Tyrant's Realm
Steam/PC
Team Tyrant/Skystone Games
1/16/25
While the idea of a new action Roguelite with classic PS1 visuals is enticing, I shuddered a bit when I saw that Tyrant’s Realm, developed by Team Tyrant and Skystone Games, features Soulslike combat. My history with Soulslikes has been, well, interesting to say the least. I fell in love with the faster-paced Bloodborne when it was released in 2015 (I bet that makes you feel old), but I have found that many indie developers struggle to nail down the formula. This has left me playing many releases that end up feeling slow, tedious, and far too difficult to be fun.
Some players thrive on the rush that comes from defeating an overly difficult boss after 40-50 attempts. They don’t mind retreading the same areas repeatedly, and many gameplay systems that, to me, seem disrespectful of the player’s time, are revered by genre enthusiasts. I don't inherently dislike Souls games; in fact, I often love the atmosphere and ambiguity they offer. However, for me, time is precious, and these games often don't scale well with what's happening in my life.Â
Thankfully, Tyrant’s Realm leans more towards Roguelite than Soulslike, providing an endearing gameplay loop that retains many of the combat traits beloved by Soulslike fans while keeping the challenge reasonable. So, is Tyrant’s Realm, the latest action Roguelite game, the first must-play indie release of 2025, or does it eventually burn out and sink into a fiery abyss? Let’s find out in our full review!
Tyrant’s Realm doesn’t offer much of a narrative. You are simply a warrior tasked with defeating the evil Tyrant (no, not that Tyrant) The game’s Steam page will honestly teach you more about Tyrant’s Realm’s story than the game itself, but ultimately, the narrative isn't much of a focus in this title. If you were expecting deep, mysterious lore, collectible documents that flesh out the world, or even character dialogue, you might be disappointed.
Instead, the focus here is on gameplay, which is run-based in typical Roguelite fashion. Your goal is to conquer various areas and bosses while collecting coins from fallen foes or destructible barrels to grow stronger through upgrades. Your quest to defeat the Tyrant and his minions will require multiple runs, learning enemy patterns, choosing the correct upgrades and a bit of luck.
Before diving further into the gameplay systems of Tyrant’s Realm, let’s explore some of the available options. In the settings menu, players can tweak various gameplay elements. Vertex snap can be toggled on or off, and players can choose between a pixelated or retro CRT filter.
Neither option was to my liking, especially the CRT display, which looked particularly ugly. Using it resulted in a bluish hue encapsulating my screen that wasn’t very pleasing to the eye. Therefore, I recommend players stick with the default game settings, which look lovely.
I also recommend turning off the auto-lock feature immediately, as it tends to be extremely aggressive, activating at the most inopportune times. Aside from that, you can select a preferred gameplay controller for button prompts, which is always lovely. You can also invert the camera and choose between a few different resolution options. I played the game on the epic resolution setting and easily achieved a locked 120fps but do note that I am using an Nvidia 4070 GPU, so your results may vary.
As you begin the game, you'll be required to complete a basic tutorial. Here, you’ll learn movement and combat mechanics. Naturally, the left stick controls character movement, and the right stick controls the camera. Unfortunately, the camera is one of the major issues throughout Tyrant’s Realm. If you get tangled up with an enemy in a tight corner, you may find yourself trapped, unable to see, and left to desperately mash the attack button in hopes of surviving. Thankfully, camera issues aren’t prevalent throughout the entirety of your experience, but when they do occur, they can be run ending.
Holding down the B button on an Xbox controller allows you to sprint. I found the default speed of the game to be quite good, so I didn’t sprint as much as I expected to. Since many of the game’s areas feel tight and condensed, sprinting is a feature that's easily forgotten until later areas, where it becomes somewhat necessary.
By clicking in the right stick, you can manually lock onto enemies. As I mentioned earlier, the auto-lock feature isn't very good, but when used manually, it works just fine, allowing you to keep a targeted enemy in focus. Switching between targets is also a breeze, even with multiple enemies on screen. While this can be handy, you’ll find that baiting enemies into rooms and fighting them one-on-one is often the best course of action. When enemies gang up on you, it can be difficult to survive, as I often felt a bit animation-locked after sustaining attacks, especially when multiple enemies are striking simultaneously.
Then there’s your dodge roll, which works quite well in Tyrant’s Realm. Rolling feels responsive and smooth, saving my life on more than one occasion. Parrying, the bane of my existence, is done by pressing the left trigger just as an enemy is about to strike you. This requires learning enemy patterns and traits. Often, attackers are extremely slow in their animations, which takes some getting used to. As someone who typically struggles with parrying, I initially found this mechanic challenging. Thankfully, I eventually got the hang of it and found it to work well enough.
You’ll notice a yellow bar on the top left of your screen that charges up over time. This is your execution bar, and when it is full, you can perform an execution as the name suggests. These instant kills occur upon a successful parry while the bar is maxed out. While I enjoyed this mechanic quite a bit, the executions themselves are a bit disappointing. The sicko in me wishes they had been more over-the-top and gorier.
Of course, if you struggle with parrying, you can hold the left trigger to raise your shield and block incoming attacks. As for weapons and equipment, you’ll acquire new items as you progress through each run. The game features a large assortment of shields, swords, and armor, with additional blueprints that can be earned from defeating enemies and unlocked through an in-game merchant. It’s quite fun to try out different weapons and armor sets, and the random procedural nature of the game will keep you on your toes.
Skull altars are scattered throughout areas, offering additional perks for weapons and armor. The items you collect are color-coded, so you’ll need to pay attention to the colors you have equipped to select the best upgrade at the altar, which expires after one use until you find another.Â
Additionally, some weapons and armor come with secondary abilities that can be used. These abilities need to recharge after each use but can be quite handy. The last major mechanic of the game is healing. You’ll have a set number of flasks that can be activated with the press of a button. I’ll never understand why the healing animations in Souls games have to be so painfully slow, and I found this aspect just as frustrating here as in any other Soulslike. Also, keep in mind that you have a stamina bar. If it runs too low, you'll be left wide open to attacks. Stamina is consumed with nearly every action in the game, so I had my eye on it constantly.
Tyrant’s Realm is broken up into uniquely themed areas. While you could theoretically run through and bypass some enemy encounters, doing so would result in missing out on gold and treasure, which are your lifeblood. As you reach the end of an area, you will enter the merchant’s lounge. Here, you can spend all the coins you earned on your run to unlock new weapons, gain more flasks, and even unlock shortcuts to bypass tedious areas entirely on future runs.
These sections are a lovely way to catch your breath. They allow you to fill up your empty flasks, view the world map, restore your execution bar, and check your overall progress in the game. Stats such as the number of treasures you’ve collected or the number of enemies of a certain type you’ve slain are all tracked.
While the game opens in a prison area, you’ll encounter other distinct locations, such as a fire-themed temple, a hedge maze full of traps, and even a coliseum. With the game being procedurally generated, the number of enemies and their locations can vary from run to run, as can the layout of the areas. Occasionally, you’ll come across a fork in the road where you need to choose between two locations, and you’ll even battle bosses that must be defeated for you to progress.
The gameplay loop is fun for a while, but as with any Roguelite, starting a run from the opening prison after a death can feel deflating. Thankfully, any gold you put toward upgrades at the merchant’s shop remains locked in place, allowing you to grow stronger. There are no levels to be gained per se, but there are unlockable perks that help you progress further with each run. Personally, I found the flasks and shortcut upgrades to be the most handy, as I was usually able to find great armor and weapons on each fresh run.
For a game built with a Soulslike combat engine, Tyrant’s Realm never feels overwhelmingly difficult. Sure, you’ll experience your share of deaths, but enemies don’t deal massive amounts of damage and generally leave you with a fighter's chance. Enemy AI isn’t the brightest, particularly on bosses, which can be easily manipulated into basic patterns. Personally, I appreciated the more accessible difficulty, but those seeking a soul-crushing Soulslike experience might be disappointed.
The areas are quite small, and although the game features a decent map system, it is rarely necessary. There's some room for exploration and treasure hunting, but not much. I also found that later areas were a bit weak from a design perspective. One map has you twisting around a circular corridor, trying to weave your way to the middle area while a boss fires at you. This section wasn't very fun, made worse by bear traps scattered across the ground, many of which are hard to spot.
Even so, I generally enjoyed each of my runs in Tyrant’s Realm, even if I wasn’t always eager to jump straight back into another. The combat is solid despite its flaws, and the sheer number of blueprints that can be discovered adds up to a pretty good time. The game won’t change your mind if you aren’t a fan of Roguelites, but it achieves what it sets out to do quite well.
My favorite aspect of Tyrant’s Realm is its retro PS1-style visuals. While the game recreates the look of a 32-bit classic to some degree, it also manages to have a smoothed-out, modern vibe that works for me. PS1 games weren’t always known for high frame rates, despite a few running at 60fps (I’m looking at you, Tobal No 1), but in Tyrant’s Realm, the combination of old-school graphics and fantastic performance go together like peanut butter and jelly.
Enemy designs are a bit generic, and the animations are janky, but most of the environments look quite nice. Decent menus and readable text round out a lovely visual presentation that captures the essence of a Soulslike, blending nostalgia and modern visual touches nicely.
On the other hand, the sound design is less memorable. There weren’t any standout musical compositions that I came across, and most of the sound effects amount to standard grunts and groans. This isn't to say the game sounds particularly bad, but it does feel generic and slightly uninspired.
While Tyrant’s Realm is far from perfect, I was impressed with what developer Team Tyrant was able to create. The gameplay is fun with solid mechanics, the visuals are quite lovely, and the progression system worked for me. Yes, the camera is rough at times, some of the later levels are somewhat disappointing, and the enemy and boss AI could have definitely used some work, but at the end of the day, it’s a fun game with a cool style that’s definitely worth checking out—at least during a sale.
GOOD
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