Stolen Realm features engaging combat and offers the freedom to build your characters. But is that alone enough to keep you engaged?
Burst2Flame Entertainment has only developed one previous game—the top-down shooter Armored Evolution, which was released in 2019. That game was a real-time action-based combat game. It did have some RPG elements, but those were mostly from selecting upgrades. In contrast, Stolen Realm builds off the turn-based strategy system of Divinity Original Sin to craft a more traditional RPG.
The world of the Stolen Realm has been sundered into multiple biomes. Portals have opened, leading to far-off cities and unexplored regions. These include lush forests, volcanic fortresses, arid deserts, frigid mountain tops, and more. The narrative only occurs in “Main Quest” locations and has no story when exploring other locations.
You can make anywhere from one to 30 characters. However, a single party can hold only six people—the rest will remain in reserve. Bringing more people on a mission does increase the power of enemies, but often, having your own extra damage and decoys can make fights easier.
Stolen Realm does not have outright classes, but there are presets to help guide character creation. There are no equipment restrictions, and everyone improves via the same basic five stats. Might improves damage, healing, and total armor. Dexterity increases critical damage and adds movement every 25 points. Vitality improves maximum health. Intelligence increases your mana pool, summon health, and skill range. Finally, Reflex increases your chance to dodge, likelihood to counterattack, and maximum counterattacks per turn.
What really makes characters shine are the various skill trees. There are currently ten options, four of which target physical traits and six more focused on magic. Some skills are self-targeting buffs, others weapon attacks, and some passives that are always active. You can take the preliminary skills of a tree right away, but unlocking higher tiers requires a dedicated investment of 2, 4, 6, and 10 points.
Starting Stolen Realm with the more physically focused, Warrior offers heavy damage at close range and ways to charge forward. Monk debilitates enemies with status effects and has bonuses to stats. Thief can easily dodge and favor landing the killing blow. Ranger improves archery and aids allies.
Nature keeps enemies at bay and allows the summoning of animals. Light heals or outright prevents damage. Shadow drains life from enemies and allows the reviving of the undead. Fire burns the enemy, making other magic attacks more powerful. Lightning can shock, improving critical strikes. Finally, cold can slow down or outright freeze targets.
Besides skills and stats, you can also adjust each character’s look. This includes gender, skin color, eye color, hair, and various face paints. Each preset comes with a default character, so be sure to make adjustments before confirming the final steps.
Stolen Realm has two main game modes: roguelike and campaign. The former leads to an endless assortment of dungeons and encounters. The latter instead focuses more on where to go and goals in locations, but you can easily go off-track. Additionally, you can select hardcore mode, which auto-deletes party members if the whole team is defeated.
There are numerous difficulty tiers, which increase the power of foes and the rarity of equipment drops. The game first recommends the “Adventure” level, which helps onboard people who haven’t played many RPGs. “Classic is closer to a standard setting, while higher tiers become more brutal. The final option, “Heart of the Realm,” is jokingly noted with Burst2Flame Entertainment not knowing who it is beatable. You can freely change difficulties in the town, but not while already in a dungeon.
Your adventure in Stolen Realm begins in the forest area of Talestone and is directed towards the desert mountains. However, you can wander along other pathways to undergo additional side quests. Before accepting a mission, you will be informed of the target boss, baseline experience points, and gold rewards.
The actual stages are comprised of hexagon grids, allowing you to hit from many sides but also requiring you to defend yourself. Most dungeons begin with a battle. You can freely place your team members before any engagement. The typical best strategy is to place all of your melees around one main target while ranged stats are ranged.
On most maps, various objects will also spawn prior to combat. Shrines have an aura, which affects those close by with buffs or penalties. Barrels detonate into clouds when destroyed, either dealing damage or, in some cases, healing. Healing items and power-ups can also appear but will disappear once the battle concludes.
The difficulty of fights can vary greatly in Stolen Realm. Either more enemies will be added to ramp up difficulty levels, or the default foes will gain more hitpoints, evasion, and resistance. In most cases, using free actions can easily stack up a huge amount of damage per turn. The Shadow, Monk, and Thief skill trees all have a means of damaging or healing without consuming a standard action. Additionally, outright summoning creates both additional damage and distractions.
However, you shouldn’t create too many minions in tight spaces. You cannot walk through allies, which can make it easy to block yourself and hard to move into melee combat. This often means ranged attacks are very useful in all situations. Additionally, area-of-effect spells are marked as friendly or enemy and will not hinder the appropriate team.
After a battle concludes in Stolen Realm, you can explore the area for additional loot. There will be a clear marker to the next area, but you may be given a choice to do another battle, collect treasure, undergo an event, or rest up. Events are the most interesting, as they offer a storybook section that may have skill checks or options. In one case, this led to a fight with four young ninja masters: Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo – all sharing the names and weapons of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Rest areas may be your only opportunity to recover hitpoints and mana, as these aren’t restored after each fight. The party is only healed once an entire map is cleared and you return to town. You can’t even use potions or skills. This leads to it being better to leave the final enemy alive but incapacitated rather than winning. This leaves you ample turns to recover life with free skills like the Monk’s Meditation.
Some floors also include gathering, such as harvesting, mining, and fishing. These come in the form of simple timing mini-games. The first two have no time limit and let you freely acclimate to the gauge’s speed. Fishing, however, puts you into it without pausing for a tutorial. You might miss your first fish because of this.
Stolen Realm does lack a lot of onboarding or extra confirmations. Moving to the wrong hexagon, targeting the unintended person, or even increasing the stats and skills you don’t want is very easy. There usually isn’t a free way to correct this, if there is even an option at all. At a minimum, you can respec characters in town, but this costs gold.
Stolen Realm does feature multiplayer, allowing you to create an online party with friends. You can use your already-made characters, which can make the party a bit uneven if levels and gear have a huge gap. The server browser is limited, and it recommends only inviting friends. This can make it extremely difficult to find just a random pick-up game.
An odd choice is that there is no initiative in multiplayer battles. When it is your team’s turn, every player can move at the same time. This can lead to six people crowding up, targeting the same foe, or running off in the other direction. It can quickly turn into destructive chaos. Coordination has to be done through a basic chat menu and no-way markers.
The graphic design of Stolen Realm is simple but a bit garish. Character models are sharp and polygonal, with helmet-like hair. Eyes, mouths, and face paint are all single colors, making the game look very similar to geometric titles like Going Medieval.
The music of Stolen Realm is serviceable but a bit repetitive. It sounds like a generic fantasy, switching between peaceful towns, creepy dungeons, and mysterious lands. Many of the tunes have a similar medieval whimsy to the party game King of the Castle. However, it would be nice if there was more variety.
There is also a voice-over narrative, which is clear and well-acted. It tells the story of your father, a famed adventurer who explored the land before you were born. This is a bit confusing if you have a large party – is he the father to the crew of over a dozen fighters? Additionally, this narrative seems to be connected to zones instead of the main quest. This means you’ll hear it completely out of order if you take a different path at a crossroads.
There really isn’t much of a story hook at all, nor do you make any key choices of what happens. Instead, Stolen Realm should be completely approached like a loot RPG such as Diablo 4. You are here to grind, make builds, and get progressively stronger. This is great for fans of dungeon crawlers who don’t really need anything else. But if you prefer a strong plot or setting, Stolen Realm doesn’t have it.
