End of Realms Review — Russell Troxel

Dec 7

Dec 7 End of Realms Review

Since I consume a lot of video game-related media, I’ve heard a lot about how game releases slow way down at the end of the year, but it wasn’t until I began writing weekly reviews that I really understood what that meant. When choosing what game I would look at this week, there were no major releases I could find. Of course, any given day sees about 20 new indie games being published on Steam and other PC vendors, though this isn’t always a reliable source of review material thanks to some developers having weird ideas about sex and/or violence. But, as they say, the show must go on, so I decided to gamble on End of Realms, an indie made by a two-person team and honestly it could have gone worse.

In End of Realms, players step into the shoes of an adventurer named Roth the Fearless. Roth is the stereotypical cynical hero that has become popular recently, refusing faith and decorum in favor of getting to the point. By the end of the tutorial, Roth has gained a magic sword, seen his only friend killed by an undead mage, and spent decades making a name for himself as an adventurer. Now an old man splitting his time between mercenary work and drinking in taverns, Roth is hired by a young girl to help her get revenge on a cruel goddess. Once that goes as badly as you’d expect, Roth is once again left companionless and embarks on a quest revenge, traveling the land, slaying monsters, and gathering powerful artifacts.

Exploring the wilds of End of Realms is one of the strangest experiences I’ve had playing a video game in recent memory. Once a player has finished with an area, they’re given a choice between two other areas to explore. These aren’t specific named areas, instead they’re vaguely described archetypes like “holy grove” and “hot springs.” Once Roth has conquered the monster or gathered the treasure, players choose a new destination. There’s no theme or connection between any of these destinations, with Roth going from an ancient tomb straight into a comfortable inn, making the setting feel less like a coherent world and more like a random smattering of locations floating in abstract space. During certain quests, players will be asked to find unique, named locations, but these will pop up randomly during exploration rather than be found by player navigation. The entire experience feels like playing darts blindfolded against a moving dartboard and only being told how you’re doing when you get a bullseye. The resultant confusion and despondency from this aimless adventuring very nearly put me off this game several times.

With the exploration being lackluster, players probably hope that fighting the monsters found during this time would at least be good. It’s better than the exploration, but not by much. During a fight, Roth can choose to use one of three skills presented to him. These three skills are pulled randomly from the 10 skills Roth has equipped, not unlike drawing from a deck of cards. Most abilities discard themselves when used and are then replaced by another skill Roth has equipped. Skills can be used any number of times, so long as they cycle through the deck first. Roth uses these skills to defeat monsters by depleting one or more of their stats: fortitude, defense, and willpower. Depleting fortitude makes sense to me, if my opponent runs out of blood or equivalent internal fluid, then I win. However, depleting defense and willpower didn’t seem sufficiently different. For example, I had an ability called Spellbomb, which caused a fiery explosion to erupt on my opponent’s person. Spellbomb did fortitude and defense damage, but not willpower damage. Another skill known as Mana Blast, fired a bolt of raw magical energy into my opponent’s face, but did exclusively willpower damage. As cool as the skills were, it felt like they were being presented as many different ways to win a fight, when they all boiled down to damaging my opponent’s physical body.

For all the negative things I have to say about End of Realms, there’s actually one aspect that I very much enjoy and that’s the games strange but flavorful progression. When Roth beats an enemy, players will be rewarded with equipment and/or treasure instead of the experience points traditional to the RPG. However, there’s no guarantee that the equipment will be better than what Roth has equipped and he can only carry five treasure items at a time, so this isn’t a reliable way to improve Roth, and with no experience points or leveling, players can’t fight monsters over and over to learn new skills. But hang on, I did say I liked this, so what’s the good part? The good part is how Roth gains new skills by being in certain situations. Some of these situations are easy or even inevitable to find, such as after Roth visits 30 locations known as Healer’s Huts, Roth learns the Healthy Body skill, making him better at patching himself up after a fight, showing how Roth picks up new skills by seeing them done. My personal favorite was learning the skill Vitriol, an attack that does more damage based on how much damage the enemy did to you the previous turn, by being savagely beaten by a griffin. I know not everyone will be won over by this peculiar method of player progression, but I was undeniably charmed by it.

End of Realms is the kind of strange, risky game that can only come from small developers. It has so many quirks and oddities but also is uncompromising in its vision. Honestly, I do feel a bit bad saying that $8 is too much to pay for this game, but I also know that there are enough problems with End of Realms that the average person will be in some way unhappy. So I recommend waiting for a sale unless you’re the same kind of odd as me, in which case go ahead and take this $8 gamble.