Iratus: Lord of the Dead

You play as Iratus, a necromancer recently freed from imprisonment, aiming to conquer the world with undead minions. Playing the villain is refreshing, and the writing leans into this with humor and gothic flair. Combat is turn-based and requires strategic planning. Your minions (skeletons, vampires, banshees, etc.) are crafted from body parts and have distinct roles (tanks, debuffers, etc.). There’s a focus on mental stress mechanics, not just HP, allowing for different win conditions. You don’t recruit heroes—you create your army from the remains of enemies. There's significant depth in how you build your team, with four ability trees per minion and plenty of synergies to discover. The game has a strong gothic horror aesthetic, with grim environments, a moody soundtrack, and evocative narration by Stephan Weyte (voice of Caleb from Blood), who adds a lot of charisma to Iratus. Despite variety in builds, the core loop can start to feel repetitive after extended play. Maps are fairly linear, and the enemy types repeat often. It’s a challenging game, and early missteps can snowball. Some mechanics aren’t explained well, which can frustrate new players. The narrative is mostly flavor text and atmosphere. If you're expecting branching dialogue or deep storytelling, you might be disappointed. [b]Iratus: Lord of the Dead[/b] is a niche but rewarding game for fans of tactical RPGs who enjoy dark fantasy, strategic depth, and playing the villain. If you liked Darkest Dungeon and want something similar but with a necromantic twist, it's well worth your time—especially if you enjoy challenging gameplay and experimentation. [h1]7/10[/h1] DISASTER | BAD | MEDIOCRE | OKAY | [b][u]GOOD[/u][/b] | GREAT |AMAZING| MASTERPIECE [quote] Reviewed on: Win11 Home 64-bit, Intel i5-11600K, GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 8GB TUF, 32GB DDR4-3600 RAM, 2 x Kingston NV1 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD, Internet Broadband 1000/1000 Mbit[/quote] [quote] If you like this review, then please consider giving it a thumbs up. I've also reviewed other games that you might find interesting. If so please follow [u][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/27418263/] Top of the Chart.[/url][/u]

This is my favorite turn-based combat game. Before playing this, I wasn't really into turn-based games at all, but this completely changed my perspective. One of the coolest things about the game is the concept , you defeat enemies and then use their parts (hearts, bones, skulls, brains, armor, etc) to create your own minions (and your playing as Iratus who is called Lord of the Dead) The difficulty also scales well. Each level gets noticeably harder, which keeps things interesting and forces you to think more about strategy. I really liked the character (minion) designs and their abilities. Each one feels unique. I do wish there were more minions though, since I found myself sticking to the same team most of the time. At higher levels, I had to switch things up because I didn't always have the resources to build the exact minions I wanted. That actually pushed me to try new ones and learn different playstyles, which ended up being a big plus for the harder stages. The only thing I feel is missing is the music. I wish it had darker, more haunting tracks to fully match the atmosphere. Overall, a great game with unique idea that made me enjoy a genre I didn't like before. TY for reading my review :) Enjoy gaming :cupdevil:

I think the game is too long for what it is. While it provides new enemies each level, in reality you learn everything there is about the combat system in the first couple of hours. On each level you'll need mostly go through the same encounters again and again with little variation.

GREAT GAME I find this game more enjoyable than Darkest Dungeon. Instead of having to worry about managing and mitigating endless negative dice rolls. I have actually focus, play, and enjoy the game how I want to play it. This game also has GAME SAVING AND LOADING. This is great because: If you encounter a game-breaking bug, it doesnt ruin your hours long run If you make a mistake because you are just "figuring out the game" it doesnt ruin your run If you just want to replay a fight, go for it!

I'm going to get right to the point: this is not a good game. It's a dumber and simpler version of Darkest Dungeons where you get to play as the edgy villain. That said, why am I recommending it? Because it's fun. For all its flaws, it does what it needs to do, it allows you to play as an uncaring necromancer lord that butchers people with his undead minions, and it has less resource management compared to Darkest Dungeon, allowing to focus on the important stuff: killing things with your undead army.

It's fun enough, I guess. Combat is interesting for a while, then it's just the same thing over and over again. It's not really compelling enough to make me want to replay it. For that reason, I'd say wait until it's 50% off or more. Cannot recommend at full price

伊拉图的配音太强了，近些年听过的最好的中文配音，简直是山德鲁在世

Lol, yeah, I think I get it. I really do. The devs clearly played Darkest Dungeon (a good game, btw) and suffered through the same pain as I did. You know, where your “heroes” are basically a rotating cast of expendable idiots, capped at level 6, and emotionally easier to replace than an empty pen. Very little freedom when combining a party for a specific dungeon. Still, the game was great overall - amazing atmosphere, fun, and just the right amount of misery to keep you coming back. So with Iratus, they basically went, “What if heroes were… actual heroes?” Now you can level them up to around 100, which is a clear improvement from 6. They’re still replaceable, but not in that “who even was this guy?” kind of way. Party-building is way more flexible, with multiple viable setups instead of “pick these four or die.” If you’ve played Darkest Dungeon, Iratus will feel VERY familiar. If you haven’t, well, it’s a dungeon crawler. A pretty well-balanced one, too. Not overly forgiving, but that’s kind of the point. These games live and die by punishing your mistakes just enough to make you question your life choices. Difficulty settings mostly boil down to stripping resources from you while handing enemies extra stats (blocks and wands are critical!). At higher levels, it can start feeling like a coin flip between “who runs out of blocks first?” So yeah, a bit of RNG grind creeps in. But hey, that doesn’t make it a bad game. It’s a solid one! Easily worth 2–3 playthroughs before the grinding loop starts to feel a little too familiar.