The Royal Writ is so called due to King Mikolt II, the ineffective ruler of the kingdom of Aranfold, who rather than act directly against those who his ruling council advise are causing trouble, is more minded to send a letter decreeing the course of action. This is secondary to the matter at hand, which is actually a decent card battler that came out on PC last August. Thankfully the port to consoles is a solid one and I’m delighted to have had the opportunity to review it.
As is often the case these days, roguelite mechanics are part of the equation. The cartoon-like graphical style belies what is a deep set of mechanics. The base battles start you off fairly easily but as you progress, you’ll realise the presence of the fierce challenge that hides beneath the surface.
I reviewed the excellent Balatro in a former life and as well as the just one more go aspect, The Royal Writ shares multipliers and score that act in a comparable way to mult & chips in Localthunk’s masterwork.
You navigate a map that has a mixture of shoppes, deals, wheels of fortune and battles interspersed throughout. As you progress, you’ll gain coin which can be used to bolster your deck and hence army to tackle the boss at the end of each area.
The battles are set out a bit like the lanes in Popcap’s classic Plants Vs Zombies; except you’re the aggressor here and you’re moving from the left to the right. If you go all the way to the right, you’ll come a cropper and die against the ramparts of the fortress you’re attacking.
If, however you have armour equipped, you can butt up against the ramparts and, in effect, have another stab at defeating your opponent. The base units don’t have any special abilities and are basically expendable but in conjunction with characters who can buff them up, can be quite useful.
The further right you travel, the higher the column modifier gets. At first, it’s just added, but you can pay coins to make it into a multiplier. This is often the key to success. It’s also a delight when you just scrape through with the bare minimum required. Moreso in the second act where the enemies are that much harder to tackle.
As you traverse the battlefield, you’ll encounter useful features such as bridges and some less benevolent like traps which can lead to your units either gaining useful equipment or being hindered by poison or wounding for example. The former doesn’t affect your strength directly, but when you’re poisoned, each time you progress you’ll take damage, if you’ve low hit points this will invariably result in your demise.
Unless the RNG has proven particularly churlish, you’ll probably reach the boss of the first act on your second or third attempt but in my case, I was pretty ill equipped to deal with his special attacks. Thankfully as you go, you’ll have the opportunity to unlock extra character cards by way of rescuing them from dungeons to improve your chances.
Upon winning a run, you’ll unlock challenges as well as hardships in the respective act. The first of which has Mikolt as your lone source of damage with all other units being multiplier. Don’t be getting cheeky though and try to duplicate him so you have an extra as the developers are well ahead of you and will give you a unit with multiplier.
The hardships are a stackable set of hindrances that you unlock in turn in both acts one and two, they make what is already an unforgiving game even more challenging. But the thing is, I can’t help but try and beat them all. You see, The Royal Writ’s systems are so well integrated that even if you have a bad run, you never feel hard done by and you can leap right back into the action.
One thing that’s apparent from the off, is the sheer sense of humour throughout. It veers occasionally into sheer whimsy but there’s also a darkness to it. So, while this might’ve been a game I’d play with my kid, the fact that you can get relics by pulling teeth from your troops for example might lead to some awkward questions. Not to mention you can only unlock certain benefits from your character cards by sacrificing them. This is fine in a normal ruleset game, but when you’re doing one challenge in particular that doesn’t allow any deaths, you’re limited in that regard. It stops certain synergies you might otherwise exploit.
Thankfully, the crash issues that bedevilled my early playthroughs have largely been resolved but a few Trophies such as those for pulling teeth and winning matches with fifty cards don’t seem to be tracking quite right. That’s no big deal though as I’m having a ton of fun playing regardless. I could write for hours more about The Royal Writ, but it’d stop me playing it. Get to it, it’s really good.
Save Sloth Studios’ The Royal Writ is out now on PS5 & Xbox Series/Gamepass published by Yogscast Games.