage. For slot three, the game reserves the possibility of obtaining an ultimate skill as a result of encounters with death or with The Pirate Salesman. If it's due to death, it's quite possible that the ultimate will have some negative effect on our character. So, be careful. For a game in Early Access that's still in development, the sense of solidity they convey is quite surprising.
Conclusion
Soulslinger Envoy of Death not only gives you the opportunity to discover new things in each encounter, but after more than 15 hours of play, I still haven't seen everything it offers, something I both love and terrify in equal measure. I say this because right now the game only shows a third of its content, with an immense roadmap that the developers are going to shove in our faces with a gasp of surprise with each update. In short, a wonderful game in which death is just an excuse to further strengthen our protagonist, craft new and more powerful weapons, and increase our attributes to prepare for the start of each new encounter. We must be clear that our best ally in this shooter is death, the advantages it offers us, the shelter we can craft, and everything we can do within it. It's a game in which we can choose our path and forge our destiny in each match, a first-person shooter that feels complete.
