Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs Reviews
A hit or miss story with a solid battle system, a cute art style, and some interesting ideas.
While Regalia: of Men and Monarchs never excels in any one area, the unique mix of gameplay elements really comes together to provide an experience that's worth having. If you're a fan of JRPGs, SRPGs, or a fan of the British tradition of absurdist fantasy comedy, there's something here for you to enjoy.
Regalia is a fun tactical RPG with a strong narrative element. It's not without it's issues – mainly loading times – but it's a well-designed and content-rich game nonetheless.
Regalia certainly has a lot going for it, particularly in its audio and visual presentation, but its generic battles and some minor control and UI issues prevent the Royal Edition from truly ruling the realm.
Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs is a mish-mash of a game that combines tactical RPG battles with a visual novel and world building elements to create a fairly new experience. There is a lot of fun lines in the dialogue and the game provides an urgent, multifaceted challenge, but is poorly paced and plagued with loading screens that take away from the polish and joy that could have been.
Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs is a good tactical RPG if you've got the time, but not if you're looking for a meaty storyline.
Regalia is a game that's honest, and it's a game with gumption.
Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs has great style and clear heart behind it. In many cases, though, it is an issue of seeing the forest for the trees, as great parts of the game are simply lost in minutia. The hard difficulty requires near-perfection, which begins a grinding mentality to what otherwise was a comedic adventure. Suddenly, every choice becomes do or die, as a few extra % points can make the difference in a battle. The difficulty itself is not the entire problem so much as the battle system is too much of a slog compared to the rest of the game.
There’s a beautiful game in Regalia, but it’s sadly hidden behind a massively cumbersome and counter-intuitive interface. While I’ve been told that there’s an update in the works with numerous fixes planned, and even several for issues I mentioned, I’m not entirely sure though it will fix all of my complaints. Frankly, I’m a bit shocked the game got through Nintendo’s testers in this state. The game costs $24.99 on Switch and provided me at least 30 hours of playtime, and while I can see the good here, it’s currently outweighed by all the bad. I will note that if Pixelated Milk is able to fix the majority of the problems I mentioned, my score would likely be double what it is currently. I can respect the effort here, but it’s hard to recommend Regalia: Royal Edition in it’s current form. Here’s hoping it gets the loving care it needs soon.