The newest roguelike to come across my review desk, Realm of Ink, has just entered Early Access with hopes of standing out in a niche yet highly memorable market. While I was initially unsure of how I felt about this title, it began to grow on me as I gave it more time. While it certainly can use some improvement throughout its Early Access development cycle, I think the game is pretty good, imperfections and all.
Realm of Ink is the second roguelike I’ve reviewed this week, with the other being Ravenswatch, a super fun ARPG-roguelike mix that has easily become one of my new favorites in the genre due to how unique its approach to traditional mechanics is.
Realm of Ink, in comparison, is a much less unique title. It doesn’t try to reinvent the roguelike presentation, featuring a very genre-traditional approach to mechanics and level design. This is, of course, fine; it’s a formula that works, and following this formula doesn’t make Realm of Ink less of a good game. If anything, it just delivers mechanics proven to be fun and does it well.
Realm of Ink is a roguelike based on East Asian storytelling, specifically taking the aesthetic of ink scroll drawings.
It can be kind of hard to tell what’s going on in Realm of Ink because the story starts in media res, and the localization can make it hard to completely understand everything the characters are saying. From what I’ve gathered, our protagonist is stuck in the realm of It, a malevolent storytelling god who wishes to control the fate of all things—something our protagonist is adamant about fighting against.
The game uses the ink scroll drawing style well, especially in its effects and boss fights. Little cutscenes here and there paint the picture (pun intended) of you being in the world of a story, and thematically, collecting ink as the source of your power is fun. I especially enjoy how your pet, an inkblot, changes form based on the powers you collect.
I would describe Realm of Ink as an action-arcade or beat-’em-up-style roguelike. For fans familiar with the genre, think of Realm of Ink as a far more fast-paced version of Hades, and I do mean far more fast-paced; fights happen quickly in Realm of Ink, with low cooldowns on dashes and abilities, and enemy attacks coming out quickly with very minimal time to react.
At first, I was under the impression that Realm of Ink is a little too easy. It’s normal for me to fail against the first boss during the first couple of runs in a roguelike, but I got all the way to the second stage of the second zone’s final boss before I was taken out in my first run. The game allows you to change your difficulty in the pre-room staging area, though, and I would say that the default difficulty is a bit too easy. The second one is probably more about where you should aim to play the game.
Even so, I still have mixed feelings about Realm of Ink’s difficulty, mostly due to the balance between how generous the game is with items and the skill test that is boss battles.
Realm of Ink will just throw money and items at you. While upgrading your main abilities can be a bit difficult, it is super easy to acquire thousands of silver in the first zone, which is then used to buy healing items and other goods from pre-boss shop rooms. You stack up a lot of stat-modifying perks quickly, which is good because the game features a whopping 30 slots for perks in a single run.
It can be easy to start feeling a bit overpowered in Realm of Ink, especially in the common rooms leading up to boss fights. You can absolutely shred through regular enemies without taking a single point of damage. With a good build, you’ll beat down the boss’s health bar quickly. However, it’s hard for me to say if this is unbalanced because of how quickly combat happens. You will still find yourself failing a two-stage boss fight if you aren’t fast enough to dodge every attack. I will say that I’m usually pretty bad at games that require fast reflexes and good timing, and I felt like I was doing consistently well at both in Realm of Ink.
Something I definitely do not love about the game is just how text-heavy every single item seems to be. Before you know exactly what everything in the game does, trying to learn your way around can be pretty difficult because each perk or ink you pick up has a paragraph or more of text attached to it, affecting multiple stats all at once. Realm of Ink especially becomes even more text-loaded as you upgrade it, often adding new paragraphs to the mix as it evolves to do even more things.
As you progress through the game, specifically by collecting resources dropped by defeated bosses, you’ll begin to unlock new forms which change your weapon attacks and playstyle. I was surprised by just how many of these are available this early into the game’s development, and even more so that I really liked the design and playstyle of basically everyone. The urge to collect these forms is a powerful driving force to keep you playing the game repeatedly.
Realm of Ink took a minute to grow on me, but grow on me it did. The game needs to work on its localization, and I still have mixed feelings about the game’s difficulty, but all in all, it seems to be in a fairly promising state, and I’m eager to see what the game is like after it leaves Early Access.
Pros:
- Fast combat
- Great style based on East Asian ink paintings
- Fun character designs
- Lots of replayability with cool, gameplay-altering forms to unlock
Cons:
- Poor localization that can make the story a bit confusing
- Text-heavy abilities that make learning all the drops difficult
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