Tyrant's Realm

I'll give this a thumbs up, but anyone reading this should know I'm critical of it! This game is good in simple ways and struggles in complicated ways. Going through the dungeon, finding weapons, and fighting enemies and bosses all works, but there's issues that wear down the concept the longer you engage with it. The combat is simple. It works exactly the way it looks and is generally pretty fun. However, it is often very samey. You will essentially never cause an enemy to flinch on purpose, even the largest weapons won't do it in a hit (and you can't know if it'll happen in two and so on). Unless you've got the right kind of armor ability or manage a parry, you are always at the mercy of the enemy's tempo no matter if it's a grunt or a boss. Which means, other than dogs and a few bosses, every enemy in the game is a humanoid that you fight by waiting your turn. If you try to force an attack through to interrupt the enemy you WILL get hit unless it's a killing blow and even then it's probably going to be a bad trade more often than not. This also means there's almost no real difference between how you treat the weapons. No ability to flinch the enemy means the only thing you g…

No option to turn off camera smoothing for keybaord players is wild.

I'm definitely the target audience for a souls inspired rogue lite with dead cells inspired progression but man, this game is just too easy and too short. I've played for a total of 2-3 hours and beaten 2/3 difficulties. Levels are too short. Enemies are too similar. Bosses are too easy. The game just doesn't have enough meat on its bones. Maybe that 3rd tier of difficulty will change my mind, but I doubt it.

Competently made, feels pretty good to play. At some point I'll come back to this.

Beat it on my first run, which took me 77 minutes to do, but was still pretty fun. I enjoy it this way tbh. Yes it's a soulslite/roguelite, but it's a good gateway for newbies that want to get into the souls/likes/lites genre to dip their toes and ease their way into it. Once you beat your initial run, you can up the difficulty to test yourself more and more. I like how the game combines the rogue/souls elements into a quick bite-sized version, allowing you to explore the world with confidence, because once you reach the merchant at the end of the level, you can restock your flasks to prepare for the boss battle. I also like how the various armors can help you in a pinch, like the thief armor that you can wear to go back and loot all the enemies you defeated, and then you can return to where you left your old armor if it can still serve you well. The bosses are pretty unique and the mechanics, while not special, offer variety so it doesn't feel to redundant. The final boss felt kind of cheap with the 3 phases, but considering it is supposed to be the final boss, it's not that bad. My only issue with the game really is just the CRT filter. It doesn't really look that good, and …

Cool roguelite with very nice visuals and souls combat. Not that difficult or complex, but the gameplay is fun and has enough replay value.