Realm of Ink

If you're a fan of 'Hades'-like games, you'll definitely enjoy this one. Also - what if Hades had a lot more waifus? Although, unlike most other games in its genre, it doesn't take a lot for it to get going, until your OP. I tried and failed 6x times, before completing my first run. (Each run averages about 10-15 mins) After that first run, it gets a little easier - and you can unlock different characters with different playstyles (and they do become very different). Like the first character I unlocked (outside of the basic 3 you get) was Keh, the flower girl. Keh, drops flower turrets, and she floats around, instead of walking. The game does a good job of scaling your power to the pacing of the stages. By mid-game, I was erasing bosses in 3-5 seconds, thanks to my fireball shower power. The art-style, and music are also very appealing to me. (Chinese fantasy based art and music.) Highly recommend, (but get on sale if able). 8/10.

The art style is great and that's really where this game shines out but that's pretty much all it has going for it. As others have said, it's basically a Hades clone without the tight mechanics and charm. Beyond the wall of waifus, there isn't much personality; none of the characters are really all that funny, interesting, or likable. The gameplay is clunky, the dialogue is stiff and wooden, and there's really nothing pulling me into doing another run. More importantly, it's in desperate need of balancing. I cleared the game on my second run. My SECOND run and I've already hit the soft ending. In just over a couple hours on normal difficulty, before I even understood the mechanics. I somehow hit the broken mechanics sweetspot and bull rushed through all the tough talk bosses in under a minute a piece mashing light attack, including the last big baddie. Right now, I can't recommend, which is a bummer cuz I like the genre and art style. Maybe wait for a few patches or a deep sale.

Absolutely yes, with qualifiers. This game is gameplay forward. The story is beautiful and the art is breathtaking, but the story is a little light. It reads like a fairytale, not a novel. People call this a Hades II clone, and even if it theoretically could have started that way, that's not really true. It's Dynasty Warriors. If you like Dynasty Warriors, and you like Hades I/II, you'll like this, because it's like if those two games boinked and had a really artistic baby. Having play both, the combat in this is far more satisfying. The bosses are fast-paced and punishing, but you can read them if you take time to learn them and don't panic. I love this game. It's imperfect, but it's also v1.07, and I am so excited to see what new build varieties come out in the coming year. It's a phenomenal game, top to bottom.

I really wanted to like the game, but the entire experience was subpar or just plain average. TLDR; I cannot recommend the game even on discount. There are better, tighter gameplay alternatives & more engaging, insightful meta-commentary on the "character knows they are in a video game". I'll still play to pass time and holding hope for updates to improve it. Would love to change this review to positive because I think the ink art style & chinese mythology are fantastic. Issues: [list] [*] The translation & text is off; the chinese dialogue doesnt match the text & formatting is off whenever there's symbols like '. Terrible formatting in the skins section with text overlapping one another. [*] The voice acting is fine. Not bad, but not great. Rather than the simple script, I had bigger issues with the overall soundscape. [*] The music and sound effects are bland. The soundtrack never built the hype for the moment. The sound effects when hitting enemies or casting your ink spells had little impact. It was never satisfying. Some bosses felt like they were blatantly missing sound effects [*] Speaking of hit feedback, I had no idea what was happening in my status effect build. Numbers were going up, enemies were exploding (with no satisfaction again because of bland sound effects) and the screen was overwhelming with effects. I knew mechanically I was stacking effects and detonating them, and complementing curios adding damages, but I felt indifferent to it. [*] Combat was okay for a bit until I got a legendary curio in said status effect run and it completely trivialised the run. I won a boss fight standing at the edge of the map. Even in standard runs, it didn't click. The combat was not as tight and fluid as it should be. Never mind Hades, even other roguelites have tighter controls. The invincibility frames/dodging times felt off, and I took three continuous hits unable to get the timing down (could be a skill issue). [*] The story really disappointed. I heard about the premise and was excited for meta-commentary and 4th wall breaking narrator; like Icey or Stanley Parable. In the end, it was rather very basic. The story did nothing with the premise of "Character who knows their in a video game/story". No snarky comments, only barebone anger at "not following the script" & simple "you don't control my destiny" lines. [*] Besides the ink art style, the world building, plot & characters leave a lot to be desired. The dialogue (as in actual script), character motivation and lore are significantly inferior to the art direction. [/list] Enjoyments: [list] [*] The art style is beautiful. The team should be proud of the art direction, because the cut scenes, bosses and overall aesthetics are fantastic. It really did feel like I was playing in an ink painting. [*] Despite my gripes with the combat and hit feedback, I see a lot of potential. I am interested in seeing more pet combinations, and the ink combos (passive & active) are systems I'd love to dive deeper into. The other characters/combat style seemed genuinely interesting too. Just not quite enough to get me excited to jump back in. [*] I think the Chinese mythology & aesthetics was realsied quite well. There aren't enough games that take advantage of this. It could be pushed further. [*] Doge was here. It made me laugh. Nuff said. [/list] I really hope either this game gets patches to improve, or their next game is better. I see potential, and I am invested in seeing it realised in this game or their next. It's not a bad game; a passing grade just isn't good enough in this climate.

200溃散不是难度是恶心程度，不选固定轮椅不sl开局就是纯牢，我最长一把战斗时间能打53分钟，逗我呢？花俩小时当赛博搓澡工是不是？人物挨打后硬直很大，200血不到挨一下八九十甚至一百多，导致很多时候就是挨一下罚站然后死或者直接死，不无伤掉战损还不sl的话又很有可能错过卖血npc的提升。诅咒遗物那几个减移速的、减伤害的和守财奴真有人拿？完全想不出任何能拿的场景，负重钱行拿过一把真的要吐了 放追踪弹的纯私募，还有放追踪风的和书灵放的那个神经追踪黑圈，地形小+各种aoe+角色跑得慢，这能忍住不喷的是什么人？ 第二章寺庙有个远程扔拳头还是放导弹的敌人没指示线 最后一章滚来滚去的那个比最恶心了，肉的离谱，玩宝宝流最搞笑，根本打不到，自己苦哈哈追着搓半天然后不小心被两下震荡波震死了 还有个甩追踪火球的，明显火球伤害判定比贴图要大 真心建议大家不要嫌低难不够爽就想去高难尝试任何墨宝组合，纯浪费时间好吧

Better Than Hades Gameplay : https://youtu.be/tSGA62ylEwM

Realm of Ink is a game that plays a lot like Hades but lets you make more complex builds and is a bit faster. The developer (Leap) is Chinese and that comes through in story and game elements, it feels like it respects Chinese mythology and culture. Also the ink-brush painting aesthetic is something I really liked. However, there is some pretty overt fan service in the character models that I found a little off-putting. Overall I rate this game a guilty pleasure; it is fun to play. I am writing this review after getting all of the achievements, which took about 35 hours. For comparison, doing the same in Hades 1 and 2 took over 100 hours each for me. So right out of the box, let me tell you the game is fairly easy. Especially if you have played Hades or games like it before. I have done a few dozen runs, and I think I have only lost 3 of them total; largely due to me being greedy. Despite how this sounds, I actually think this is the developer's intent. The game starts on the lowest possible difficulty ranking and each clear allows you to go up to the next difficulty tier. There's about 7 of those tiers before you get into adding on additional difficulty modifiers. I think they let you work through the difficulty at an executable pace (it is a rougelite after all) so that you are ready for the next tier when you get there. And to be clear, the game is easy because they give you so much room to work. There's like 100 different Curio's that alter the game in various ways that allows you to make your build pretty overpowered if you are trying for synergy. There's also around 30ish different relics that give new buttons to push (you can only have up to 2 at a time) and a lot of absurdly powerful elixirs that you can pick up. So a lot of the difficulty removal comes from decisions that the player makes. That's part of what makes it fun. There's a also around a dozen different 'skins' that have their own move sets and ability upgrades that really change the game up. By endgame there are 6 total biomes to progress through, the first four of which can alternate between two different choices. This keeps the game from getting stale. In the extreme upper end of difficulty it can take quite a while for things to die. I did find that my computer (specs attached) chugged a good bit deep into the game when there were screens of enemies alive taking damage with 10's of millions of health. I didn't encounter any crashes, but there were slowdowns there and in the 'endless' mode. Overall its a 9/10 for me, I really enjoyed it. Its a good game to start up and just destroy things for an hour when you have the time.

For a game that's now v1.0 it feels like it's on par with a roguelite game soon to be released and has just recently released its demo. Maybe because of the balancing of this game? If your run doesn't pop a "legendary", you're cooked. If it does, it's GG. like finish the whole region-die for whatever reason-restart again type of GG. Where is the music?? It's so boring I can only hear the wind, bamboo whistle and what not. Npcs have this chinese names I only sometimes hear and see, one generic "Grace" but your main character is RED?? Throughout the start of the idea of making this game to early access to v1.0 the only name suitable for the mc is a color? And here I am excited because I can switch skins for the mc with different names and skills. Only to be the default red during dialogue. But if you wanna have fun playing a roguelite game, this one's pretty decent. It's all up to your attention span lol Those doge meme, huge breasted women and foot fetish memes can only do so much I can't take this game seriously. And yes, I'm still going to continue playing this until I get bored or find better games to play.

風格與其他遊戲不同 挫折感也很低 適合喜歡由淺入深的老司機

哈迪斯的优秀框架，水墨画国风美术的再加工。 角色+2个墨宝+X个奇珍+加属性丹药。组合度是有的，但不高。 哈迪斯开山10分的话，暖雪9.5分（剧情+玩法+国风偏好），墨境6分（无剧情+玩法一般+国风偏好）。