Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs – Preview
Follow Genre: Turn-based RPG, Strategy
Developer: Pixelated Milk
Publisher: Klabater
Platform: PC, PlayStation 4
Tested on: PC

Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs – Preview

Good: Good and at times funny lore
Bad: Loading screens
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7.0
(1 votes)
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Developer Pixelated Milk and publisher Klabater are currently putting the final touches on the tactical RPG Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs. In this ‘cheerful fantasy world full of weirdness and wonder’ (sic: the developers) you challenge your enemies with your raiding party in turn-based combat while enjoying the storyline and on occasion find yourself chuckling about the over-the-top humor.

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Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs is a game partly funded by a Kickstarter project and this shows if you look at either the Community pages on Steam or the Kickstarter page itself. There is a number of fans who have not only backed the game but also provided the developers with feedback on the gameplay, story-line and graphics while reporting bugs during the beta of the game. We also got a chance to have a sneak preview and our first impressions were positive. Unfortunately the beta was closed down for the developers to focus on the imminent release and we did not get a chance to enjoy as much of the game as we would have liked but nonetheless we look forward to seeing it again once it is available for general play.

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You start out your adventure when your father passes away and it turns out that your inheritance is a bit larger than you expected. Apparently your character finds himself ruler of the kingdom Ascalia all of a sudden. At first it might sound enjoyable to be heir of the throne but it quickly becomes clear that the inheritance is not all that glorious. Upon arrival in your new home you find out that it is in a huge debt and it is up to you to restore the country to is former glory.

One thing you notice immediately when starting the game is the soundtrack. The developers hired Game Audio Factory, which is known for several other titles, to provide the orchestral soundtrack and it immediately sets the mood. Next to music also the voice acting is quite good and keeping in line with the characters. The sound effects during the combat are more or less what you’d expect without being overly special.

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The lore of the game is obiously quite important but it does take quite some time to get through the introductory story-line before you get to your first combat situation. Whenever you encounter a new aspect of the game you are provided with a tutorial which explains in-depth what you can and are expected to do. Especially the character development, town and diplomacy screens are quite intricate and require a good study before using them. In some parts the tutorials are layered, giving you the basic information first and revisiting topics when you are more familiar with the game mechanics.

As Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs is a turn-based game obviously you can take quite some time to plan and come up with a strategy on how to best defeat the enemy. When you start combat first you can deploy your characters in a certain area of the field. When it is your turn your characters are activated and you can freely move them multiple times when there are still movement points available. Each time they are activated however they can only perform one action like using a skill or an item. The monsters you face are varied, ranging from rats and wolves to elms and stranger beasts.

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Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs certainly looks very appealing to the eye. The developers are very proud of the hand-drawn backgrounds and everything has a pleasant cartoonesque feel to it. The characters are nicely animated and their movements are fluent. The only thing that might look kind of out of place are the emotes popping up over the characters their heads: even though they are animated nicely by their own rights, they don’t seem to totally fit in with the rest of the graphical style. This doesn’t bother as much as the loading screens though. While they always contain some contextual info on the situation at hand, they tend to become annoying quite fast and do interrupt the flow of the game.

Conclusion

The creators of Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs tout that they know what it takes to build a good games as they enjoy gaming themselves too and it shows. We think they have a nice title on their hands here and given the fact that we were sorry the beta was closed so soon we can imagine people playing it when it is released the 18th of May will also feel sorry once they have churned their way through the promised 30 hours of gameplay.

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Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs - Preview, 7.0 out of 10 based on 1 rating

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