Thank you Song of Nature for providing us with a review copy!

Saul of Tarsus - Bible Game is a straightforward JRPG that puts you in the shoes of the eponymous Saul of Tarsus, beginning the story on his fateful trip to Damascus. Following the Biblical account, he is met on the road by Jesus, temporarily blinded, and told to go into Damascus and look for Ananias. Ananias' house serves as Saul's home base for the remainder of the game.

Before his encounter with Jesus, you get into your first tutorial battle with a nameless new Christian. All the elements of the typical battle system are here, but with altered names. You have 3 meters to watch: your Resolve (HP), Self-Image (MP), and Special (which is what I will call it because I don't think the game ever mentions what this third meter is called). Your primary method of "attack" is Persuade. In other words, your battles are battles of words, in which you are attempting to break down the other party's resolve to continue arguing with you before they wear you down. You have a small arsenal of special abilities that are powered either by the Self-Image or Special meter (signified by whether the numbers beside the ability have blue or white numbers next to them, respectively). In your tutorial battle, you are quite overpowered, with incredible Resolve and special abilities that let you boast in your "Self-Righteousness".

Once Saul's sight is restored, however, Ananias warns you that your old methods of persuasion will no longer work. As a new believer, your stats are now set to a much lower level, and you are left with a single ability: Testimony, which is basically just a stronger, more accurate Persuade attack. I've seen lots of RPGs where you start off super strong and then lose your strength for the sake of the plot, but this was a very interesting way of doing that. It's a very clever way of showing how, as a new believer, one has a totally new way of thinking and has to grow in their faith. It's also a nice touch that a new believer may have little more than their own testimony to persuade others to put their faith in Christ.

After this, there are basically just two items of business: go to the temple of Jupiter, then to the synagogue, and preach the gospel to everyone inside. This part of the game feels a bit like going into Pokémon gyms, as you'll have a gamut of weaker debaters to deal with before reaching the head priests. Unlike Pokémon, however, should you rest (which you do by praying at one of the many small, cross-shaped altars you can erect from piles of stones around town), some enemies will become hostile again. This includes every single priest in the synagogue. It makes for good grinding opportunities, though whether that's a good or a bad thing is up to personal preference. It DOES mean you have to be strong enough and/or well-equipped enough to take on the entire

However, getting money is not as simple as defeating enemies. You may be persuasive enough to convince people they should question their beliefs, but not enough to get them to part with their wallets! This leads into essentially the only other mechanic in the game: fishing. Talking to the right NPC will yield a fishing rod which can then be used at any body of water. You will need to buy bait to have much hope of catching anything. When a fish does bite, you go through a carbon copy of the fishing minigame from Stardew Valley. Whatever fish you do catch can then be sold to various NPCs for cash. The cash can then be spent on a small variety of healing items or on changing the color of your outfit.

There are a handful of optional side quests. Once you've defeated the head priests of the temple and synagogue, thus riling up the local Pharisees enough to plot to kill Saul, Ananias and the other local Christians will help Saul escape from the city. While this is only the beginning of Saul's real life history of ministry, it does mark the end of the game.

With doing the minimum amount of grinding and side questing, a player could beat the entire game in just a few hours. And honestly, that is probably my main criticism of the game: most aspects of it are pretty barebones. It's short, you will only end up with a handful of abilities by the end, the list of usable items is rather small, and the enemy variety is rather limited. The types of things you'd normally be able to interact with in a game like this, like signs or bookshelves, almost never are interactable. Enemy behavior is also pretty predictable, using only basic attacks when at high health and only special, hard-hitting attacks when at low health. Even the menu options feel lacking; there is no way to see Saul's stats or to get a description of what they are and what they do. There's a special attack that makes Saul "humble", which appears to buff his defenses...sometimes? Against certain enemies? It seems to work on the minor Pharisees but not on the synagogue's head Pharisee.

This barebones feeling extends to both the art and music, both of which are fairly simplistic. While the main gameplay uses basic pixel art, which you'd expect from this style of game, the portraits, attack animations, and cutscene art are all lacking in finer details. There's also issues where the highlighted menu items are only slightly off-color from the unselected ones, which is hard on the eyes. The music style fits, sounding right at home in the Middle East, but it is very simplistic, with only an instrument or two and a slow tempo.

Then there's the controls. Steam claims the game has partial controller support, which is true. You can control Saul and interact with most of the game with the controller, but there are still aspects of the UI that can only be interacted with using a mouse, such as opening the map or interacting with the title screen. In other words, you can't even start the game without a mouse. Had I not been using Steam Link to connect with a touch-screen device, I would have been forced into playing with either a mouse and keyboard or using a controller with a mouse perpetually at the ready. Not only that, but when playing from the couch, the mouse is very difficult to see on screen. There are then no explanations of which keys do what, though it doesn't take much experimentation to figure it out. The controller mapping was pretty intuitive.

Finally, there are the bugs. On the minor end of the spectrum are the typos, of which there are many. Most notably, at the end of battle, you gain "[some number] EXP EXP". Should you level up, you get a message saying, "You have reached level Level!"; your actual level number is never displayed, and as the menu lacks the ability to see Saul's stats, there is no way to actually know your level. And those are just a few typos I happened to actually make a note of, though I definitely saw more (like the misspelling of the word "priest" captured in the screenshot below). In the middle are the issues with collisions; there are a couple places that are lacking collision detection, allowing you to waltz out of bounds and onto random structures. But the biggest issue is with the save files. Sometimes and for no obvious reason, all of my save files would just disappear. This happened multiple times, forcing me restart the game twice. All my saves even disappeared mid-game once; I had been cycling between the three available save slots to try to prevent the issue, and then out of the blue, all three slots were empty again.

Morally speaking, there's nothing really to speak of. During one side quest, Saul can be threatened by thieves, but the battle system still plays out like normal, with the thieves literally using "Threaten" to attack Saul's resolve, and Saul persuading and sharing his testimony until the thieves feel like they'd likely invoke some kind of holy wrath for robbing Saul. Likewise, the Pharisees plot to kill Saul, but Saul escapes unharmed.

I have to give credit where it's due: the game seems to be made largely by a single person. While it may not be the most well-polished JRPG, having a non-violent, Bible-based game that you can get for free on your phone to let your little ones play is a pretty good deal. And if you feel like supporting a small game studio dedicated to making Bible-based games, you can always pay for the full Steam version, donate, or join their Patreon. They have a couple more games in the pipeline if you'd like to see more.

-maestro_dana