Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs

Pros:

- Very decent TRPG gameplay, difficulty may vary;
- Play loops are interesting and engaging;
- The text adventures are quite great and engrossing;
- Fun dialogues without being too much;
- Decent story;
- Decent music;
- Great voice acting;
- Gorgeous character design and art;

Cons:

- For the love of the flying spaghetti, the GUI is way too small, I can barely read any of it;
- Controls are a bit clumsy;
- No controller support;
- The 3d models aren't bad, but they do stick out like a sore thumb. It is like they are out of place. Maybe this was the one art direction slip;

All in all you will have a good time with the game, the mechanics are quite solid and can deliver a really complex experience.

This game was so fun and refreshing!

First: I do wanna address that there is this annoying bug where the game doesn't recognize the weapons you craft unless you do it all at the same time and have sold all of your other weapons beforehand. I saw that this was a bug that started way back in 2017 and still hasn't been patched. The workaround is okay, but it is still annoying.

Next: I absolutely loved this game. I don't know if I just haven't played a lot of strategy games (which I do love but maybe all the ones I've played are just similar), but this was such a fresh take for me. I love the restraints it puts on the player, which makes you really think about how characters are built and which characters are the best for each battle. Only 4 characters and no heals? And if you want extra exp points, you have to fulfill challenges? It really does make for a lot of preparation. I like how you work with just a set of skills, but they can change based on the perks, and you have to balance that with all their other stats. And given there are is no healing in this game, you have to really utilize shields or invest in dodging. It gives you a lot of incentive to always use Kay, which I think is thematically really nice too.

When I hear about games to play if you want a Persona-like experience regarding the social sim elements, I can't believe I haven't heard this on those lists yet! The base building and bonds are fun. Most of the characters are pretty silly and while a lot might not be fully fleshed out, they might be very useful units with good perks so you still have a reason to level up their bonds nonetheless. Like, I don't think the characters were super deep, but they just work as an ensemble and I like having this mild-mannered protag who just kinda rolls with the punches.

The voice acting!!! Superb. Absolutely superb. And the music is so good too. They really add to the experience.

Overall, love the game and this makes me so excited for this studio's next game even though it's nothing alike in either gameplay or visuals because I at least know the level of quality they will aim for before shipping out the project.

This is a very 7/10 game, simply for some of the rough edges. If you use Alissa, the tab key is your friend, the "kingdom quests" can be found under quests in the menu, and it is important not to grind too many of them too early, just so you aren't scrambling late game, since you always need to complete a particular number within a chapter.

The characters are fun and unique, each playable character having practical and interesting utility; Henrietta's dispel ability single-handedly won me certain boss fights The dialogue is charming, although story depth suffers a bit for a desire for humor (which does land quite often) including the very last cutscene in the main campaign, which really made me smile ear-to-ear

The SRPG gameplay is not overly compelling, but by no means bad. The lack of tracking for the kingdom quests was a bit frustrating, especially with crafting progress, but it was never really an issue in my playthrough. I'm not sure about controller integration, but every so often mouse and keyboard would have some small hiccup that made doing what I was intending a bit wonky. These frustrations mixed with the campaign overstaying its welcome every so slightly made the last few hours feel like a bit of a slog.

This game has a bunch of things that could have made it special but it falls short on almost all of them. I don't know about the development process but since it's a crowdfunded first game of a fresh team, I can imagine where it went wrong.
The premise is that you get to play an heir of an old forgotten royal family, trying to rekindle the majesty of your ancestors' glory days. With party based combat, exploration and diplomacy-friendship gimmicks. The thing is, each and every one of these features leave a lot to be desired.
- The combat is poorly balanced and the skill tree is a mess.
- Exploration happens almost exclusively via text-based adventures with no visual presentation whatsoever.
- Social interactions doesn't change any of the story arcs or add a meaningful depth to the game. They're incredibly shallow.
- Diplomacy feature is just you replying to the letters sent from the other kingdoms and doesn't impact nothing, it's just numbers.
I'm not saying it's a bad game, it's a mediocre one. It has cool art, nice voice acting and a few surprising moments in its writing. However the presentation is rather dull (no animated cutscenes whatsoever, just 3d chibi folk with stock animation), gameplay is quite repetitive and the UX is all over the place despite the good looks.
I personally think it was enjoyable as a palate cleanser.

The game's story felt like I was watching an English dubbed Japanese anime, the meh kind, nothing mindblowing.
Voice acting is entertaining to listen to at least.

The game's battle system needs some getting used to, even for turn based tactical vets like me. In which I gotta ask, why go to such lengths to differentiate themselves by making it next to impossible to save your allies? Is it THAT HARD to stick with the tried and true method of potions and healing spells to increase the survival rate of your allies? Personally, I'm not a fan of this aspect of this game, NO HEALING during battle.

Keep doing this for the next game and those that enjoy turn based tactical RPGs will avoid it.

7 out of 10, but that's because I'm only 3 hours in. I will revise my final score once I clear the game.

Very fun mix between time management, tactics battles, and a little bit of city-building. Nothing is very in-depth besides the skill assignment system, but you'll have a good time exploring the different relationships between characters and going through the various text adventures. If you're an achievement hunter, read about the different branches ahead of time or else you'll need to do a second playthrough to grab everything.

"Regalia" is the perfect fusion of a - really interesting, and charming! - storyline in visual novel style, and a decent tactical RPG with lots of customization options and things to do. Within the game, you build buildings, upgrade them, get into deeper and deeper friendshio/relationship with a ton (!) of characters, craft or buy items, and upgrade your characters within a kind of board, where you choose the skills you unlock with all those other stuff. The game challenges you with so called kingdom quest besides ordinary story quest, making it a thrilling experience. I never played a game like this before, may "Azure Dreams" from PSone days the only game that comes to my mind, that blends RPG, tactics, city building, storyline, and character interaction this great.