Thanks to EastAsiaSoft for the review code
Title: SÖLDNER-X: HIMMELSSTÜRMER
System: Nintendo Switch (eShop)
Price: $9.99
Release Date: 10/03/2025
Prelude
In this PS3-era shooter, you take control of a ship on a quest to destroy alien invaders, in tale mostly as old as time. This is a port of a very old PS3 downloadable shooter that became known for having some of the hardest trophies on the platform, and while it got a sequel in the years afterward, this original game has been locked to PS3 until now, thus, making this a retro port in a sense!
Yes, 2008 is retro. Sorry to break it to you at how old you are now. Anyhow, this game does have cutscenes splitting up the halves of each level and boss introductions, but there’s not much to them outside of some pretty art, so if you’re one of the oddballs hoping for a story, you won’t find much of one here even with the true ending obtained.
Presentation
For a PS3 shmup, Soldner X looks surprisingly decent, being a digital download title back in the day and whatnot. It carries on the 2.5D trend at the time, with 3D models on top of 2D perspective, and right away it becomes blatant what system inspired Soldner; European computers, no doubt including games like the original Project X. The 3D models are incredibly basic looking and some of them look rather ugly against the backgrounds, but they’re still fairly visible and at least aren’t intrusive or in the way of things. The bullets are easy to spot as well, even on the higher difficulties, so visibility isn’t a problem even if the models look ugly. The different backgrounds look fine, with the game’s stages looking better as the game goes on since the first two levels are fairly dull looking.
What truly makes Soldner X excel more than it should would be the soundtrack. You can absolutely tell the composer was inspired by the best of the best from the Amiga, since this OST is filled with similar vibes to that of the Turrican, X-OUT OSTs and Project X intro song. The soundtrack as a whole holds up well and is remarkable as a throwback to that era of euroshmup, with some songs in it being good enough I might end up seeking the OST out later for out-of-game listening. No matter how frustrating the game got, the OST being as strong as it is kept me going.
Gameplay
Soldner X is a horizontal shooter, tasking you with completing five stages in order to wipe out the alien forces. You do this by taking control of your main ship and switching between different weapons with the shoulder buttons, with two of them being on you at all times, those weapons being your normal shot and an electric beam. Unlike most shooters where you upgrade your weaponry via powerup pickups and gain new weapons in the same manner, Soldner X goes with a chaining system where if you fill up a meter and switch your weapon, it will release a powerup orb from your ship, which is how you can collect thing such as bombs, strength upgrades, and even finite weapons such as the Rockets.
Chaining takes a bit of getting used to and I had to give the game a few tries on Beginner mode to even figure out how to make the most of it, but once it clicked I found myself having a lot of fun with the mechanic. You even gain temporary weapons along the way, such as a wide bow shot and flame attack, but unlike your two default weapons they go away for good once you run out of energy for them until you pick up another drop.
There may only be five stages, but there are caveats with that low amount. The first being that each of these levels are really long, split into multiple segments with the halves separated by cutscenes. You’ll be seeing the same backgrounds for a good while until you move onto the next segment of the stage, but on a decent difficulty level the game isn’t boring despite how long these stages can drag on.
What is a drag is how you unlock the fifth and final world, which requires you to find hidden keys in each of the previous four worlds before finishing the fourth one. You thankfully do not need to do this all in one go, but they can be a pain to find and easy enough to miss. You can’t go back and get them via training mode, so if you screw up on level 3 you have to go back through the whole game to try for those keys again.
Still, the scoring is decent, the chaining mechanic is fun, and most of the bosses are enjoyable to fight, so outside of the key nonsense I didn’t have much issue with the core gameplay loop. There are minor extras to keep the replay value going for those who gel with Soldner X, such as the aforementioned practice mode, the multiple difficulty modes including unlockable ones that crank the game up to absurd levels, (and are the reason why the PS3 version has a microscopic amount of people who 100%ed all the achievements in it) and online leaderboards for each individual difficulty. You even have the ability to increase the max amount of continues you have depending on how long you play and rank up in game. Handy!
Conclusion
Overall, Soldner X is a fairly fun tribute to the Euroshmup, and considering the two others I tried in that vein earlier this year, I was quite impressed that this much older one ended up more enjoyable than either of them, and it just goes to show how even early era PS3/360 games are well worth preserving and bringing back out for modern audiences. The chaining mechanic is great fun, the bosses are enjoyable to fight, and the simplicity of the matter is what really makes the game a pretty fun romp. It’s just a shame hunting all those keys down for that final world can be a pain in the ass and a pacebreaker if you want to go for the true ending and that fifth level.
Still, with how the sequel originally launched at the start of the PS4 era, I’m very pleased to see the original Soldner X back out again, especially on the original Switch. Dare I hope that the sequel will make the jump to Switch as well? I’ve always had a fondness for this one’s chaining system, but I just hear so much better things about the sequel that i’ve been made more curious by my time with this original gem how Soldner X-2 shapes up. hopefully that one is imminent, too!
I give SÖLDNER-X: HIMMELSSTÜRMER a 7 out of 10.