Realm Royale Looks to Join the Ranks of Battle Royale Mainstays Alongside PUBG and Fortnite
When Hi-Rez studios opened up their class-based hero shooter Paladins to the public through Steam’s Early Access program back in 2016, it was met with quite a bit of criticism due to the similarities in gameplay and character design to Overwatch, which had launched just a few months prior. When the studio announced earlier this year that the game would receive its own Battle Royale spinoff (then named Paladins: Battlegrounds), gamers were quick to criticize that as well (as is tradition) before the mode had even been put into alpha.
In the 6 months since the announcement, Hi-Rez hosted a closed alpha and quietly observed trends of the surging genre lead by PUBG and the explosion of Fortnite Fever, while fine-tuning Paladins: Battlegrounds into a unique experience before rebranding it as Realm Royale and opening it up to the public earlier this month. In the few weeks since, the medieval-themed, free-to-play BR shooter has made waves by breaking 100k concurrent players in its first weekend and sporting class-based gameplay mixed with MMO-esque mechanics that set it apart from its competitors. This time around, it seems like those same comparisons that were so damning to the early success of Paladins are working in Realm Royale’s favor.
Naturally, Realm Royale has all of the genre staples. After twiddling your thumbs on a starter island you jump from an aircraft (in this case a steampunk zeppelin) and descend into the map where you rush to accumulate loot and be the last player standing out of a hundred as “the fog” rolls in, shrinking the map throughout the match. There are solo, duo, and squad modes, and the game is set to have a Battle Pass sometime in the future. Even across all of these familiar mechanics, Hi-Rez puts their own interesting twist on them to separate them from the crowd.
Getting Started
Firstly, Realm Royale is primarily a team-focused game. Of course, if you choose to play alone, you can simply turn off “fill team” when you choose between solo, duo and squad modes, but it looks like Hi-Rez wants to encourage players to play together in a mix of classes. Personally, I played exclusively by myself so I’m not too sure how much of the intended experience I missed out on, but I still enjoyed myself and felt like I was getting the most out of it playing alone.
Before delivering you into one of four starter islands, players are prompted to choose one of five classes, each of which come with their own passive bonuses, abilities and exclusive weapons that can be found once the match begins. The Warrior class is privy to a throwing axes, and regenerates 5 health per second after taking damage, whereas the Engineer generates 5 armor and can wield a Plasma Launcher. Assassins gain a 10% movement speed bonus when traversing by foot, and have exclusive access to sniper rifles. The Mage class gains a 30% boost to armor and health potion benefits, as well as the right to wield a bizarre “Stone Spear” weapon which acts like a burst rifle. Finally, Hunters receive a 10% increase to weapon swap and reload speeds, along with being the only class to use the longbow. Every class also gets a dagger to put up a fight with if they can’t find anything before running into an opponent.
The Map
When you jump from the steampunk zeppelin into the map, you do not have a parachute. Players literally hit the ground in superhero landing fashion wherever they’re aiming to land. It makes reaching areas further away from the zeppelin’s set path more challenging, but on the upside, you can more easily land right where you know the loot is, allowing you to equip yourself with armor or weapons almost immediately. If you take a look at the map when the match starts, you’ll notice that the first circle that the fog will close in on is designated immediately, allowing players to start making their way to the safe zone early or scrounge around outside of it before it becomes unviable.
In your first match, take a moment to look around the game’s backdrop to admire the beautiful cracked moons and gargantuan planets looming over the map. I’m personally unfamiliar with Paladins’ lore so I’m not sure how related it is to Realm Royale’s setting, but it does make me curious and interested in what lead to the destruction of its surrounding celestial entities.
The map itself is home to a myriad of unique areas which are primarily separated into three biomes – a familiar forested area not unlike a medieval version of Fortnite’s entire map, home to rolling valleys, a river and townships, but most interestingly a small area overrun with enormous, beautiful magenta and fuchsia mushrooms, along with majestic, bio-luminescent lepidopterans reminiscent of Dark Souls’ Moonlight Butterfly (except without the hostility). The North-Eastern third of the map is a mountainous tundra where snowy fields surround a small lake and shimmering ice caverns connect the locale to the outskirts of the North-Western half’s desert Badlands.
The Winter-y Eastern half is somewhat barren with significantly less loot and forges to be found than the rest of the map, though this can kind of be generally said for the whole Northern half. The desert Badlands contains an enormous sawmill in the center of the area, while the Western portion is more tropical with beaches and patches of green scattered about the seaside leading back into the aforementioned forested half of the map.
It’s a large and pleasantly diverse map where the level design offers itself to an array of long or close range firefights with a solid balance of verticality and even fighting grounds with enough cover to feel safe but keep you on your toes at the same time. Sprinting across the map on foot can take a while, especially when you have The Fog hot on your tail, but Realm Royale equips everyone with a trusty steed to help you traverse the land or escape enemies with ease. It takes a second to spawn, but disappears immediately when you decide to dismount and has a short cool-down period. Be careful when jumping off of high ledges while riding it though, as landing instantly dismounts you, but luckily there is no fall damage whatsoever in Realm Royale.
Weapons & Abilities
Players get two slots for weapons and three for abilities, while armor and potions have their own dedicated slots and keybindings so as to not subject you to frantically rummaging through your inventory for recovery items in the heat of a battle. The HUD shows icons for your helm, greaves, gauntlets and breastplate, which light up in accordance with the rarity of the armor you have equipped. If you own a lower tier of a weapon or piece of armor, when you find the same item of a higher tier, a little green arrow will appear over it and immediately replace its lower tier counterpart in your inventory when you pick it up. As per a recent update, some items have elemental abilities, like the Poison Pistol, which does extra poison damage with each shot you land. It’s also worth noting that ammo is infinite, but clips are often small, so be sure to stay on top of keeping your weapon loaded (which shouldn’t be too challenging if you’re well versed in multiplayer shooters).
Abilities are one of the main things that makes Realm Royale unique, and each class comes with one that can’t be swapped out, for better or worse. Each ability has a cool-down, and every class has a set of abilities that is exclusive to them.
The Warrior is equipped with a ground pound ability like the one you see when you first land on the map, but can also use a damage-dealing charge move, or throw a net that slows down opponents.
Engineers employ a thrust that propels them vertically into the air, and can acquire separate abilities that drop either a shield or a turret that can shoot at enemies.
The Mage gets the ability to soar through the air and even through windows, as well as a fireball that can pass through enemies or an ice block that negates all damage for a short period and restores a bit of health, but immobilizes the player in the process.
Assassins are endowed with a blink ability that teleports them directly forward a short distance, and can pick up a sensor drone that reveals enemy locations in a set area for five seconds, or a “Ghost Walk” that makes the player invisible and faster for up to five seconds, depending on the rarity of the ability equipped.
The Hunter can dodge roll in the direction you’re moving, and are eligible to use abilities that grant them different explosives like the Blast Shot or Proximity Mine, or a Flare that reveals enemies in a larger radius.
Each ability comes in handy in their own way, but the set you use and how you use them really boils down to individual preference play style.
Crafting
Realm Royale also employs its own crafting system, but it’s very different from Fortnite’s base-building and fast-paced cover-on-demand style. When you come across an item or ability, you have the option to pick it up or “disenchant” it. Disenchanting it transforms it into shards, the amount of which is dependent on the rarity of the item or ability you’re destroying, with the base amount being 5. You can also pick up shards from opponents after you defeat them. Shards max out in your inventory at 200, and can only be used at “forges” found around the map. When you find a forge, you can spend shards to craft armor or health potions, or a random legendary ability, weapon, or armor that can’t be found anywhere else on the map unless you kill someone who also has legendary gear equipped or come across a supply-drop-esque treasure chest that lights up on the map.
It takes a full minute to forge legendary items, and when you fire up the forge, the timer can be seen from nearby including outside of the building you’re crafting in, which means if an enemy runs in and guns you down, not only have you lost, but they get to keep the item you were in the middle of crafting (providing it fits their class). Multiple items can be forged at once, but each item will take its own full minute to craft, which means the more you craft at one time, the more vulnerable you are.
Death?
Now, there’s one game mechanic that I was unsure of where to place in this preview, so here it is.
When you get downed by an enemy, you temporarily become a chicken. Yes, a literal chicken.
When you become a chicken, a 30-second timer begins, and if you survive that thirty seconds while being attacked by (likely) the opponent who downed you in the first place, you return to your human form as your chosen class with all of your loot. If you’re defeated while in chicken form, that’s the real end of your time in that match. You drop all your loot, along with a “chicken trophy,” which is used to craft legendary items at the aforementioned forges. Only one chicken trophy can be carried at a time.
A hint for playing in chicken form: you’re small enough to jump through windows, which is useful when trying to evade certain death.
Closing Thoughts
There’s a handful of other things worth mentioning, like how well it performs even on my laptop which is seemingly aging faster and faster by the day. It has a measly Nvidia Geforce GTX 960m and a i7-6700HQ CPU running 2.60GHz, but I was able to run Realm Royale in 1080p at 60-frames-per-second. In simpler terms, I have to turn down quite a few aspects of Overwatch to get a remotely steady 60fps, but I was able to run Realm Royale flawlessly.
Other small delights include a series of online guides to help you get acquainted with Realm Royale, matchmaking times on par with its competitors, and a nifty voice that announces when “The Fog Sets In” for maximum atmosphere. It also has a ranking system with Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond and Master tiers.
Some negatives would come down to how early the game is in development, like the empty shop and lack of unlockables (both of which are indeed on their way, as per the Battle Pass mentioned at the beginning of this preview), and some other typical early access issues like animation bugs and asset clipping, but nothing worth uninstalling or having a fit over.
Overall, I’ve really enjoyed my few hours so far with Realm Royale. The game still has a bit of a ways to go (its still in alpha), but the foundation it has right now is solid and a worthy competitor to the games that popularized the burgeoning Battle Royale genre. It currently sports roughly 40k concurrent players and those numbers are sure to bump up as players become frustrated with Fortnite’s balancing issues or PUBG’s new event pass, or simply look for a new Battle Royale game to sink time into.
Realm Royale is available for free on Steam right now, and will be coming to Playstation 4, Xbox One, and likely Nintendo Switch (Paladins just launched on the hybrid console) sometime in the future.
Have you played Realm Royale yet? Let us know what you think in the comments below! And be sure to stay tuned to COGconnected for all the latest news on Realm Royale as it makes its way to Battle Royale stardom.
