Video Game / Eversoul

The story of you and the girls who live forever.

AWAKE YOUR SOUL.

— Tagline.

Eversoul is a role-playing idle gacha game developed by Nine Ark^* Stylized as NINEARK and published by Kakao Games (Guardian Tales, World Flipper). Initially announced in August 2020 as "Soul Artifact", it received the name change in 2021, was quietly delayed from its planned 2022 launch, and was finally released on January 5, 2023 globally except Mainland China and Japan.

In the distant future where humanity was wiped off the face of the Earth following a cataclysmic world war and a failed Homeworld Evacuation, there live magical beings called Souls who are born from the many artifacts humanity had left behind. They have been rebuilding the destroyed Earth, living in relatively long-standing peace and harmony, until a mysterious gate opened in the sky that brought forth countless monsters from an unknown place. With their world of Eden in danger, Queen Yuria of the Kingdom of Solrey and Mephistopheles, an artificial Soul created by humanity who's bound to her artifact The Ark "Metatron", begin performing a ritual to summon someone from the distant past, one that can help the Souls discover the artifacts they all came from, recall their locked-away memories, and access greater power to combat the looming threat. This hero of theirs — the Savior — is you, a young man hailing from modern-day Earth.

As the Savior, you are given the task of leading and nurturing the Souls so that they can fight back against the unknown threat. In battle, you take five Souls to the battlefield as they fight automatically on your behalf, with your manual input restricted to unleashing their Active skills, which are charged as a Soul accumulates dealt and received damage, and activating their Ultimate skills, which are attacks that can turn the tide but can only be used once a universal charge bar is filled to 100%. Out of battle, you have the responsibility of leveling them up, upgrading their stats, and forming solid bonds with them through the Bond System. You are also made in charge of your own town that you can customize and protect from monsters at your behest.

The game's trailers are available in English here, here, and here. Check their official websites here (KR/Asia) and here (NA/EU).

It has also spawned a pre-release prequel Webcomic subtitled "The Beginning of the Soul", focusing on a select few Souls and their backstories from before they ever met the Savior, namely: Mephistopheles, Ayame, Adrianne, Linzy, Talia, and Jacqueline. Do note that it's only available in Korean. There is also an OST playlist on YouTube containing image songs of the mentioned characters relating to the events shown in the webcomic, alongside other OSTs uploaded by the official Eversoul KR account. Do note the songs are also only in Korean.

Eversoul provides examples of the following:

• Absurdly High Level Cap: A Soul's level caps out at Level 240, provided they are in Origin tier. Once you have at least one Soul at Origin tier though, this 240 is immediately turned into 245, and each subsequent Origin ascension gives five more levels to reach. To put into perspective, if one managed to get the initial roster of 30 Souls to Origin tier within the release month, they would immediately have access to Level 390, a level cap that F2P players could only DREAM of having instantaneous access to. Of course, with this trope in place, any level up beyond Level 200 will require absurd amounts of Mana Crystals per level. Ready those zodiac buffs, stock up on Town buildings with Mana Crystal buffs, have your guild start investing in Mana Crystal guild buffs, and prepare to have the patience of a god because Mana Crystals will be your future main bottleneck upon having five Origin Souls, and these don't come too plentiful from the idle rewards without any buffs whatsoever.
• Action Girl: The playable Souls are all female and can all take to battle due to their supernatural nature.
• Action Girlfriend: For Souls that have explicitly romantic Love Stories, they can end up qualifying as this once players reach their True Endings. Notable cases include Jade and Talia.
• Actually Four Mooks: Encountering an enemy in dungeons will always put you in a battle with five enemies, which may sometimes include enemy Souls.
• Advanced Ancient Humans: Before their apparent downfall, humanity had achieved a scientific breakthrough that allowed man to access latent superpowers within themselves, as well as obtain the ability to see the previously-invisible Souls that have been with humanity for so long. Now calling themselves "Homo Dominas", they sparked a series of events that would lead to the destruction of Earth and the fall of human civilization on the planet.
• After the End: The main story is set centuries after the extinction of humanity, letting the Souls rebuild society in the world they now call "Eden".
• All in a Row: While exploring, your party will follow you around at almost the same pace, while maintaining formation as much as possible.
• All Myths Are True: The Souls all originate from powerful artifacts. These can be mythological (Greek, Roman, Chinese, etc.), literary (Arthurian, fairy tales, etc.), or straight-up modern (RPG-7) in nature.
• All Swords Are the Same: Averted in actual battles as Souls have their own weapons and fighting styles with the appropriate appearances and animations, but it's played straight in Town and dungeon explorations. Melee Souls will always use the same sword swinging animation and Ranged/Magic Souls will always use the same "ranged" casting animation when breaking stuff. The Savior's attack animation is basically the same as melee Souls, with the only difference being that his sword swings have red smear frames than the normal blue frames.
• Alternative Calendar: Averted somehow. Even when humanity is wiped off the earth, their calendar system is still used by Souls to this day, even human holidays.
• Amazon Brigade: One guy, multiple girls, in a war against an unknown enemy.
• An Interior Designer Is You: Once your Player Headquarters is unlocked, you are given a patch of land in which you can erect buildings and decorations in however fashion you like. Certain buildings also provide passive buffs to characters assigned to them, like houses.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Clearing some Souls' Love Stories with a True End will give the player access to costumes that a specific Soul had worn over the course of said bond story. The developers have also stated that costumes will not be available for direct purchase and are instead obtained through the aforementioned method or special events, as a way to give players an incentive to try and pursue their favored girls.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Souls in pick-up banners that you haven't obtained will always be available in the Town for the duration of their banner schedules, giving players the chance to get to know them through daily conversations, gifts, outings, and accessing their Love Stories.
  • A Soul's Love Story can be reset at anytime by paying 100 Everstones. This allows players to rethink their choices made throughout said story while keeping their bond level progress with said Soul intact, allowing them to see each ending with at least 200 Everstones.
  • Players can reset a Soul's level by paying 50 Everstones. This allows them to obtain all the materials used for that Soul's level ups and give it to another Soul who players might benefit more from, like a Soul with a higher rarity than the previous one.
  • As with any idle gacha game, there is a Soul Link feature that allows players to raise five Souls' levels and give some underleveled Souls access to these levels as long as they're placed within a Soul Link slot. Initially having a 24-hour cooldown time when a Soul is removed, as-is the standard for idle gachas, a later update would reduce said time to 4 hours, letting players change Souls in and out of sync more frequently in case the going gets that tough or players want to try different Soul synergies quickly.
  • You can borrow a friend's Soul at any time with the Hire Soul feature, accessed through the Friends screen, for up to 5 Souls per day.
  • Unlike its other idle game contemporaries, its Labyrinth mode allows you to run the clock against enemies that prove to be difficult but not impossible to defeat without worry of the game just killing your units for running out of time. This makes heal-centric teams/treasure runs a solid tactic to utilize within said mode.
• Anyone Can Die: Something that the story can utilize due to the Souls' inherent "immortality", as first showcased by Linzy, who was expected to be a regular in the main story, getting "killed" by the end of Chapter 3. She gets better by the end of the next chapter, but said "death" becomes a sort of warning to the Savior: if he makes more wrong choices going forward, the Souls that are fighting for him will end up paying for it with their lives.
• Apocalypse How: The apocalypse that wiped humanity can be considered Class 3a. It was their folly that summoned an uncontrollable Soul capable of mass destruction during a devastating world war ruled by magic and supernatural powers, but humanity is seemingly the only species that went extinct as a result. Souls have the excuse of being immortal and unkillable beings, but how some animals and plants survived the cataclysmic war is never touched upon.
• Archaeological Arms Race: The discovery of the Souls led many nations to seek out as many Artifacts as they can to create Souls from them. Said Souls would later be subjugated and utilized in wartime against their will.
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • Auto mode will always activate Active Skills once they become available. This can sometimes end up negatively affecting the overall battle, as sometimes these skill may end up being used in situations that would render it either unnecessary or wasteful.
  • With a bit of Guide Dang It!, some players may think that Auto Ultimate's skill priority setting makes it so that Ultimate Skills are used in a specific order set by them, when this setting actually sets the highest-priority Soul that would "always" activate their Ult once the gauge is full, and would only follow the setting if said Soul/s is/are unavailable (stunned, charmed, etc.) or incapacitated. The same problems with Auto mode also plague this mode, either wasting or unnecessarily using Ultimates at certain times.
• Bad Luck Mitigation Mechanic: For the gacha system:
  • The Normal banner, where all Souls (including pick-ups) have a chance of being summoned, there is a pity system of 30 pulls set so that once this threshold is reached without obtaining a single Epic unit, the summon will guarantee at least one.
  • Pick-ups don't have the above mechanic, but instead have a mileage system where you obtain specific materials every 40 pulls, up to 200. The featured Soul's shards can be obtained within 80 pulls should bad luck set in.
  • Artifact summons feature a "wishlist" mechanic, which gives any three Artifacts you set higher chances of having its shards pulled from the gacha, allowing players to easily pursue any Artifact that they would benefits more when obtained/ascended.
• Biblical Motifs: From your Player Character essentially acting as a Messianic Archetype to the people of Eden, to humanity having to flee the Earth in space-faring arks following a cataclysm stemming from humanity's hubris, to Mephi's ark being named after one of God's right-hand angels, to her referencing the fifth of seven trumpets from the Book of Revelation when referring to the End of Eden...
• Cast Herd: Souls are mainly divided into six main races: the Humanlikes, the Beasts, the Fairies, the Undead, the Angels, and the Demons. They are also divided into their respective affiliations, like the Soul Alliance or Jade's Merchants' Guild.
• Cataclysm Backstory: World War III, also known as the Soul's War. At some point in the distant past, humanity was at war with each other due to rapidly developing wartime technology following the discovery of many artifacts' Eversouls and the subsequent creation of the Souls from them. This would come to a head when they accidentally summoned Apollyon, a powerful Soul that cannot be subjugated, as it went about causing mass destruction to Earth. By the year 2389, humanity was forced to flee to the stars, leaving the earth destroyed but recoverable. Humanity would later go extinct in space while the Souls and many species that were left behind bounced back and prospered...
• Character Portrait: Certain NPCs use them in cutscenes since they don't have 3D models like the playable Souls. Souls may also have this when they're out of focus or have their faces obscured. The Savior's portrait, on the other hand, is only available in the profile image section, although he does have a full 3D model as shown in an in-game cutscene from Chapter 2.
• Chest Monster: You can't encounter them in dungeons, but they can be encountered in the Dimension Labyrinth. Actually Four Mooks is in effect, showing wholly different enemies once fought, and defeating it will provide that Labyrinth Coins and a 2hr Gold quick loot item.
• Com Mons: The four Common and eight Rare Souls. The former are practically just "release" fodder to obtain currency for buying random Soul shards, while the latter are only used as "ascension" fodder, being expendable units that help raise Epic Souls' tiers. Despite this, some of the Rare Souls like Rita (a knight of Solrey) and Rose (The Heart of Linzy and Chloe's childhood friend trio) relatively have an influence in the main story, and any small details regarding the Common Souls are given through praying in the Town's goddess statue on the commercial district.
• Cool Airship: Two notable examples are: Mephistopheles' Ark "Metatron", which was once a Cool Starship before becoming an airship used by the Savior and his party, and Soonie's Turtle Ship, which got an upgrade from the traditional real-life depictions of it being a strong but relatively ancient Cool Boat to a gigantic airship that could rival Marvel's Helicarrier.
• Crapsaccharine World: By the time you're taken to the future, Eden is already on a near-losing war against a deluge of monsters assaulting the various regions of the Arcadian continent. Even so, everyone can somehow still find the time to relax, mingle, and even go on dates with the Savior like a usual everyday routine.
• Dating Sim: One of the game's big selling points. As the Savior, you are tasked with bonding with the Souls you meet over the course of your journey, raising their Bond Points and reading through their personal stories called Love Stories. Upon reaching Bond Lvl. 9, you are then tasked with raising said points, now called Affection Points, up to 3000 points, with said Soul/s giving you randomized gifts every 100 points once you reach a threshold of 2000-3000 points and having faster work and rest times in Town. Initially, there was a degradation system in place where Bond 9 Souls would start to lose 100 points per day, giving you the task of maintaining their Affection Points as much as you can. Following negative feedback towards this system^* It was seen as way too punishing and a waste of time due to the relatively inconsequential benefits a "Cherished" Soul provides, the devs first reduced the decrease to 50 points a day on the March 2, 2023 update, before subsequently getting rid of the system altogether on the March 16, 2023 update.
• Die, Chair, Die!: There are breakable objects in dungeons that you can attack, though they only give out a pathetic amount of needed resources. You can also attack objects in the Town's Commercial District and destroy them, but they respawn once you exit the mode and re-enter, and they don't give resources.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Any future Soul to be released can show up in select sections of the game, like Peer Reviews and other existing Souls' Love Stories. Some of them also show up in some loading screen art in a chibi art style.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: In Eversoul, the "elements" correspond to the Soul races/factions. The advantageous faction deals 25% more damage to the race that they counter: Humanlike (Orange) > Beast (Red) > Fairy (Green) > Undead (Blue) > Humanlike. The other two, Angel (Pink) and Demon (Crimson), counter each other.
• Evolutionary Levels: There are three basic rarities in Eversoul: Common, which cannot be evolved past said rarity, Rare, which can be evolved to Legendary+, and Epic, which can be evolved to Origin+5. Both Rare and Epic units will need dupes of both themselves and fodder to reach their max rarities.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The nation of Gaon is a stand-in for Earth's oriental cultures, particularly those of the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, with Korean culture being the more dominant one.
• Fictional Earth: The world of Eden is the Savior's Earth in the distant future, having its landmasses and environment drastically changed due to the cataclysm and subsequent extinction of humanity following years of war.
• Foreshadowing: Some are set up during the first four chapters of the main story, like Yuria's "real self" and the true fate of humanity but one of the more obvious ones can be seen in one of the loading screens, specifically the one associated with "Soul Master": there are two depicted people with such powers: the blue-themed Savior, and a red-themed mysterious girl's silhouette.
• Gotta Collect Them All: The whole point of a "waifu collector" gacha game. There are other forms of collections that the player can fill out too, like story CGs, BGMs, and event decorations.
• Graphics-Induced Super-Deformed: You and your party are rendered as Super-Deformed when exploring dungeons and the Town, as full 3D models when in combat and in typical cutscene dialogue, and video CGs during key moments in the main and bond stories.
• Guide Dang It!: The choices to get the True Ending for any Soul can be this, as a correct choice may not be the obvious one, or there are certain choices that can greatly influence the ending you'll get regardless of the choices you've made previously.
• Humanity's Wake: The Souls assert that humanity had perished entirely centuries before the events of the game, and they left behind a ton of things in their attempt to evacuate Earth, like ancient ruins that can still be found around Eden.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Let this message from the Forbidden Ruins tell you just how the humans saw the Souls at the time of their dominance:
  The Message of the Homo Dominas: "Give up. Your resistance is futile. Souls will only be enslaved in the face of overwhelming power."
• Idle Game: You can only get so far in the beginning with whatever you've been given, especially if you're not Bribing Your Way to Victory from the get-go. Once stuck, you primarily rely on idle gains gathered by your party, leveled up by reaching certain stages within the Battlefront.
• In-Joke: The developers' company name "Nine Ark" is referenced in the story as mankind left the Earth on nine arks following the aftermath of the Souls' War.
• Interface Spoiler: If it's your first/second time playing through a Soul's Love Story, you can actually spoil yourself on what ending you ended up getting by looking through the Archives menu. The game would default to the next episode to be unlocked, so when you reach Bond 8 with a specific Soul, you can see early on what ending you'll be experiencing through the first time around by just taking a peek at their associated Archive.
• Leitmotif: Outside of image songs, the game employs this during Love Stories, giving each Soul that has an accessible bond story 1-2 instrumental character themes that play during specific episodes.
• Meaningful Name: The title "Eversoul" refers to the source of the Souls' Resurrective Immortality, bundled within ANIMA — formless spirits within Artifacts that the Souls originate from.
• Moe Anthropomorphism: Of mythological, historical, and even fictional artifacts, with a tinge of Historical Domain Superperson if said artifact had a notable person/character associated with it. According to Word of God, this approach was taken so that they can create distinct characters that don't rely too much on basing characteristics from integral figures.
• Multiple Endings: Each (Epic-rarity) Soul has a bond story that will lead up to one of three distinct endings depending on the player's choices: the True, Normal, and Bad Ending. Each ending has a unique CG associated with them, with True Endings notably having the track "TRUE END" playing by the end of the particular ending and giving players a unique costume for that specific Soul. Once the player finishes any ending, they are then allowed to "reset" the story to try to go for the other endings to get extra summoning tickets and bonus CGs.
• Player-Exclusive Mechanic: The ability to use Ultimate Skills. Only the player has access to the Ultimate gauge that allows Souls to unleash their greatest skills. Because of this, Ultimates are only accessible in PvE modes, as PvP is done asynchronously and it would be unfair to the defending player if the attacker can unleash Ultimates while their AI-controlled units can't. This also means that any Soul that relies on their Ultimate to be an effective unit is rendered almost useless in PvP.
• Player Headquarters: Story progress will give the player access to Arkenine, the temporary capital city of Solrey that they are tasked to rule over. This acts as the typical "dorm" feature found in modern gachas, giving you An Interior Designer Is You privileges, but on a notably bigger scale.
• The Prophecy: A legend passed down in the kingdom of Solrey goes as follows: "In the time of doom, the only hope is the Savior from the past. But in order to summon the Savior, you must pay the cost: the power of two great Souls." At least that's what they all thought it meant, as Dr. Faust hints to the Savior during Chapter 3 that him being called to Eden is so that Yuria loses her power in the first place, confusing the young man for a good duration of the dungeon run.
• Really 700 Years Old: A significant portion of the Souls have been "alive" for so long, some of them even living as far back as the Middle Ages. Mephistopheles, in particular, has been around for at least 700 years now due to her initial duty as the Metatron's operator during humanity's Homeworld Evacuation back in A.D. 2389. Notable mentions also go to Yuria and Rebecca, who admit at one point that they're the oldest Souls in existence.
• Series Mascot: Mephistopheles, due to her Deuteragonist status and her overall adorable factor that charms even the oldest and most politically-powerful Soul on the planet.
• Socialization Bonus: There are quite a few benefits in keeping some friends and entering a guild, such as:
  • Friend point exchange, which can be used for Friendship Summons,
  • Town expeditions, giving both you and your helper/helped 10 friend points for clearing monsters in each other's Town, with a maximum of 3 expeditions done/received per day,
  • The earlier-mentioned Hire Soul feature, allowing friends to borrow each other's units to account for temporary strategies, and
  • Guild raids, an upcoming content that will reward guild members depending on collective performance against a guild boss.
• Trapped in Another World: The main premise. You are taken from your familiar contemporary time period to become a hero for a civilization of the very far future.
• Video Game Caring Potential:
  • Your Souls in Town will often have missing item requests. Taking the effort to find and return them gets you gratitude and a keyword you can use for later Outings with them.
  • You can head to other players' Towns and clear out whatever problem they have, netting both you and them 10 Friendship Points.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • When roaming in the Town, you can interact with Souls by hitting them with your cane for no reason or run past those working part-time, which makes them flinch for a bit before continuing on. Seriously, the only reason you'd do that is because you wanted to see what happens.
  • After clearing a Soul's Love Story, their bond meter changes so that the meter will have a max cap of 3000 points and a decay of 100 points per day, putting you in a sort of balancing game to keep that meter up. You can also just outright ignore them and move on to other Souls, but they will start to have negative dialogue while visiting your Town when their bond points reach numbers lower than 500, like them citing a feeling of neglect or a wanting to meet with you in some way.
• Wham Shot: Chapter 3 ends in a rather shocking note: as a berserk Jacqueline is about to destroy the Forgotten Ruins in an attempt to keep the secrets of the Homo Dominas hidden, in a drastic decision following Chloe and Rose exhausting their mana reserves, Linzy does a Heroic Sacrifice to incapacitate Jacqueline before it happens, taking only her out of commission. As she's a Soul, her physical form dissipates and turns back to a crystal as she's sent to a deep sleep for an unknown period of time. As far as the Savior is concerned, she's practically dead.
• What If?: The Love Stories are set up as "what-if" stories separate from the main one that comes about when you decide to pursue a specific Soul, set a while after the Savior has acclimated to life in Eden.
• Wishing Well: In the Town, there are two "wishing wells" that you can drop a gold coin into once a day: a fountain that gives daily fortunes, and a prayer statue that gives daily tidbits regarding the Souls' day-to-day lives.

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