Review: The Revenant Prince

Review: The Revenant Prince

The Revenant Prince is Nomina Games’ first game. Darrel Wijaya, the brain behind this developer studio, created this game by himself, and today, his work is finally released upon the world. The Revenant Prince is inspired by old school pixel RPG’s and JRPG’s, so I was immediately sold when this game landed in my inbox. Let me share my experience with you!

What we liked!

  • Art: One of the first things that catch your eye in a game, is usually the art style. The Revenant Prince is a beautiful, beautiful game. Both the characters and the environments are well executed and a big part of why I enjoyed this game, is its graphics. It’s mostly pixelated, but when entering dialogue, you get some clean, more detailed graphics.
  • Story: The game starts with a prologue and if I’m being honest, I wasn’t immediately sold. It got me all confused since there was no explanation and I had no idea what was going on. However, then the story really starts unfolding and man, did I love it. I found the storyline to be very moving and it sucked me in quite quickly. The dialogues and characters caught my attention and got me invested in this game. There is a lot of dialogue though, so if you’re more into the fast-paced action kind of games, you better skip this one.
  • Encounter rate: Instead of a difficulty level, The Revenant Prince lets you pick an encounter rate. This can be 100%, 50%, 0, -50% or -100%. I enjoyed this feature quite a bit. By default, it will be 0, but if you wish to battle a little more, you just kick it up a notch. If you want to grab something quickly, just lower the encounter rate.
  • Your choice: During dialogues, you will often be offered choices. Think about these, because they will affect your gameplay. Will you kill that person, or will you show mercy and spare them? I always like it when your choice affects your gameplay because it gives the game a more personal touch.

Somewhere between

  • Shortcuts: There is only one menu, with several options. In this menu, you find your items, status, sphere grid, quests, and journal. Options and saving the game will also be found here. That’s quite a lot, right? Some shortcut keys would have been very welcome, even it was just for a few of these like the quests and items. It’s the biggest problem this game has, but it is something I missed.

What we disliked

  • Tutorial pop ups: When something new needs to be explained, there is a pop up window that will appear on screen. For example, when you first encounter quest boards, a pop up will explain them and give a quick tutorial on how to interact with them. Unfortunately, these tutorial pop ups seem a bit dull. Like, seriously, when the first one appeared on screen, I was so confused because it seemed like barely any effort was put into designing them compared to the rest of the game. They’re just plain ugly.
  • Bugs: I expect bugs in Early Access games, but this is a finished game. I wasn’t even playing for that long and the entire game just crashed. I had to restart and begin again. The bug that caused me to become very annoyed, was the one encountered during my first boss. She was nearly dead and all of the sudden, I couldn’t attack anymore, she didn’t attack me anymore, and just nothing happened. I couldn’t even save the game, which sucked because I hadn’t saved before starting the battle. I had to redo a whole part before getting to that boss again. I ended up having to fight the first boss (who wasn’t difficult at all) THREE FREAKING TIMES. Up to this point, I enjoyed this game a lot, but after this bug, playing felt a bit like a drag.

Rating:

70%