Stolen Realm
by Aethyna
Aug 27, 2022 |
1
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79
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0
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8
rate
Genres:
RPGGraphics:
3DLabels:
Turn Based , Co-op , Fantasy Setting , Dungeon Crawler , Party-BasedPlatforms:
Publishers:
Burst2Flame Stolen Realm is a turn-based tactics game that has a dash of roguelite and supports co-op, allowing you to fill your party of heroes with your friends. Gather various materials from your adventures, go to town to buy and craft better gear, and try your best to get to the final act where an epic showdown against the Black Dragon awaits! Play Now Similar Games Played
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Summary
Stolen Realm is a turn-based tactics game but with a dash of roguelite and a twist! – it supports co-op, allowing you to fill your group of adventurers, up to 6 of them, with your friends. Gather various materials from your adventures, go to town to buy and craft better gear, and try your best to get to the final act where an epic showdown against the Black Dragon awaits!
Plotline
The story here is a bit of a hit-and-miss for me. The game starts off with an introduction where some unexpected guests showed up at the town portal. It seems like the Blood Mask gang found another defenseless town and wanted to pillage it. It’s good that you’re there to put a stop to it!
However, knowing these fellas, they won’t stop coming back until the town is theirs, so you’ve decided to take the fight to them instead.
Now, this is where things get confusing for me. The game lets you defeat the so-called Blood Mask boss in the very first level of the first Act which kind of prematurely ended the first part of the story.
There’s also this Calen the Wizard character who by all means is as mysterious as his cryptic dialogues. The wizard promised the protagonist – you – power and aid – but for what, that remains to be seen. He also constantly berates the player for “wasting his/her potential” without really elaborating much. After turning into a black dragon, he ended the introduction mentioning something about the player’s brother, Logan, who supposedly approached Calen in desperation.
The introduction is supposed to lay a bit of a foundation as to what the story in this game is about so we can understand the characters better, but I think it fails at that. It could really use a bit of reworking.
Gameplay
To start playing, you’ll need to first create your character. The game offers multiple character classes for you to choose from, including the warrior, the thief, the ranger, the wizard and the monk, each with their unique set of skills. Each class also comes with their preset build, but you are given the choice to modify the presets, such as reallocating your starting stat points or choosing specific skills you want, if you want. You can customize the appearance of your character as well before diving in.
Since Stolen Realm has a pretty high learning curve, the game provides you with 6 difficulty levels, ranging from Casual to Heart of the Realm, to choose from. You might be tempted to start with the hardest, especially if you’re a veteran of the genre, but know that the mobs leading up to the boss are typically easy regardless of which difficulty you choose. It’s the boss fights where you’ll really feel the heat and the pain of the difficulty you’ve chosen. Thankfully, the game doesn’t have permadeath, despite having some roguelite features, so you can attempt a boss fight again and again, at a lower difficulty too if needed.
You’ll start the game in the town where all the merchants reside. Here, you can buy and sell goods, as well as to reset your skill points for a price. You can also hoard… ahem, I mean store… the many loot items you’ll get from your adventures too. Now, since you are completely broke at the start, you can’t really do much here. It’s time to leap into the portal and start adventuring!
The game itself is split into 4 acts, with each containing around 8 levels. You won’t be able to replay completed levels at first, but eventually, the game will give you the option to replay specific levels and farm loot, thanks to the “side quests” feature.
Playing a level in this game feels quite like a typical roguelite. You get to choose which path you want to take, usually out of two options, and you’ll have to face the consequences of your decisions. Like most roguelites, it’s not always battles from start to finish. Instead, the game has quite a lot of Events that are all very well-varied. Sometimes, you’ll also stumble upon a place where you can rest and prepare, and a merchant who will sell you some stuff.
Each area you’ve uncovered may sometimes even contain extra loot. There are free coins that you can pick up and chests that you can open. There are also hex grids that contain resources that you can gather, whether it is some valuable plants or fishes. Interestingly, the game adds in a mini-game for the gathering process. For plants, you’ll need to stop the fast-moving indicator on the green area and naturally, the more accurate you are, the more plants you’ll harvest. It’s another mini-game for fishing. Here, you’ll need to keep your indicator beneath the fish as much as possible in order to catch it.
The materials you gather come in many different grades or quality levels, and can be used at town to upgrade your gear via crafting. Of course, you’ll need to pay the vendor in question some coins as well for the service they provide.
Now, as you travel across the landscape, you’ll eventually make your way to the final boss. Fights in this game are turn-based and highly tactical. This is evident in the many crates that you can move and use as protective barriers against enemies. However, these very crates can also block your sight of view, preventing you from attacking out-of-sight enemies. There are statues and other objects that grant bonuses, like extra damage dealt or resistance, within a specified area around them, and both you and your enemies can get these bonuses simply by standing within range.
Combat can also be a bit tricky here. You see, you only get to use your basic attack skill once per turn and that your other skills usually have pretty lengthy cooldowns and cost mana. There are action points that will restrict how many actions or movements you can take in your turn as well, forcing you to make hard decisions as to whether you should attack and leave your character exposed or end your turn to wait to get another opportunity to attack. In a way, the gameplay reminds me of The Hand of Merlin, though the difficulty isn’t that high in the latter.
Generally, mob battles are easy enough in Stolen Realm, but bosses are in a whole other league. Bosses here have special abilities that isn’t revealed to you until the boss in question uses it in combat. The first boss alone is able to drastically reduce your movement points, making it hard to escape from the barrels of fire that he will also summon at around half-health or the massive swathes of fire-covered grids.
During fights, you’ll notice that defeated enemies will sometimes drop potions as well. These potions can be picked up and immediately used by simply moving your character onto that specific grid. There are also other potions that you can pick up and store in your inventory for use later, but those potions can only be obtained either from the potion vendor in town or by finding one in loot chests.
Every battle you’re in will grant you experience points, which will level your character up when accumulated. Every level-up will grant you a skill point and 5 stat points to invest. You’re free to decide which kind of build you want to go with, depending on your playstyle, and yes, this means that you can also grab skills from other class’s skill trees, such as the mighty helpful healing spell, if you want.
Stolen Realm is dubbed as a “looter” as well, much like Diablo and Path of Exile, but minus the trash items. This means you’ll get a modest amount of loot that you can then decide to equip, keep for later use, or sell for some much-needed cash. Naturally, the higher difficulty you play, the better loot you’ll come across… at least that’s the idea in theory. However, it doesn’t seem like playing at higher difficulty does offer better or more loot at the moment though.
Although the main gameplay loop is fun, Stolen Realm still has plenty of room for improvement. For instance, the game needs to be more transparent, providing more detailed tooltips for perks that some enemies have, and maybe show the total number of action points more prominently. Considering the game difficulty, it would be great if the game would allow the player to undo a move if the move doesn’t cause any subsequent effects, namely simple stuff like moving from a hex to another; or moving a crate to another spot.
Community
Stolen Realm is a unique turn-based tactics game mainly because it lets the player recruit his/her friends to play the game together via its co-op feature. The game even allows a player to control multiple characters during co-op, like having a friend playing one character while you’re playing 3. It also has simultaneous turns so there’s no need to wait for a friend to make a move before making yours.
However, although the game supports up to 6 characters in a party, the game does ramp up the difficulty depending on how many characters you bring into each level.
Graphics/ Sound
The graphics here look really good! Personally, I like low-poly art but this may not be the case for some players since this kind of art style has been getting an increasingly bad rep within the gaming community, no thanks to asset flip developers. The game also has funky ragdoll physics that make defeating enemies a laugh sometimes.
In terms of sound, the game offers well-varied soundtracks that changes depending on where you’re at and what you’re doing. The music are all very pleasant to listen to, though I really love the one that plays during the character creation screen. It really makes me feel like I’m about to head off on an epic adventure, which was exactly what I was about to do.
Conclusion
To put it simply, Stolen Realm is a diamond in the rough. The gameplay is pretty much solid and the game itself may be a “breakout indie” material even without the storyline, but it still needs more polish, balancing, and maybe even some tweaks in the design, to ensure that the game is able to cater to players of different skill levels. Thankfully, it’s good that Stolen Realm is currently in early access and is able to take in feedback from their players to further improve their game.
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