Tyrant’s Realm is an hybrid roguelike and soulslike developed by Team Tyrant and Skystone Games, attempting to bring players back in time, with a visual style inspired by PSOne titles and a dark fantasy setting that nods to the classics of Robert E. Howard and Frank Frazetta. Released on 16 January 2025, the game promises an epic adventure among swords, magic, and indescribable horrors. However, beneath the captivating retro veneer lie several issues that make the overall experience less exhilarating than one might expect.
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A journey that ends too soon
The roguelike heart of Tyrant’s Realm promises variety and tension thanks to procedurally generated paths and randomly placed enemies, elements that should make every run unique and unpredictable. The idea of retaining upgrades acquired between deaths adds a sense of progression, encouraging the player to improve and delve deeper into the game’s systems. However, this intriguing premise collides with an execution that lacks edge. Despite the clearly defined structure and roguelike mechanics, the game struggles to offer a consistent challenge: after becoming familiar with the combat system and its rough edges — which we’ll see shortly — the difficulty level drops sharply, transforming an initially tense adventure into an almost relaxed experience.
With such a short completion time, just 45 minutes for the first run, completed on the second attempt as always, the sense of achievement completely disappears. This is a serious problem, especially for a title that draws inspiration from notoriously difficult games like Dark Souls. The absence of a well-balanced difficulty curve not only diminishes the emotional impact of failure and rebirth, but deprives the player of the satisfaction of overcoming a challenging obstacle.
Between pointless parades and dodged, wobbly attempts
The gameplay of Tyrant’s Realm revolves around close-quarters combat, with a system aiming to evoke the elegance and challenge of souls-like titles, but it stumbles over several flaws that undermine its effectiveness. The dodge, which should be a central and strategic mechanic, is frustrating to use due to an incredibly narrow activation window. Worse still, it proves entirely useless against bosses, effectively nullifying one of the few opportunities for players to showcase tactical skill. The dodge system, on the other hand, appears to add more aesthetic flair than substance: the slow-motion effect that accompanies every successful dodge breaks the action’s rhythm and offers little practical utility, turning a key combat element into an unnecessary loss of dynamism.
The inability to cancel animations, and therefore attacks, may initially frustrate, but it is a deliberate choice that forces you to commit to every attack and parry.
Even the variety of weapons and armour, though initially promising, ends up being a wasted opportunity. Many fights reduce to a monotonous routine of blocking and counter-attacking, with few chances to experiment with different approaches. The lack of balance between the game’s elements becomes clear: the shields, which block 100% of damage, make many battles — including those against bosses — incredibly easy and devoid of challenge. In a context where every enemy attack is unbreakable, this design choice penalises the overall experience, limiting player options and flattening the sense of progression. Ultimately, what should be an engaging combat system becomes a repetitive and clumsy dance, where every step forward seems more like a forced correction than a real improvement.
Well, it’s true the title draws inspiration from the PSOne era, but besides the graphical style, was it really necessary to also revive the gameplay limitations of that time?
CRT, what nostalgia... but what a nuisance
From a technical standpoint, Tyrant’s Realm relies entirely on a nostalgic visual style that strongly evokes the golden age of the PSOne. The retro graphics are carefully crafted and rich in detail, helping to build an atmosphere capable of immersing the player in a dark and mysterious world. However, despite the atmosphere being one of the game’s strengths, some stylistic elements risk being counterproductive. An example is the CRT filter, an interesting addition in theory, but which ends up appearing overly blue and unauthentic compared to cathode-ray tube televisions it should be inspired by. A minor color adjustment could certainly make this choice more effective.
The user interface, while functional, could be improved. The lack of customisation options is noticeable, making the visual experience less fluid than it could be. For example, the colours indicating equipment statistics could be reviewed: green, which should signify an improvement, also appears when the value remains unchanged, causing confusion. These are minor details, but collectively they negatively impact the overall experience.
From the perspective of enemy and boss design, the game offers some interesting ideas, but the variety runs out quickly. This flaw, combined with the repetitiveness of environments and combat, becomes apparent early in the game, making the experience predictable and lacking significant surprises. This is especially evident in the maps, which, although well-designed visually, are too few and repetitive, limiting the sense of discovery that should be central to a dark fantasy adventure.
In conclusion
You might think this review has ended too soon... well, that’s the feeling the writer had with Tyrant’s Realm, a game distinguished by its nostalgic visual style and an intriguing setting, but which stumbles over unbalanced gameplay mechanics and poorly calibrated difficulty. Despite the idea of combining roguelite elements with a souls-like combat system being interesting, the execution leaves much to be desired, with repetitive dynamics and a lack of variety that undermines the overall experience. The promises of challenge and progression are undermined by questionable design choices, making the game too short and unrewarding for fans of the genre. Tyrant’s Realm remains a title with solid potential, but one that needs polishing to truly stand out as a memorable experience, capable of capturing the attention of players within the now extremely saturated microcosm of roguelites and soulslike games.
