Tryant’s Realm caught my eye with its retro pixelated visuals that are reminiscent of the PlayStation One and classic dungeon crawler days. I’m also a sucker for a Soulslike that has some unique enemy and boss designs, couple that with some randomness of a Roguelite, and I’m there. I’ll admit I never heard of Tyrant’s Realm until it was brought to my attention just last week, but sometimes it can be a good thing to go in blind. Did Tyrant’s Realm hit all the notes I like? Well yes, and no. Let’s dive in.

As with most Roguelikes, and Souls games, for the most part I couldn’t care less about the story. Luckily, Tyrant’s Realm doesn’t waste any time trying to bore you with story or exposition dumps. You start in a dungeon and work your way through levels and bosses to finally kill the Tyrant. Apparently, there is a bit of a story which I found on its Steam page, so I’ll summarize it here. Looks like for generations, your family has fought relentlessly to end the reign on the Tyrant, an ancient being who seeks absolute power and knowledge. Doesn’t really explain what bad stuff he has done besides that things are decaying and messed up. I have to assume if we’ve been trying to kill him for generations, it has to be some bad stuff.

Tyrant’s Realm is a Soulslike, Roguelite, Dungeon Crawler, so I’m expecting there to be a lot of unlocks and progression. For the most part, yes, there is a lot to unlock with each run. However, there was a base build that was so strong that I didn’t really need much else besides the starting gear to beat the game. In fact, I beat the game twice without a death using this same build, but I’ll get into that more later. Typically in Roguelites you start of fairly weak and you slowly progress each run as you unlock better gear. However, the base gear is plenty strong to get you through all three difficulties without needing to unlock much.

That being said, the first items I did unlock were my flask uses. More flask uses, more health I can refill during the runs. This is the key to early success and the way to do that is to get the thief armor that allows you to loot enemies bodies for more gold. Once I found this armor I never changed from it. Sure, it didn’t do much damage reduction, but I was able to max out my flasks and other unlocks extremely fast. Then you find a shield that doesn’t use stamina to dodge and that alone was a cheat code. Being able to easily dodge at all times really removed a lot of the difficulty.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some cool unique weapons and armor to unlock and find, each with different perks that you can use. I just never felt the need to risk what I know completely destroys and that was infinite stamina and a quick weapon. As long as you level up the base armor and weapons as you go from the alters you’ll find during the levels, the starter gear still kills. Once you beat the first run, which for a veteran Soulslike/Roguelite fan was a walk in the park, you will unlock an additional difficulty. There are three total difficulties and you’ll need to beat each one to get the actual ending. This is where my thief armor sort of gave me a fast boost to the top because the biggest difficulty change is flask usage.

In the first difficulty you’d go through your level and stop at the merchant to refill. Then you will fight the boss and then stop at the merchant again to refill before starting the next level. However, in the second difficulty flask refills are only every other merchant stop, so you have to beat the level and the boss before you can refill. The third difficulty there is only one charge per run, and all enemies are elites. However, because I was able to loot so much gold and never died for the first two difficulties, I had full flasks before I started my third run.

I haven’t mentioned gameplay much because its your standard Soulslike affair. You have you light attack, heavy attack, roll, block, parry, and lock on. Parrying will stun enemies temporarily until you fill up your death meter. Once that is filled you can do a special attack that will instantly kill an enemy you just parried. As you progress through the levels you’ll find alters to choose between upgraded three different sets. Depending on your items you have equipped they’re either Green, Red, or Yellow. The alters will have you pick one of the three colors and whatever armor or weapons you have equipped of that color also get a tier upgrade along with your health. However, the more you choose one color, the less health you get from those upgrades.

My upgrades were basically the same for each run because, as I mentioned before, I used the same weapon/armor combo for every run. Didn’t need to bother blocking because I had unlimited rolling, didn’t want other armor because the amount of gold I got form the current one was worth it, plus I wasn’t getting hit that often and with max flasks two runs in, it wasn’t a big deal. I’m not trying to boast here, I’m trying to express that the game is just a bit too easy.

While it was a bit too easy, I did actually enjoy the game and most of all the boss fights. The level layouts are fairly simple, and I do wish there was the same level of creativity in the level layouts as there were in the boss fights. Once you get through the first boss you’re given a choice to pick between two doors, each leading to a new level and boss. There are a total of five progressions, one being the opening level and boss, and then the next three you’ll choose between a left or right door, and then the final level and boss. You will need to do more than the one run to beat all the levels. In total there are eight levels/bosses and all the bosses are way better than the levels.

The levels all have their own aesthetic from tombs, to sewers, to snowy camps, and forges with fire all around. I love that each one has its own style, but they all just a bit lackluster in design. They’re very simple grid patterns with not much variety to change in-between runs. However, the boss fights are where things become more fun. There is always some sort of twist to the boss, like having to kill the Twisted Alchemist first because he will keep healing his massive Primate Enforcer mount. Or the Marin Abomination that will dive back into the water and try to surprise attack you.

Visually, I really enjoy the retro pixelated graphics. There is a certain charm and aesthetic that comes from well done retro visuals that I just enjoy like Crow Country or Signalis. It absolutely fits the darker theme this game goes for and coupling that with some great level art and variety, I enjoyed it. While each boss had some really cool designs, I do with there was more variety in the normal mob creatures. That was really the main drawback here.

Sound design didn’t really pull much weight here, in fact I could have played this with headphones playing other music and I wouldn’t have really missed much. Sound design is very basic with attack collisions and random grunts and moans from the enemies. I honestly can’t even recall there being any rousing or menacing music for the bosses or even the final boss.

Tyrant’s Realm has a lot of great ideas that came together in a good package. However, there are aspects of it that really drag it down. From the basic level designs, to the easy combat, to what I think is a broken gear system, there just wasn’t enough challenge to this to feel like a Soulslike or a Roguelite in the slightest. I don’t remember the last time I’ve fully beaten a Roguelite with only two total deaths. There is definitely something here, it just needs to be tightened up and not be afraid to challenge the players to make them go through multiple runs.

 

Graphics: 7.5 Retro pixelated graphics are complimented well by some good boss and level art.	Gameplay: 6.0 Classic dungeon crawler with barebones Soulslike combat. However, it’s lacking in some variety and Roguelite structure.
Sound: 6.0 Nothing great or bad here, very simplistic.	Fun Factor: 6.0 There are some good ideas with the boss fights here, but the lack of variety in enemies and areas left me wanting more. It’s also a bit too easy to break since I beat all three difficulties for the full ending in under four hours and with only two deaths.
Final Verdict: 6.0

Tyrant’s Realm is available now on PC.

Reviewed on PC.

A copy of Tyrant’s Realm was provided by the publisher.