Tyrant's Realm Review: Illusory Wall Ahead

Tyrant's Realm is a Souls-like roguelite. The only way it could be walking into a more oversaturated niche is if it were a deckbuilder on top. Just with my preliminary glance at its Steam store page, I was also half-sure IronPineapple has probably fooled around with it at some point. Unsurprisingly, they indeed have in 2021, with records of it tucked away in the umpteenth episode of an obscure Souls-like (souls-lite?) escapade.

Surprisingly, that seems like a very different game from the launch-ready version of Tyrant's Realm I got to play: better in some ways, worse in others, but a Theseus'd proof of concept, nonetheless.

Tyran's Realm uses the tailored lure of PS1 wistfulness cleverly

The art and audio direction are both economic and brilliant. (Image via Skystone Games)

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Whichever version of Tyrant's Realm you happened to be exposed to first, it has the same unique catch: the coat of PS1-era graphics on top of the usual Souls-like roguelite mumbo-jumbo. To its biggest credit, Tyrant's Realm pulls off this surface-level gimmick perfectly in its own stride.

It doesn't dig all that deep into the low-poly gravel as the Bloodborne demake did. Visually, it's much more "modern" than the original proof of concept IronPineapple got to play three years ago. I don't know what caused the development pivot in the four years in between, but it worked out just fine in the end result.

It still has a lot of PS1-era charm through various leitmotifs: the Ico-inspired deafeningly loud echo of chunky footsteps, the intentionally scuffed nature of enemy movement animation, a shimmering vfx layered on models, a blocky blood sprite that comes out of the finisher cinematic. Peppered together, these elements labouriously simulate the unkempt, goofy, and spellbinding look of what a PS1 game feels like in our minds.

To cement its intent, there are also a few toggleable options to deep-fry it further into the PS1-zone: a CRT monitor mode that obfuscates everything, and a 4:3 aspect ratio that should, in my opinion, be the default setting for the game.

Unfortunately, this is where my incontrovertible praise for the game runs out. There's a lot that Tyrant's Realm gets wrong beyond the veil of its PS1-graphics simulacrum. I'm going to structure this review tag by tag, so let's talk about the "Souls-like" tag first.

Tyrant's Realm, the Souls-like: Visions of demake, but didn't expect weak foe

The Riposte just uses the same animation template for all weapons (Image via Skystone Games)

Like a loyal mentee, Tyrant's Realm takes a lot of notes from Dark Souls' teachings — both good and bad ones. Before I proceed with my rant on the mechanics, a word on the camera. Yes, it's bad. It's Dark-Souls-2-Smelter-Demon-strategically-bodyblocks-you-into-the-wall bad. There's nothing I hate more in any Souls-like than its proclivity to jank camera, and Tyrant's Realm triggers this pet peeve big-time.

Outside of some neat presentation tricks like a slowdown to highlight a successful dodge and a full-on cinematic that plays on riposte-kills, there's not a whole lot of original stuff Tyrant's Realm tries to innovate its Souls-like formula. This would have been completely alright, had it executed the basics successfully; but it doesn't. If you go into it expecting the same level of mechanical chops and polish as even OG Demon Souls, you will be disappointed.

The fundamentals of gameplay involve the usual Souls-like suspects: enemies have bespoke telegraphed attack patterns, and your success is a combination of learning these patterns and using your tools to deal with them. Tools in question: the rusty sword arm for swinging away, the trusty off-hand for blocking, and your own two feet for barrel-rolling your way out.

In sticking to its Souls-coded weight of combat, Tyrant's Realm fully sacrifices the floaty fast-paced action of ye olde Nightmare Creatures. It would have been a perfectly fine thing, except this game follows the wrong lesson. Its version of attack commitment quite literally gatekeeps your other controls from coming online.

Here's a quick explanation of the central problem: after each melee swing, there's a pronounced delay before you can either block or dodge-roll successfully. This is not an input-lag problem, but simply the fact that recovery frames prevent any input other than chaining attack or movement.

Between this and a further few frames before the shield-up or dodge animation plays, you'll have to ration your attacks well if you plan to block or dodge-roll — it's hard to pull off an agile hit-and-run playstyle even with the faster weapons.

As a result, gameplay only feels as good as the moveset of the weapon you happen to have on hand. The balancing here is well out of order; some movesets are far more utilitarian than others, and some of them feel far better to play with.

Enemies are a mish-mash of different archetypes: there’s the geriatric zombified younger brother of the Lost Sinner from Dark Souls 2, the plump sort that gets personal with a butcher’s knife, foot soldiers with blunted shortswords just trying to get their guard shift off, and so on. Some of them have unique gimmicks, like kasa-wearing elusive small guys that cartwheel backwards, and knife-brandishing kitchen hands that will snack on fish to recover health when low.

Bosses, meanwhile feel underwhelming across the board. The developer has done good footwork in the concept work, but most of them are all too easy to outplay due to unvaried attack patterns and undemanding mechanics. Altogether, they present a good amount of surprise flavor for your first run but quickly become dry and dull over repeat attempts.

The "first run" being fun is the operative keyword here. Let's talk about the other big gamer tag: the Tyrant's Realm the roguelite.

Tyrant's Realm, the Roguelite: Door Does Not Open From This Side

The difficulty modes do little in practice (Image via Skystone Games)

This game does a semi-decent job at being the old-school type of Souls-like for masochistic Dark Souls 1 enjoyers, but it completely fumbles its prerogative of replay value as a roguelite.

A few warning signs of the inadequacy materialize with its movesets. There are not many of them, and some of them are shared between multiple weapons. A lack of variety is the main problem that affects this game's core structure as a Roguelite.

The goal in Tyrant's Realm is to get to the titular Tyrant's bedchambers and murder him, only for him to turn back the clock and reset your run. This is a fine lore premise for a roguelite, but the journey in the middle simply does not provide enough variety.

To get to the Tyrant, you have to clear 10 levels. Six of these have an alternate route you can take, presenting effectively six new levels to spice things up. The levels themselves are well-conceived, some of them obvious love letters to fan-favorite areas from the Soulsborne series. Leaving aside the boss arenas, there are effectively eight levels, and all of them — despite being randomly generated — do not utilize the tileset by being complex to navigate, or hiding secrets (other than the easy-to-spot cracked walls in Resurrection Chambers).

This pushes the entire responsibility of introducing unique spice to each run on to the equipment and build-cooking system. Each combat level is punctuated by a Merchant's Lounge, where you are forced to spend all your coins towards some upgrade or purchase (Credit Card companies usually aren't this aggressive).

If you've unlocked weapon or armor blueprints, this is where you can purchase them — except the economy is slow enough that you'll have to spend almost half of a run getting that weapon. It's far more valuable to use up the coffers towards permanent upgrades (which take multiple runs to complete just one tier) and run with whatever best-case weapon/armor you get.

Weapons, armor, and shields that you get are color-coded: they're either blue, green, or red. This has no innate significance other than the direct vertical progression system in each run: crushing skulls at altars. In these altars, you can upgrade one color to buff all equipment of that color for the run, and get a max HP boost. You'll get five or six altars like these every run, but subsequent upgrades toward one color have diminishing returns to keep things in check.

The color-coded system of universal gear upgrades every run is a brilliant idea. Unfortunately, it's about the only brilliant idea Tyrant's Realm posits as a roguelite. The equipment itself is balanced in a way where getting the really busted stuff trivializes your entire run. Basically, the vast majority of armor and shields provide a unique bonus, and some of these bonuses are quite overpowered.

One commendable fun element Tyrant's Realm incorporates is its take on an Ashes of War system. Armor sets can also come with their own unique actives, ranging from patting down enemies to get more coins to an overpowered shield-bash that can staggerlock all but the strongest enemies.

This sort of wide disparity between gear bonuses and unique quirks is perfectly fine for a roguelite. After all, not every run is meant for godhood. By comparison, weapon balance in Tyrant's Realm is a big problem. The disparity here feels unwarranted because the difference is created by the moveset problem I discussed before: some of them are just sluggish.

If you get the Lord's Greatsword, you can do a no-hit run poking at enemies from a healthy distance with zero counters or drawbacks. Meanwhile, those using a weapon with the straightsword moveset are left scratching their head with the questionable heavy-attack hitbox. In some other roguelite, this is a minor discredit. In a Souls-like roguelite of all things, this is a downright travesty.

You can't do magic and archery in Tyrant's Realm; you're limited to being the melee guy. The askew balance of fun and accessibility of different playstyle thus curbs its roguelite freedom a lot.

There's a two-pronged issue at hand: the range of fun build variety isn't that big, and the blueprints price-gouge you too hard to even spec into them for the better part of a run.

You can spec into a poison dagger build and watch enemies get sick and blip with a green sprite effect, and it is indeed a fun end goal. A fun end goal beset by the necessity of happenstance. It's only a fun run if you get that dagger early on, otherwise it's another dull run where you're not having much fun with what you're given.

The verdict

Ultimately, some questionable design choices and hit-or-miss movesets deflate what is otherwise a great Souls-like proof of concept. The salvageable portions of Tyrant's Realm make it a fun few hours till you hit your first serviceable gear combo and end the run.

The higher difficulty mode it unlocks juices up some enemies to the Elite tier to toy with the idea of new mechanics to make flask management more hardcore and the run overall more punishing.

Only, you've already outrun the game's good side by that point. Tyrant's Realm qualifies as a good Souls-like but fails as a roguelite — only apt for one evening of throwback-gaming.