Every so often a game gets its hooks in you before you understand what it is. Just recently, I was invited by Digital Extremes to play the pre-alpha build of their new game, Soulframe. It’s been a while since I have played any of their games. I never played Warframe, but I was a fan of Unreal Tournament back in the day, as well as Darkness II and Dark Sector. Other than a trailer I saw of Soulframe several months ago, which is what put iton my radar, I went in completely blind. I wanted to let the game hit me. I put in about six hours. Completely solo. And I came out of it with something I did not expect going in. So in this video I’ll walk you through what Soulframe actually is, what it gets right, where it stumbles, and the thing aboutthis build I keep coming back to. A big thank you to Digital Extremes for the invite. Let’s dive in.

What Soulframe Is On Paper

On paper, Soulframe is a free to play action MMO. You play an Envoy, in a world called Alca. A nature versus technology type fantasy, with a heavy Celtic feel running through all of it. Going in blind, that was the entire sum of what I knew. And it turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

What It Gets Right

The first thing that got me excited about Soulframe was the atmosphere. I’m probably going to date myself by saying this, but moving through Alca gave me a Neverending Story vibe, minus Falkor and the crippling childhood sadness. There is a strong sense of wonder hanging over everything. The nearest comparison, from a gaming perspective, is Fable, without the British humor.


The world of Alca has talking animals, an imperial army coming after you constantly, and this steampunk vibe surrounding all of this strange technology. It does a good job of drawing you in while still leaving you curious and clueless. You’ve got a sparrow that helps you navigate at the flick of the wrist, but exploration is mostly left to you. It scratches an explorer’s itch that a lot of big games don’t satisfy as much, from my perspective.


Soulframe doesn’t have classes per se. It has Pacts, which define you as either a Warrior, Mage or Rogue. Tethren is your warrior class if you want to be up close and swinging. Oscelda is your mage class if you want to cast and support. And Sirin is your rogue, the bow and arrow that comes with some dirty tricks. I went Sirin, and that surprised me, because I am almost always a warrior guy. Sword and board, with thick armor, is typically right in my comfort zone. But I tried all three, and Sirin just spoke to me.

Sometimes you don’t pick the character, the character picks you. Each Pact gives you three abilities. For Sirin, one ability shoots an arrow that explodes into a cloud of dust that blinds a whole group. The second drops a decoy that pulls enemies off you and then explodes on them. And the third one turns you into a flight of butterflies, which is the most elegant way I have ever fled a fight. The bow is the real star. Sometimes you can almost feel the resistance of pulling the bow back. It’s a slight but strong detail. Light attacks have a crunchy, satisfying weight to them when they land. Your strong bow attack launches a hail of arrows down from the sky and gives you actual range and control. Any time a group of enemies clustered up, I was raining arrows, every time.

How You Actually Progress

Now, there are three separate progression tracks running at the same time, as ways for you to level up and progress.
The first is your Envoy rank. That is your overall character level, and it climbs off of everything else you are doing. Leveling weapons, leveling pacts, and finding motes scattered around the world all feed into it. The second is your weapon type. Each one earns its own experience through combat, up to a max rank of thirty. And using a weapon type feeds points into its Combat Arts, which is a linear skill tree of abilities tied to that weapon. The third is your Pact. It levels on its own, unlocking those three abilities as you rank up, and feeding a passive tree called Pact Arts that you spend points into.


Sitting underneath all of that are your Virtues. Courage, Spirit, and Grace. These are your core attributes, and they decide your health pool, your cooldowns, your stealth, and which weapons and armor you can actually attune to. Courage gives you the biggest health pool and attunes to the heavy melee stuff, the greatswords, the polearms and the shields. Spirit shortens your ability cooldowns but hands you the least health, and it attunes to magick weapons. And Grace lands in the middle on health while boosting crits, headshots and ambush damage, which is why it attunes to bows and short blades.

You get a hub called the Nightfold which you can travel back to any time. This is where you work on your character, addressing all of the points I just mentioned, cause you can’t do so out in the field. As you explore, you can form these bonds out in the world, slowly filling your hub with people, like a blacksmith to upgrade and craft your gear, that kind of thing.

The Thing I Kept Noticing

Something stuck with me while playing, and it took me a bit to put my finger on it. The entire time I played, I never felt one moment like I was in an MMO. The pieces are technically there. And even though I didn’t play the game with friends, I still didn’t get that MMO ambiance you typically get in these games. The Nightfold is a hub. There is a chat window. Co-op is in the design, and you can party up. The game keeps you so immersed in its gameplay and exploration that for those six hours, nothing else mattered. The game never once made me feel like I was missing out by going alone.

Where It Falters

Now, to be fair, this is a pre-alpha, and it plays like one when it wants to. I ran into your typical stutters and frame drops. Some animations never fully rendered out. There was a good amount of geometry clipping. And at one point my screen went completely black on me mid session. Character faces right now look a bit stiff and lifeless, and I would love to see the character creator get more in depth downthe line. Also, the camera can be awkward in how it’s positioned when aiming your bow. So many times I wanted to reposition how I was aiming naturally, but over time, I got used to it.


Also, I don’t want to speak badly on the lack of crafting. It’s very possible that I need to actually explore and grind more to start changing up my gear. I was mainly surprised that in the time I played, I hadn’t changed my gear once yet. Something I’ll address as I keep playing. None of the critiques I’ve mentioned were anything I would be concerned about for a Pre-Alpha build of a game, and I was never deterred from playing more. In fact, the game is one of the more polished I’ve seen this early in development.

What That Label Promises

It’s been a long time since I played an MMO and had a good time. Final Fantasy 14 rings a bell. The issue I usually have withrecent MMOs is that they focus more on the systems to keep you coming back to play, and not on the immersion of
the world.

When I think of MMOs in present day, I think of wasteful side quests, queues, and dailies that waste your time. A constant gear treadmill that has you log in, run your errands, log out, repeat. I do not think that is what a great MMO is. I think a great MMO is the thing the genre was always supposed to be, which is a massive, immersive world you get lost inside of. The difference is where your attention goes. To the world building and immersion, or to the systems.

Why That Is A Good Sign

When I play an MMO, or any game for that matter, I care about the plot. I care about the NPCs, who they are and what they want from me. I care about the problems this world has and what I am supposed to do about them. I say this to say that Soulframe has the strong inklings of heading toward that true definition of what I would call an MMO. It largely feels like an action adventure with all of the MMO systems tucked away in the background, so you can focus on the immersion, on the lore, on the character building.

Who Is This For

So if you love atmosphere and a good action adventure, keep your eye out for this one. And if you are the kind of gamer who normally bounces right off MMOs, this is a title I would tell you to consider keeping an open mind on, cause it is comfortably the least MMO-feeling MMO I have played. Currently as I am putting this video together, Digital Extremes is hand selecting who gets into the Preludes build, so this is not something you can go download yet, but definitely keep it on your radar if interested and go wishlist it so you do not forget.

The Verdict (For Now)

In closing, I have been having a fun time exploring Soulframe in the little bit I have spent in the world. The atmosphere andthe music here sell this world completely. I loved exploring Alca, and I am genuinely excited to see where this goes. But I want to leave you with a real question. If a game is built and marketed as an MMO and plays like a single player adventure, is it still an MMO?

Let me know in the comments. Thanks again to Digital Extremes for letting me play this build and talk about it. Thanks so much for reading, and make sure to check out my channel and other videos below.