The player, controlling one of the eight main characters, explores dungeons and fights enemies in real-time combat across three-dimensional plains from a top-down perspective.

The story takes place on the continent of Barnea, where its principle magical energy, Soma, is disrupted by the arrival of monsters called Visitors.

First announced in October 2007, Soma Bringer was the first portable title to be fully developed by Monolith Soft and the first game they released since their acquisition by Nintendo.

Soma Bringer is an action role-playing game where players control members of a military unit dubbed Pharzuph Division 7 and explore three-dimensional environments from a top-down perspective, while the overhead camera can be zoomed in and out.

[3][4] In addition to the single-player mode, the game features cooperative (co-op) multiplayer, which is activated through wireless connection and allows up to three players to freely explore environments and dungeons.

Abilities, including standard attacks and special moves related to a character, are mapped to the Nintendo DS's face buttons.

To combat the Visitors, the controlling organization in charge of regulating Soma usage - Secundady - created a dedicated military force called the Pharzuph.

The main narrative follows new and veteran members of Pharzuph Division 7, who set out to investigate and combat a recent spate of Visitor attacks.

During the mission, the group encounter Idea, an amnesiac girl with latent and highly attuned Soma-related abilities who is assigned to Pharzuph Division 7 by their leader Master Laban.

During their continued missions against Visitors, Pharzuph Division 7 are confronted by the Unbras, a group with similar powers to Idea and whose leader Adonis seeks Master Cages, Soma-condensing devices connected to the origins of Soma technology.

As the group travels, they discover that Adonis and the Master Cages are linked to the origin of Soma, the energy of life which the extraterrestrial Arethia granted humans the ability to use.

Only Adonis fully awoke, while Idea suffered an incomplete awakening after being found by Pharzuph Division 7 and regressed to a childlike amnesiac state.

Through Welt, it asks Pharzuph Division 7 to stop both Laban and Adonis, the latter wishing to bring destruction upon mankind for its treatment of the Arethia.

[8] The game took approximately two years to develop: Takahashi's aim was to create an in-depth introductory role-playing experience for the DS.

[8] The story was written by Takahashi's wife Soraya Saga, whose previous work included Final Fantasy VI (1994), Xenogears (1998), and the Xenosaga series.

The move to being an action role-playing game enabled the incorporation of cooperative multiplayer: the team wanted to focus as much as possible on the combat and related gimmicks over environmental puzzles.

Also in contrast to earlier Monolith Soft titles was the lack of lengthy cutscenes, which could not be incorporated into the game with the DS' limited hardware.

[8] Due to the gameplay being created first, Mitsuda had difficulty pinning down what he had to do, and wrote songs for the soundtrack based on the gradually-emerging visuals and scenario.

[9] The opening vocal track, titled "Ring", was written for the opening movie and set to a piece of poetry written by Takahashi: to portray the themes of the game, Mitsuda used three female vocalists, Eri Kawai, Koko Komine, and Tamie Hirose, and recorded in a multiplexer to produce as clear a sound as possible.

[8][9][12] Part of the difficulty in composing the music was creating different mixes for the soundtrack depending on whether the player selected the built-in speakers or the headphones.

[12] Two key people cited by Mitsuda in overcoming these barriers were sound programmer Hidenori Suzuki and synthesizer operator Junya Kuroda.

According to Kuroda, the main difficulty was not a lack of techniques for creating a clean sound for the DS, but applying them to the music of Soma Bringer, which was more ambitious than many other soundtracks for the platform.

He also praised the additional tracks for their richness and depth, finishing his review by saying that it was a soundtrack not to be missed by buyers of video game music.

[10] Ultimately, Soma Bringer was not released outside Japan: no explanation was given by Nintendo, although there was some speculation that its high text content was to blame.

[7] GamesRadar compared Soma Bringer to Square Enix's Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, except noting that the gameplay systems and customization options were deeper.