Realms of Antiquity: The Shattered Crown

A surprisingly complex RPG in the style of the old Ultimas but with some modern sensibilities. You can tell that the whole thing has been a labor of love by the developer. Speaking of the developer, he is extremely responsive and continues to make extensive updates to fix bugs and improve the game. I've thoroughly enjoyed my time with this title and encourage anyone reading this to give it a try.

* No 'follow the arrow' until the end of the game * No spending 2 hours fine tuning your haircut before starting the game * No hyperrealistic 3d rendering with ray tracing * No voice overs in 30 different languages Only the good stuff stays, the real game: big world, many characters and monsters, loot and equipment, character progression, spells, dungeons... And if/when you reach the end (I didn't...yet) you'll likely have a better feeling of accomplishment than most other games out there.

I'm old. I remember when Apple IIe was standard and 386s were primo. And yeah, I love modern AAA games. But I find myself gravitating back towards the games of my youth. It makes me so happy that games like Nox Archaist and Realms of Antiquity exist. Old games with modern QoL stuff. This game is epic for anyone who actually remembers the 80s. You'll love it. It'll make you feel like youre playing Ultima V again. I just wish there was an Ultima style hint book to go with it. EDIT 2025: I had to restart due to my old hard drive deciding to crap the bed. I was probably 20 hours in my first run, 20 hours in my latest. This game is amazing. Its huge for one thing. I thought before I was close to the end. No. Not even close. I'm maybe just at the end of the early game. And it has all the extreme joy of exploration and poking around dungeons looking for cool loot and solving quests the Ultimas did, but without the 80s jank, like crap UIs and getting RNGed to death. The difficulty is about perfect. Its not hard, its not easy. You arent going to waltz through but you arent going to get old-school Wizardy'd, either. (Anyone remember running around the first room of Wiz 4 trying to get the stupid priests to cast milwa in combat so you can actually see the door to get out of the starting room? Yeah, theres none of that here.). Theres puzzles, but theres no WTFery level puzzles. The UI is extremely easy to use and intuitive. Theres no Shard of Spring/Demon's Winter UI ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ here. I love those games, but man those UIs makes me want to beat my head in a wall. RoA fortunately has one of the most inituitive keyboard driven UIs Ive seen in a game like this built for an oldschool system. This game is a must have for any retro CRPG fan.

I uninstalled Elden Ring because all I wanted to play was this.

Played many, many hours with one of the early versions (bought from website) before also getting the steam version. Absolutely recommend if you enjoyed the Gold Box games, Bard's Tale, Ultima, Darklands, and other classics. Should be a lot of fun if you enjoyed more recent games such as Dungeons of Chaos, Amberland, Knights of the Chalice, etc. This games doesn't have everything that the others have, but it has parts and pieces that compose a satisfying dungeon crawling, party-building, light puzzle solving, grand questing, old-school format adventure! If you like this genre, then try it (you can always refund if it isn't you) because it will have positives for everyone who likes these types of games. As I got deeper into the game, filled-out the party (recruit not create), and advanced the storyline I had the WONDERFUL experience that the challenge level remained steady, the plot grew, and the gameplay had more aspects to it. Grindy at times, but not in a bad way. 5/5 stars

I was surprised at how quickly this retro RPG transported me back to my childhood days of playing Ultima and kept me playing for hours on end. The exploration and maps are fantastic - you can tell the designer put a lot of thought into them. The dungeons are better designed than those in AAA games in many cases. I actually felt a sense dread and danger while exploring certain large dungeons, which I think is rare. This is largely to due to the fact that you can't rest to instantly heal, and must rely primarily on healing spells (potions to a lesser extent). Spells take energy, and energy can only be restored by rations and potions. The combat mechanics are simple but fun, and allows for turn based combat that doesn't take too long. There are many different monsters with different strengths and weaknesses that you have to figure out in order to fight them effectively. Magic items are rare, but definitely worth finding. Overall, I can't recommend this game enough!

Great RPG with an intuitive control scheme, superb exploration, quality world building/narrative and a well balanced/fair combat system that isn't very grind reliant in the least (leveling does grant you some additional life/stamina/a skill point which are useful but for the most part if you're really struggling on a particular encounter/area you really ought to go elsewhere, the game is very open and working your way through a tough section will always reward you with useful equipment, which is never stat gated). The inventory limit can be a bit challenging to manage at first but makes finding new recruits all the more rewarding (assuming you're starting as a solo hero, you can also create a party of up to four custom characters to start your adventure as well). Visuals are colorful and very readable (for the most part, there's a few issues where large boss tier enemies share the same enemy icon as a smaller less threatening variant). Outside the starting splash screen there's no music so you might want to load up an OST/podcast of your choice as you play. Dev is very responsive and helpful, so if you're looking for a high quality game with high quality support look no further.

Despite being restricted to such archaic hardware, Realms of Antiquity The Shattered Crown is the next step on the evolutionary chain of Ultima inspired role playing games. The world of Realms of Antiquity is fun to explore, in fact the world design is this games single strongest aspect, and is full of things to discover. Either it be loot or entire dungeons! What truly makes the world design great is how diverse each area is while not becoming a theme park like so many other games. Logically telegraphed transition zones. you will start seeing cacti and brown dirt before entering the gulch. Areas placed in a manner that is environmentally logical. No scorching desert adjacent to icy plains. Towns themed around their environment. Stone buildings in the highlands and mud brick designs in the desert. While it seems odd to assign so much praise for what should be relatively minor aesthetic choices. It is important to remember that all of these things are all marks of passion from the single developer. That he made the game not solely for profit but because he wanted to make something outstanding, something ignored or even forgotten by some many people in the industry today.

Great retro Ultima inspired RPG - highly recommended if you're into old school RPGs where you have to pay attention, map where you go and overall aren't mindlessly led where the next objective is by a hovering point on the horizon :) Keep up the good work with updates too!

This is a very good retro game with modern refinements and an impressive scale. I often get the impression that many RPGs from the era this is inspired by tend to be too obtuse, expecting the player to conjure arcane knowledge just to be able to proceed, as not always everything is nicely explained in the manual. However, this wasn't a problem for Realms of Antiquity, save for few exceptions, as the game is mostly very intuitive. Here's the stuff that I liked: - Each location feels unique, having it's own story, enemies, dungeons and secrets. - The game plays a little bit with different genres, but everything still feels coherent at the end of the day. - Some quests have a number of different solutions that can impact the game world. - Combat is well-balanced with each having a well defined role that sometimes also extends to the exploration of the world. Here's some stuff I'm neutral on: - For most of the game you'll have too much money at your disposal without anything really expensive to spend it on, however in the late game there will be enough opportunity for you to spend your wealth on some useful things. - I would say the game is on the easier side. So, if you want difficulty, you might have to actively avoid optimizing your build too much. Here's some stuff that I didn't quite like: - This game can sometimes feel a little bit too slow, so I highly recommend people who play it to configure the emulator it runs on to go faster. - A few quests lack the proper build up for their conclusions. I would easily recommend this for anyone that has an interest in RPGs from the 80s, even if they don't have much experience with them, as it feels like an ideal entry point.