Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs

Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs

Release: April 12, 2018
Publisher: Crunching Koalas
Developer: Pixelated Milk
Genre: Indie, Role-playing, Strategy, Switch Reviews
PEGI: T
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Not all strategy rpgs are created equal. Sometimes you get a strategy rpg like Final Fantasy Tactics, other times you get cheap knock-offs, or sometimes you get strategy rpgs that are good but could be so much better. Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs came out for the Nintendo Switch recently. Its a strategy rpg with a mix of adventure and a tiny bit of sim to it. Is it a good game though? Lets take a look!

Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs doesn’t take itself too seriously. The game’s story is very lighthearted and full of funny/odd dialogue. Players should not expect a story on the level of Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem, or other popular strategy rpgs. And you know what? Thats totally fine. I love the games I just mentioned but they do tend take themselves a bit too seriously storywise. I like the odd and fun storyline thats found in Regalia.

As for the gameplay, well, I wish it was a bit better…

So Much To Do, So Little Time

There is a lot to do in Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs. Theres interacting with characters in the castle and town, building up the town, fighting battles, doing side quests, leveling up characters, and more. The game presents you with a lot of content. I like that.

What I don’t like is that the game limits just how much you can do by giving you only so many days to spend time with characters, side quests, and especially dungeons.

This time limit seems forced and unnecessary. Instead of having fun with this game, you’ll find yourself worrying about how much time you are spending on certain things and whether you’ll be able to make the deadline.

The strategy battles that you find in the game are good. The battle system does take a bit of getting use to, because of the odd menu design, but once you do get use to it, the battle system is fun. I do think the game could stand to be a bit easier though. You get hit with hard battles pretty quickly.

Of course, if you don’t care for the battle system, you can choose the Story Mode at the start of the game and that’ll allow you to skip over battles whenever you want to. I should note though that if you keep skipping battles too much, you’ll get bored with this game. The battles do add some spice to the game and you should play some of them at least.

Regalia does have good controls, even though it doesn’t take advantage of the Switch’s touch screen at all. Thats a shame because the menus in this game seem like they’d be perfect for touch screen interaction. Regalia overall doesn’t take advantage of the Switch aside from letting you play in handheld mode of course.

Perhaps the biggest problem with Regalia is the load times though. Its not just that the load times are very long (the load time when you first turn the game on is awful), its also that the load times are extremely frequent. You can’t go in or out of a menu without a load time. Every area you go into needs a load time. There are a lot of boring “I’ll just sit here until this thing loads” moments.

I hear that if you put the game on your system’s memory that the load times are better. Even so, the frequent load times are giving me flashbacks to some Playstation 1 games…

Still, I do think Regalia is a good game, but stuff like the forced time limit, the game’s difficulty, and the frequent/long load times could turn some people off. I’m hoping if there is a Regalia sequel that the time limit will be done away with, that there will some easier battles to start, and there won’t be as much load times.

One thing you can say about Regalia, though, is that its a really good looking game!

Cartoony Goodness

Regalia will take you off guard with its cartoon-like graphics. You may look at it at first and figure it for a kids game. This is definitely not a kids game. Don’t let the graphics turn you off of it. There is so much detail in every area and every menu in this game. Its such good looking game!

I just wish that Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs was a better game overall.

A Good Strategy RPG

Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs isn’t a great strategy rpg, but it is a good one. If you can get past the game’s forced time limit, its difficulty, and its load times, you’ll find a fun game. I like the story found in Regalia and its strategy battles are neat. This game could be a lot better, but it could’ve been worse too.

Thanks to Crunching Koalas for providing a review copy of this game. Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs is now available on the Nintendo Switch eshop!

Trailer