Forgive me. For once I’m just going to steal the story summary from Wikipedia:

An army has been conducting research into Monolith Gate, the door to the world of ‘Idea’. That door is controlled by Gail, a young boy who gives Jay, a soldier, special power to travel to the other side to save his girlfriend, May [note: she’s not Jay’s girlfriend. Or Gail’s either.]. The special power grants [Jay] the ability to control monsters by sucking up their souls. Once you’ve defeated a foe, you can make them into your ally for use during future battles. You can take up to two monsters with you on your treks into Idea, selecting from eventually over 100 beasts.

I should do this more often. But anyway, May isn’t Jay’s girlfriend, he just has a huge and obvious crush on her. The reason she needs saving is because she got shot trying to save Jay/Gail. See, the army had been using Gail as a guinea pig to establish contact with the world of ‘Idea’. they pretty much treated him like trash in the process, so eventually he was like Screw this, I’m outta here, I’m off to Idea. The army was like nuh-uh, we’ll kill you first, then Jay got in the way so they were going to kill him, then May jumped in front of him, noo Jay, I will protect yooou! And she got shot. So Gail took her with him into Idea to get away from the evil army dudes. The first 15 minutes of the Coded Soul were very dramatic, I’ll tell you that 😀

Turns out the only people who can travel freely from Idea to the ‘real’ world and back are Gail and anyone he allows in, and he’s chosen to allow Jay – and only Jay – to come over and help him save May’s life. For some reason this ‘save her life’ process requires Jay to clear one dungeon after another, collecting strange items the bosses drop and giving them to Gail.

Along the way Jay also meets people who have wandered into Idea on their own. It seems like they were all passengers on ships/planes that disappeared over the Bermuda Triangle. Does Idea have anything to do with the Triangle? Does Gail’s crossing-over have anything to do with the increasing frequency of such disappearances? I wouldn’t know, I’m only 5 hours in so far. I get the feeling this isn’t a very long game, though, so I should find out soon.

On to gameplay! Instead of human party members, Jay can recruit monsters from the dungeons to join his party. There’s also a system that lets you use monster drops to power up those party monsters, e.g. give them +10% HP, give them Poison attacks (highly recommended. Poison is killer in this game), teach them new abilities, etc. So far it seems the best way to play is to ignore all customization and just constantly replace your monsters with stronger ones as soon as you catch them.

Actually, if this game is anything like Monster Kingdom Jewel Summoner (same developers), you’re going to end up jettisoning all the monsters you’ve lovingly raised because the last dungeon mobs will be much, much better than anything you can create. There’s no point getting too attached, is what I’m saying. Just as well that the game lets you feed captured monsters to your weapon to power it up. Depending on which monster you use, your weapon will change into a mace or a spear or a sword or some other type I can’t remember. The element, possible attacks and number of hits will change as well. I’m sticking to a 3-hit no-element longsword for now, but it’s early days.

Uh… just realized I haven’t actually said what kind of combat this has. It’s an Action RPG. Not as action-y as some, but more action-y than Tales of ‘Mash A to Win’ Hearts, at any rate. I’m playing both games at the same time and foolishly tried to mash my way through a battle in Coded Soul. I almost got Game Over’d in the very first battle!

It’s not like the battles are hard or anything, but you’re not supposed to take a lot of hits. The enemies hit pretty hard, so this more like Rune Factory where you have to watch their motions and attack when you see an opening then get out of the way and wait for your next chance. This is extra important in Coded Soul because Jay has his own few seconds of vulnerability after every attack. What’s worse,his attack motion isn’t static, i.e. the momentum of your swing will carry you forward, so you can easily end up with your back exposed to the enemy and yourself unable to move.

My solution for now: combo-ing attacks with my monsters. They attack, the enemy tries to counter-attack but I sneak in an attack just then, then when the enemy tries to attack me, my recovered ally gets in another attack, etc. It works pretty well when I can pull it off. Getting a few levels in, getting a party monster with a Heal-All spell and powering my sword up a few times has helped quite a bit too.

So that’s it for the basics of Coded Soul. It’s too early to say anything about the story, but I’m enjoying the combat, at least. On the other hand I’m not so crazy about some stuff outside combat, like how slowly Jay runs. That’s really annoying. I’m always pushing the stick like FASTER! FASTER, DAMMIT!! Also you have to come back to camp every 6 minutes or so because of story reasons, that’s annoying too. Also the dungeon layout is randomly generated, so if you warp out and come back, you have to explore all over again, wasting even more time. Oh, and the game loads a lot.

That’s all minor stuff, though (although minor stuff does have a habit of becoming major after 20 hours). I want to save May! It doesn’t matter what happens to the rest of the world, I just want to save May! Unless something really annoying happens, I doubt I’ll drop the game until she’s safe in Jay’s arms. Wish me luck!