[Review] Mugen Souls - Nintendo Switch

Developed By: Compile Heart
Published By: Eastasiasoft
Categories: RPG
Release Date: 04.27.23

Eastasiasoft has been really publishing a lot of these Compile Heart re-releases lately. This time it’s a port to the Switch of 2012’s Mugen Souls! This time all of it’s DLC is included on cart and the game is finally uncut. I never played the original, so perhaps this is a good time to dive in? By the by, did you remember that Keiji Inafune produced this game?

Mugen Souls is a turn based RPG, that plays a bit like the Neptunia games. There’s a bit of movement you can do in the area, with each character having a range they can move in. This is free movement, so you can maneuver a bit between turns. Once you attack though, it can go a few ways. Normal attacks and abilities are no surprise. The Link attacks function normally, but there’s quite a few of them and they all have some pretty silly animations. Blast Off is a mechanic some special attacks can do to make enemies…blast off, to which can make them bounce off of say…a crystal in the field and inflict more damage. On top of that, you’ll have G-Castle fights, which use your Shampuru. Just back and forth fights, nothing too special.

The stand out is is the Moe Kills. Each enemy has a type they fall for. You’ll use a combo of different kinds of Moe to set out a powerful move that can end up recruiting those and gathering more and more Shampuru. There are quite a few of these all with their own unique designs in relation to the stat they align with. Dust Bunny in Special is my favorite.

Like all Compile Heart games, whether or not this is a good looking game is very much up for debate. The art in game looks great and some of the models like the main character look fantastic. Yu can even dress them all up in a LOT of different clothing options. I like the character designs period. However, not much else looks very good. And this isn’t a complaint about how a game from a decade ago doesn’t look modern, some of this stuff looked bad for a PS3 game in 2012. The game in fields, outside of battles does not run well at all either, I’m baffled as to why.

Music (and voice acting) is phenomenal at least. The first thing I noticed was how good the music was. I shouldn’t be surprised as Tenpei Sato did the music and his work for a whole truckload of Nippon Ichi Software games is almost all fantastic.

So lets talk about something I find quite questionable. If you’ve played games like this, you might be familiar with the concept of loli or lolicon. While nothing in Mugen Souls is explicit, there’s a lot of treading the line. Bath scenes, minigames with only suds or steam covering things up. It makes me a bit uncomfortable. I don’t agree with game censorship for the most part, but I honestly would have been fine if it wasn’t included in the first place. To be fair, there is plenty of content like this with more busty girls, but the point still very much stands. It should be said too, you can just look at any of the art, CGs, minigames, etc…whenever. Have fun with that.

Mugen Souls didn’t get good reviews back in the day and I’m not too sure it’ll get them nowadays either. It’s a for the most part mediocre RPG that’s lifted up by a mixed bag of presentation and it’s practically porn like minigames. Still, it’s nice to see it not stuck on a PS3 anymore if you want it physically.