In the past few years, the action role-playing game genre has changed quite a bit. Following the explosion in popularity of FromSoftware's Souls series, a rather large number of development studios created their own take on the formula, some of them succeeding at providing a compelling experience, others not so much. No matter the quality of individual games, however, the proliferation of Soulslike games is leading to stagnation in the ARPG genre, as the formula is essentially becoming synonymous with it. Thankfully, there are still development studios out there willing to ignore a pre-established formula, no matter how popular, and do their own thing, like Silent Games with their upcoming Empyreal.
In Empyreal, players get to join an expedition to an unknown planet where a mysterious structure aptly called the Monolith is located. By exploring the mysterious location, players will get to know more about the civilization that built it in a story that will deal with some themes that have fallen out of favor in the modern world, like duty and sacrifice. Of this story, unfortunately, very little is available in the demo launching today as part of Steam Next Fest, so it's hard to say how compelling it will be in the final release.
While the story, on paper, doesn't sound too different from the norm, Silent Games, as mentioned above, is clearly trying to do something different with Empyreal in regard to gameplay. Looking at the footage released so far, the game looked like yet another Soulslike featuring multiple weapons and stamina-based combat, but thankfully, Empyreal doesn't fall into the trappings of a genre that has definitely become a little too overcrowded. Following character creation, which features a decent number of options, players are thrown straight into the mysterious alien planet that serves as the game's main setting, and after walking on the bridge leading to the structure, they can start exploring the Monolith.
In terms of exploration and traversal, Empyreal doesn't try to do anything really different, as the different areas of the Monolith, which are generated using Cartographs collected in the massive dungeon itself, which determine the kind of loot that can be obtained, the elemental affinity of enemies and the general difficulty, don't really break the mold of the genre, featuring ancient ruins with a level design that sometimes feel a tad too confusing without a map, wastelands, ruined towns and so on. What does break the mold are the combat mechanics, which are rather unique.
Empyreal features three different weapon types that have different movesets and abilities that often have offensive and defensive applications, which determine the playstyle - the agile Glaive, the tanky Mace, and the long-ranged Cannon, which feels like the most different among the weapons with different ammo types and reloading mechanics. Lacking any sort of magic or technique points, all abilities come with varying cooldowns, a mechanic that I have found well suited to the combat's fast pace, which would have made it difficult to keep track of anything other than current health.
Not featuring any sort of stamina system, in Empyreal, it is possible to perform regular actions as frequently as desired, which include basic combo strings and defensive maneuvers - deflection for the Glaive, Blocking with the Cannon, and both Blocking and Parrying with the Mace. These defensive maneuvers are extremely important to master, as enemies not only attack relentlessly and way too often from off-screen without any indicator to help players, but also are not staggered when preparing a special technique when receiving damage. While enemies are preparing an attack, a gauge appears above them, giving players the time to time their deflections or parries right while in the middle of their combos, almost giving the game's combat system a sort of turn-based feel. The lack of lock-on and enemy aggressiveness, combined with these features, create a pretty unique experience that often gets chaotic with a solid enemy encounter design featuring multiple enemy types coming with support abilities to boot.
With what seems a deep loot system that will allow for the creation of some specialized builds, as highlighted by the three end-game builds that can be used in the demo, and a unique approach to action combat, Empyreal definitely has the chance to stand out among the competition, especially if the developer manages to iron out some issues, such as the lack of a map that would help in some of the most convoluted locations, and tweaked behavior of off camera enemies, before the game's release later this year on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.
Steam Next Fest demo early access provided by the publisher.
