Empyreal Review

Empyreal is developed by Silent Games and published by Secret Mode. This review is Spoiler-free, played on an Xbox Series X|S.

Introduction

The game market has been flooded with games that carry elements from the game “Demon Souls”, and has been carried through countless branches, making the Soulslike genre quite crowded today.

Now I have to put my cards on the table here.  I am not the greatest fan of the Soulslike genre, having enjoyed the two Surge games previously, but i’ve struggled with the traditional games such as Demon Souls.  But Empyreal has got me in its grip and simply does not want to let go. It’s a hard game with a strong line of progression, a good story and interesting environments with plenty of enemies to explore.  The risk of exploration is its own reward.

The main character (That’s you Kenny) in Empyreal is a mercenary sent to assist an Expedition in exploring a mysterious Monolith. The Expedition has been stationed at the site for years, but after making extraordinary claims about their discoveries, they requested outside help.

You have a choice of different weapons to use in your quest for (ultimately) the truth about the Monolith.  The Glaive (think great sword) leaves you with the most agility of the three but is harder to perfectly parry.  The mace and shield enable you to shoulder most attacks (until you become staggered) and the cannon is a large, powerful lance type gun which can be endowed with various elemental abilities but is slow and lumbering.

Each weapon can be upgraded and modified using spheres you pick up from the levels, or they are available for purchase from the barman in the local watering hole (he is extremely chatty and very useful to find out info about the other people in the Expedition). These allow to augment certain attributes (Attack power, shields, elemental strengths and resistances) but at the cost of another attribute. So if I want to increase my Glaive weapon power, I will need to lose half my shield attribute from that same item, so I tackled this facet of the game by only adding shield power to armour pieces and attack power to weapons. When these are combined with various skills you can purchase from the blacksmith, you can create sets of armour, weapons and skills to cover most eventualities.

The expedition has a number of characters that offer their services to you in some form or rather. Some will trust you from the start whilst others will treat you with hostility, even violence initially. But you must gain their trust through conversation branches as well as doing various quests for them.

“At the Monolith, turn left and fight the sorcerer”.

Each section of the Monolith you are exploring is defined by a Cartogram. This defines the area of the Monolith you are exploring, the type of enemies, any strengths and weaknesses as well as any possible drops you may receive from completion. Now some locations are repeated, but by different difficulty levels and different enemies, as well as appropriately levelled rewards.

“None shall pass…”

Combat is typical for this genre, being presented with enemies designed to stop you by any means. The combat is fast, deliberate and makes use of blocking, parrying and dodging with use of pickups to enhance or protect your character.

Now there are resources that can be used for upgrades or to sell for gold and these are in the same position on every run of the same area. This means if you learn the position of these pickups, you can take a run through the level, collecting all the pickups and never miss a useful drop.

“Come back here, I’ll bite your ankles off!”

If you come into Empyreal expecting an easy ride, prepare for a rude awakening. I am no stranger to a hard game, but I die at least once on every run. You can pick up or buy tokens for retries but I believe the best way to avoid damage is to be elsewhere.  In this case, dodging is going to be your best friend.  Anticipate the attack, dodge or deflect, roll back into the target, get a few hits in, roll away, recover lost health/shields/weapon coatings/resistances, repeat until one of you falls.

If you do fall and respawn at a convenient respawn point, the enemies you have destroyed will not respawn.  However, any damage you did to enemies that survived will be reset.

“A free tip!”

When you come into an arena to fight what will be the boss for that section, start by throwing a couple of grenades.  This will chop a chunk off his multitude of health bars as well as start to build his stagger meter.

Unlike other Soulslikes, you do not lose anything you have picked up on death. You have your full inventory and will get back any pickups/power ups you may have used in your last attempt.

This for me is the strongest part of Empyreal.  Taking everything else into account, the fact that you don’t need to collect your belongings is a blessing. If you had to run through the level to your body to pick up your stuff in your underwear, you would last a few seconds, if at all.

The combat, the environment, the character and story progression, the pickups and the upgrades all combine to create a game that I have had a hard time walking away from and have several very late nights (and bags under the eyes) to prove it.

It’s a satisfying loop of struggle, failure, repeat until victory that really has me hooked and just cannot wait to see what this game has around the corner for me.

The art is very good.  It’s not as good as Hellblade II or Gears 5, but it stands shoulder to shoulder with many games that cost a lot more.  I would describe the graphics as moody, architectural and gritty.

The use of colour, light and shadow adds further stark edges to the architecture, which makes you look and look again, thinking something moved but did not…. Or did it? This game will surprise you time and time again and this helps with the main gameplay loop.

Audio is fantastic, particularly through a set of decent headphones.  Sound is a great tip as its directional and you can hear hazards out of your characters view, allowing you to prepare for the combat to come.  The music is very textural, with a touch of Blade runner thrown in for good measure.  It helps to convey the scale of the structures that surround you.

Voice acting is from the NPCs in the base is passable, the best being the blacksmith and the barman. But I will allow you to sample their scripts for yourselves.

I had no technical problems at all when playing Empyreal.  I had no crashes or graphical issues with this game in my time with it.

Performance and Quality Modes are provided which allow you to prioritise either the graphic quality or frame rate.  In my case, the quality mode was 1440p @ 30fps, whilst Performance was 1080p @60-120fps.  The resolution dynamically scales dependent on the amount going around on screen, but I did not notice any loss of quality in the most intense battles.

The games greatest strength is also it’s weakness. If you are unable to get a foot in on the combat system and make some initial progress you will find the game gets incredibly difficult, even on lower difficulties. For some this will ruin the experience, whilst others will relish the challenge and coming running to this game in their hordes.

Summary

As part of the CompleteXbox Review team I play a lot of games and have a finite amount of storage space.  Normally, Empyreal would have been removed from my hard drive and I would be looking for my next contestant.

This is the biggest compliment I can give Empyreal.  It’s going to earn that disk space on my console and I don’t see it going anywhere else soon.

A crushingly difficulty RPG/Soulslike that if you take the time to learn the blocking, dodging and attack patterns, you will spend many hours happily finding your next cartogram to conquer.  However, those that dislike the difficulty curve will not find satisfaction here.