First let’s talk about maneuvering about the field, either in a Camp or moving around your Town or Castle. Normally this isn’t an issue in games, yet more than once, I was blocked from leaving an area by placement of a team member, forcing me to restart from an earlier save. I was only able to discover a workaround after talking with the devs, which turns out to be using the ZR/ZL buttons to select icons you aren’t directly touching. That’s fine, but it’s a problem when the game never made me aware of that fix. Another less prominent issue is with the world map. It indicates Easy, Normal and Difficult dungeons, but often I got my ass handed to me by Normal ones. There’s a wide degree of variance between difficulty, even in the same tier. I could get through one dungeon effortlessly, only to struggle tremendously with another, despite both being classified as Normal.
Next let’s touch on all the speed issues. Though I wasn’t overly bothered by them, there are copious load screens that can last up to 15 seconds. You’ll pretty much see a load screen after selecting any major action, such as moving from one area to another. There’s also a bit of lag between pressing buttons and getting an instant reaction. When navigating the various menus, it can take as long as 3 seconds between pressing a button and having the game respond properly. I even had a couple of times where the right stick wouldn’t pan the camera like it was supposed to. More than once I thought the game was freezing up on me, though that never actually happened. More troublesome are the stability issues in the game. I had the game black out and force me back to the home screen with an unspecified error at least 10 times, before and after saving and also after winning battles. Suffice to say, this caused me a lot of distress as well as forcing me to replay entire dungeons.
Finally, I’m gonna touch on some personal nitpicks that stuck in my craw. Though I appreciate you can adjust the movement speed of your characters, it’s a little irritating that you have to do so every battle. I really wish the game remembered your preferences like in recent Fire Emblem titles. Another more tactical concern is that every time you retry a stage, the positioning of enemies is randomized, which can make it tricky to strategize effectively. The RNG for attacks connecting is skewed in your enemy’s favor, so don’t be surprised to have attacks with more than 75% chance of connecting miss again and again. Also regarding combat, I truly don’t like that friendly fire is a thing. Paired with my earlier complaints about Line of Sight, it can make some battles truly infuriating. And in the realm of stupid design, how about the fact that you can’t walk past your own team members if they are blocking your path? I lost a couple of battles because I forgot about this. Equally annoying was that some battles asked you to defeat waves of foes, yet didn’t alert you that more foes would spawn after an unspecified amount of time. But perhaps worst of all was the final boss of the game. I faced him with a team that was ready for anything, except for a boss that had 10,000 health, shields that auto generated every turn, and a whole posse of thugs he powered up and gave extra turns to. I tried multiple times to beat him, but was unable, even after murdering his entire entourage.
There’s a beautiful game in Regalia, but it’s sadly hidden behind a massively cumbersome and counter-intuitive interface. While I’ve been told that there’s an update in the works with numerous fixes planned, and even several for issues I mentioned, I’m not entirely sure though it will fix all of my complaints. Frankly, I’m a bit shocked the game got through Nintendo’s testers in this state. The game costs $24.99 on Switch and provided me at least 30 hours of playtime, and while I can see the good here, it’s currently outweighed by all the bad. I will note that if Pixelated Milk is able to fix the majority of the problems I mentioned, my score would likely be double what it is currently. I can respect the effort here, but it’s hard to recommend Regalia: Royal Edition in it’s current form. Here’s hoping it gets the loving care it needs soon.
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Author Crowdfunded the Game and Received Backer Copy
