Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs (PC) Review

By Eric Ace 02.06.2017

Review for Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs on PC

Taking a mix of conventional tile-based tactics games and overlaying a dating sim system similar to Persona, Pixelated Milk's crowd-funded strategy title, Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs, wraps itself up in nice anime aesthetics. With the lead character finding out they are the heir to a once-powerful kingdom, the game takes place alternating between tactical battles and building up the land.

Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs has some style to it, if nothing else. This is by far the best part of the game. The characters all feel unique and have a fair amount of life to them, and are largely enjoyable. The story itself is light-hearted and constant on the comedy, which may come off badly to some people, but by going in not expecting anything serious, there won't be disappointment.

The game alternates between three key phases: battle, kingdom management, and story segments. The story segments are unique in that many of them are 'choose your own adventure' types, where, for example, early on there are old guys playing chess. The options essentially boil down to watching, ruining the game, or watching the cows instead. All of them give slightly different rewards, such as items or experience. There is no rhyme or reason to the rewards, so perfectionists are warned. These are pretty funny, but lead to the problem later that best choices have to be made or walls in battle will be hit that are impossible to get over, as there is no additional grinding possible.

The kingdom management has a couple of different parts. Mostly it is using resources to upgrade buildings, which allow things like more rewards from battle or more characters in battle. There is a diplomacy screen of interacting with four other factions, which are fairly atmospheric, such as elf-like creatures or the religious zealots. Lastly, there is a dating sim element of spending time with the characters, which unlocks more moves.

Screenshot for Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs on PC

The battle system is where most time will be spent, and while interesting in some regard, is also perhaps the largest criticism of Regalia. At its root, it is like most grid tactics games of moving, attacking and waiting until next turn. One of the key differences is a type of bonus move that is accrued by one a turn, and can be used for a bonus attack at any time. The other is there is no heal, but rather a type of 'shield' that can be increased, but primary health never recovers during a single battle.

Characters start off with all their moves unlocked, which lowers some sense of progression. As characters level, there instead is a perk system, with players selecting things like +5% damage or increasing resistance. There are other things unlocked that modify moves, such as changing the range or effects of a character's specific attacks.

When things are going simply, the battle system largely works. Unfortunately, it is plagued by both a high difficulty (only 4% of the players have beaten the game at this point) and unnecessary hindrances. There is a line of sight mechanism that largely exists only to get in the way. The biggest problem is enemies often have a lot of hidden attributes, such as healing, which are not easily viewed. Sadly, instead of an easy idea of what is happening, the battles largely devolve into trying to 'game' the system, which does not feel fulfilling nor strategic.

Screenshot for Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs on PC

Cubed3 Rating

6/10
Rated 6 out of 10

Good

Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs has great style and clear heart behind it. In many cases, though, it is an issue of seeing the forest for the trees, as great parts of the game are simply lost in minutia. The hard difficulty requires near-perfection, which begins a grinding mentality to what otherwise was a comedic adventure. Suddenly, every choice becomes do or die, as a few extra % points can make the difference in a battle. The difficulty itself is not the entire problem so much as the battle system is too much of a slog compared to the rest of the game.

Developer

Pixelated Milk

Publisher

Klabater

Genre

Strategy

Players

1

C3 Score

Rated $score out of 10  6/10

Reader Score

Rated $score out of 10  0 (0 Votes)

European release date Out now   North America release date Out now   Japan release date None   Australian release date Out now   

Comments

Comments are currently disabled

Subscribe to this topic Subscribe to this topic

If you are a registered member and logged in, you can also subscribe to topics by email.
Sign up today for blogs, games collections, reader reviews and much more
Site Feed
Who's Online?
Azuardo

There are 1 members online at the moment.