I’ve had lousy health issues for the past few weeks, but the good part of that is that it’s enabled me to finish Soma Union. Please support me, I don’t remember the last time I felt okay. And so, let’s end July with some rambling on Soma Union’s story. I did say last time this would be all spoilers, but ehhh it’s more like some spoilers so you can at least have some surprises if you choose to play for yourself.

Soma Spirits‘ main conflict dealt with the conflict between optimism and cynicism, where Soma was split into a World of Joy and a World of Sorrow, sponsored by the deities Form and Dissonance. The World of Joy is obviously happy, but it’s also a world that’s irresponsible and careless. In contrast, while the World of Sorrow is miserable, it’s a more functional society.

In this game we sorta get the origin of the god figures of both worlds with modified versions of their beliefs – or rather, their beliefs before hunkering all in on emotion. Form had a sheltered life where she went all in on her own happiness, and when having a taste of power for herself, she wanted to lock people in the same gilded cage of happiness she lived in (or at least what makes her happy, anyway). A world where everyone’s free but under a duty to her vision of happiness. Dissonance had freedom as someone traveling away from home, and paradoxically he created a sense of responsibility for himself within those travels. He wanted to introduce duties and responsibility to the world, and in doing so they become free of a limited vision of the world. Besides both of them going Shin Megami Tensei Law-Chaos in creating their world views in Soma Spirits, neither is entirely wrong about their visions.

Optimism and cynicism isn’t the ideological divide of Soma Union, but rather, duty and freedom. Reca, as descendant of Soma Spirits‘ great sagely tree, questions whether she should administer an orderly world or let people do what they want, even if it leads to conflict. Lumen is talented at amusement park work he was raised in but felt trapped in that duty – at least until he learns his late father’s intentions – and prefers following the freedom of being a doctor.

As for Zero, they feel lost at the beginning of the game, and they wind up happily embracing their duty of investigating the fragments of Soma when they’re found. However, as they learn about their own past, they question whether they should stick to this duty for the world at the expense of themself or step away for the sake of the life they built for themself. Much like Soma Spirits’ view of optimism and cynicism, duty and freedom aren’t 100% good or bad.

What defines one of the main villains of the game though is that he represents the worst aspects of duty and freedom. They’re a being created for a specific purpose, and when considering what one of their colleagues who had also been created for that preordained duty went through, there’s also a good chance that they suffered themself. And for what? They get tossed aside the moment they stop being useful for what they were created for. So they get a taste of power and seek freedom from their origin, and they wind up swinging to the other side of the duty-freedom divide: they seek to destroy what’s left of Soma to create a world where they and people like them are truly free. In escaping their duty and chasing this freedom, the lives of everyone they know becomes collateral, treating people like how they were once treated. This villain? Good villain.

There’s another villain in the game that casts a wider shadow over that one and Form and Dissonance: Absolution, the final boss of Soma Spirits. Absolution is boring in itself and not as interesting as that villain I was talking about, but that’s fine? It’s essentially a living embodiment of power and wants that power expressed to its fullest: absolute destruction.

But contrasting the freedom is Bright, the boy who would become the Sun King, the supposed tyrant of the previous game’s backstory. At the end of every chapter, the game focuses on him and Soma’s backstory, of him discovering Absolution and using its power to create a new world. He creates an ultimate world of order, where people are safe but not necessarily happy with how trapped they feel. While Bright’s initially open to the more destructive powers Absolution has to offer, he comes to reject not only the freeing destruction Absolution provides, but the order that it helped create when he realizes how much discontent it created and witnesses Form and Dissonance take advantage of that to start shit.

Much like how the ideal of Soma’s world is to walk a middle ground between happiness and sorrow, Bright’s final mindset is to walk a line between duty and freedom, a line that Zero ultimately walks for themself. I generally liked Bright’s storyline and it reminded me of the asides in Brave Hero Yuusha, though I find Bright’s story stronger than Edward’s because I think Bright presents a better throughline. I still don’t like you Edward, tbh.

And outside of the story, I generally liked the writing in Soma Union. The tone is generally goofy but it knows when to pull its punches when things get serious. The tomatoes and blueberries of the jungle have a complete nonsense war where no one is hurt, but the silliness disappears when their generals are injured by the local villain lieutenant. This villain lieutenant is also a massive dork when talked to outside of this moment.

I think my only complaint with the story is Reca. I like Reca, she’s a kind hearted character yet she’s happy to complain to her teammates about problems like the ship’s captain pushing Zero too hard and pushing back at Lumen and Zero when they’re lashing out in response to their problems. The issue is that Reca doesn’t really have her own problems? She faces an ideological divide with regards to the jungle’s nonsense war, but she herself isn’t pulled into it the same way Lumen and Zero are pulled into their conflicts. You’d think that she’d step up into a leadership role given her role as a descendant of a character that also happens to be important in Bright’s story, and that kinda happens but only as an epilogue aside. It’s weird because she has a consistent presence but simultaneously feels like she’s just there. I wish that Soma Union did more with her.

Otherwise though? I really liked the story of Soma Union and I think it’s the strongest written work out of Torch60’s stuff so far. Honestly, it’s a crime that the game is freeware because the developer deserves money for it, though Torch60 probably has a reason for it; I originally picked up Soma Spirits: Rebalance when it was still a commercial work but they’ve changed it to freeware. I respect chasing the bag, but also gotta respect keeping things free when it easily couldn’t have been. And so on that note, since they’re free, what’s keeping you from checking out the Soma games?

So, what’s next for the site? Well, it looks like I’m continuing the trend of checking out games by people I previously covered, because next time we’re checking out Diorama Dungeoncrawl by Tales of the Renegade Sector, developer of Kill the Superweapon and Thunder Kid.