It’s good to be king.
I had never heard of Regalia before taking on this review. I honestly had no idea what to expect other than a strategy RPG. Interestingly enough, this was crowd funded project with a ton of backers. Not knowing what I was getting into, I found out quickly that this game really does try to do it all. With a few hiccups here and there, I have to say, they did a pretty good job with it all.
Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs is more than just a strategy RPG. It also has base building, delegations, text-based adventures, and crafting all wrapped around a surprisingly deep story that never takes itself too seriously. It’s easy to shoot off comparisons to other games because a lot of the influences are taken right from them.
Platforms: PC, PS4, XB1, Switch
MSRP: $24.99
Price I’d pay: $24.99
Players take on the role of Kay, a young man who he finds out he is the last heir to the throne of Ascalia. He travels there with his two sisters and a boisterous bodyguard to find the town and castle left abandoned and in ruins. Kay, along with his sisters and his specter grandfather he finds in the castle, decide to rebuild Ascalia to its former glory. There’s only one problem – his ancestors have racked up a huge debt to the banks and are now having to pay it all back.
Let’s start with the main aspect of the game itself, time management. Much like Persona or the Atelier series, players are timed with how long they have to complete objectives. Players are tasked with completing certain things in a span of days. Each thing Kay does takes up a certain amount of days. Spending time with characters to improve their abilities? That takes up a day. Want to go fishing for consumable items? Another day. Want to take on a dungeon? Travel and exploring takes numerous days. It’s a fine balance of doing things to complete quests while still sticking to a time frame. These debt collectors aren’t messing around. Miss a deadline and its game over.
Along with making deadlines, players are tasked with rebuilding the kingdom. This, in turn, will attract more people to the town and boost production. Players can build new buildings along with improvements to existing ones. This requires materials along with money, both of which are obtained through victories in battles.
Battles consist of characters on an isometric grid that can move and attack in said grid. Interestingly, every character comes with different skills. Skills are used for attacking, buffing, and all other actions on the battlefield. It was a bit confusing at first because I realized, there is no “standard attack” in Regalia. Players must use a skill, many of which have turn cool downs. Every character has a signature move that has no cool down, but strategizing when to use more powerful abilities that have cool downs can make or break a battle. Every turn, players can move their characters, attack, use items, and whatever else in any order they like. So if I wanted to attack then move away from the enemy, I totally could. Status effects are a big player in every battle. Practically every move a character has generates some form of status effect, either negative or positive. The only issue is, many of the effects are not explained very well during combat. For the first few hours of the game, I had no idea what “Sundered” meant, but I was applying it on all my enemies constantly. One really great mechanic is the Authority Points. Each turn, an Authority Point is generated. These are used for blitzing and ultimate attacks. So, let’s say I have Griffith move to an enemy and attack. I could then spend an Authority Point to blitz with him and get another turn. It helps with finishing off enemies much more quickly and expending numerous AP to blitz to wipe out a squad of enemies always felt rewarding.
Leveling up is handled through a party experience. Individual characters don’t level up, but the entire party does. It sounds like it would be overly simple, but it’s not. There is still crafting for better weapons and new skills can be equipped when unlocking new slots that can offer changes in the battle skills, better stats, and much more.
Dungeons are interesting due to the way they are handled. It’s not all battle after battle. A dungeon has nodes that players can travel to. Battle nodes obviously lead directly into a battle, but there are others as well. The first is a camp. Here, players can revive allies that have died in previous combat, and save their game. Keep in mind, players can only revive a camp once. After that, they must travel to a new camp to bring anyone else back to life. The final node type is the adventure node. Here, players have to choose what to do in a text-based adventure that tells a story of some kind that can affect the influence of the party members. These are very thought out and interesting, and usually add a lot of humor to the story.
Now, not explaining the status effects is just the tip of the iceberg for some of my issues with Regalia. Battles can go from normal difficulty to extremely brutal in about five seconds flat. There are some custom sliders for difficulty, but I wanted to experience the “standard” feel of it all. While it was rewarding, I did feel that there were some times it felt almost unfair. It had that XCOM feel to the accuracy of attack at times. The ones where I have an 86% chance to hit and I somehow miss three times. Another issue and the one that was probably the most frustrating for me was the loading times. First off, everything I did in the game brought me to a loading screen. Moving from one building to the next, going from one node in a dungeon to the next. Even certain voice dialogs that would last all of ten seconds would end in a loading screen. These were both overly long and many times would require me to hit the A button to progress past the loading screen as if it was asking me if I was ready. I’ve been ready for the past two minutes. Finally, the issue of not being able to rotate the battlefield got to me in certain instances due to not being able to see what my line of sight was with certain characters. Luckily, if I had moved and still could attack the enemy due to not being about to see properly, I could easily hit the B button to undo my movement and try again.
The presentation is very well done. The voice acting is fantastic and goes along with the whimsical and lighthearted feel of the story. It has that Disgaea feel to it where it never takes itself too seriously, and the fact that it is a very story driven game, allows the characters to ham it up a bit even if they are all standard RPG/anime stereotypes. The art style is completely hand drawn and looks fantastic even when the animations are reused a ton. Finally, the music is superb. The battle themes, the chill music in town, and all other tracks have the grandiose sound of trumpets and an orchestra with the hard rock sounds of electric guitar mixed in that gives it that great overall presence.
Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs is a game that tries to do it all. It has influences of Persona, Disgaea, Atelier, and Final Fantasy Tactics all wrapped into one. While it does have some missteps, overall this is a solid game that can really take a player by surprise at just how big it really can be. Tactical RPG players and story driven RPG players will have a great time with Regalia, and even with its faults, I still recommend it to anyone that enjoys a complex RPG.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
