Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs is a game which hadn’t been on my radar before PAX East, but I’m happy I had the opportunity to talk to some of the developers and play it. In fact, I spent 45 minutes just playing this game and for anyone who hasn’t been to a convention before, spending that long on a single game on the show floor is rare. If you are looking for an interesting, fun, and quirky tactical RPG Regalia fits the bill perfectly.
Hands On with Regalia
One of the first things which happens in game is the main character recently inherited a distant kingdom from their father and must travel to begin their rule. You are still a young Prince and very inexperienced in ruling, but luckily there is a great cast of characters to help you out on this journey. The first thing which really pulled me into the game was the dialogue and how I could quickly get a sense of who each character is but I was also curious to learn more about them. Along with the writing the VO for all the characters really reinforces the fun and interesting setting. There were many times within the first few minutes of the game where I found myself chuckling at the way something was said or done.
Shortly after arriving in my new kingdom I discovered not only is it in ruins but apparently, the entire place is suffering under a huge debt which I was now obligated to pay off. Luckily the person I owe this money too is willing to take installment payments so adventuring can commence! Of course, adventuring leads to battles and the battle system in Regalia is no slouch. It’s turn based and set-up on a grid map which is a very familiar system. However, I quickly discovered friendly fire is a thing and I could kill my own people… even the Prince himself; though killing the Prince in combat didn’t immediately end combat or give me a game over. Also, luckily for me, killing someone in a battle only removes them from combat and doesn’t permanently kill them.
Each character has their own unique set of abilities and there is room for some interesting interplay between these abilities depending on how you decide to use them. Using the environment to your advantage is also a good idea and can be the difference between winning a fight and losing it. Both positive and negative status effects are also something which can be applied and they will last for multiple rounds. For example, a shield can be applied to your allies which effectively gives them extra health which will be depleted before their actual health. Not only can this help in a tough fight but it also will help if you find yourself in a situation where you need to deal damage to them.
Regalia also features a town building/management aspect as well which I sadly didn’t have very much time to delve into but it adds another interesting aspect to the game. As I explored around my ruined kingdom I discovered there were some villagers around who needed help, in this case a vicious beast had been terrorizing everyone and was a big reason people didn’t visit the area anymore. Helping with this issue also lead to meeting and recruiting other people for my team and helped my little village to grow a bit more.
The last big feature of Regalia is the Adventure system. Adventures are basically story sections where you can decide how you want to handle various things. The choices made during these will influence how the rest of the game plays out and what kind of choices you must make further down the line. Adventures can even lead to battles depending on how you handle them which of course can be a good thing or a bad thing. This gives Regalia a huge amount of replayability because while there might seem like an obvious path to take there are many ways to reach your goal in the game.
As far as Tactical RPGs go this game really seems to be offering a bit of everything and doing all those things very well. Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs will be released on April 27th for Windows, OS X, and Linux so thankfully I only have a short amount of time to wait for the full game.
