Realm of the Mad God Exalt | a Review
originally published on 13/12/2024;
Hello everyone, I am the banished and entrapped G.E.M.Simov, a victim of the mad god Moloch. Fortunately, I have managed to escape, as a result of which I have come to share word of my troubles with the “Realm of the Mad God Exalt”.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it.
Gameplay
Realm of the Mad God Exalt (RotMGE from now on) is something similar to an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online RolePlaying Game), though it is an MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game), for it is missing the most important RPG mechanic out of them all - the ability to affect the story via decisions.
Regardless, it does feature a lot of the things that are associated with RPGs, and that appears enough for the developers to slap an “MMORPG” label on top of it. There are different Classes for the Player to choose from, there are items that can be equipped by the Player Character (PC), there are levels to be gained by the PC, there are statistical values that can be raised by the Player and which values affect the PC’s performance, there are enemies to be slain, there are Spells to be cast and Abilities to be used, there are vast lands to be explored…
But it is not an MMORPG. It is a top-down hack and slash game that puts the PC in the center of the screen, allows for movement with the WASD keys in the four cardinal directions and depends on clicking (with the Left Mouse Button - LMB) to perform ordinary attacks and clicking (with the Right Mouse Button - RMB) to perform a special attack (Spell) - both of those are determined by the Player’s Class (more on that later).
The Player has one goal in this game, and that is to… To walk into a realm, to kill enemies in that realm until a threshold is met, at which point all Players in that realm will be teleported to a special zone, through which they must advance until they reach a boss in it. Then, after beating that boss, there is another zone, with another boss. After that, there is yet another zone, with yet another boss, which keeps happening until the last boss is beaten. Naturally, each of the bosses and zones becomes more and more difficult to traverse.
There’s a very stupid aspect to this - and that is that ALL Players, regardless of their Class’ level, are teleported there. That includes those who are beneath level 5, or beneath level 10, or beneath level 15, which means that these Players will have their Characters undoubtedly die, due to the fact that these zones are meant for level 20 Characters who have very good equipment.
The PC dying is problematic, especially when it happens because the Player is forced into a zone where the likelihood of dying is incredibly high, due to the fact that in RotMGE death is permanent - when a Character dies, all the things in their inventory disappear, all their equipment disappears and the Player must start from level 1 on that Class.
Under normal circumstances, things are much more manageable. The Player roams around and encounters enemies - of which there are many varieties, but there are 2 main types: minions and bosses. Minions can sometimes drop a loot bag which contains a potion (either of HP or MP) and, rarely, can drop a loot bag with an item, while bosses tend to drop a loot bag which contains items with a power tied to the power of the boss.
There is no indication what the power of the boss is, aside from the HP it has and the amount of damage it does to the PC, so it is a bit of a guessing game, and there is a very important random element to it. The way enemies do damage is by either firing a projectile at the PC, which can be dodged, or bumping into the PC. This creates a bit of a bullet hell, which is manageable and provides a decent amount of entertainment…
However, there is a bit of a problem. When enemies die, they give the Player Experience Points, which lead into the Player’s Class leveling up. However, leveling up is very ineffective at making the PC stronger, and then the items the Player collects also don’t really contribute to making the PC stronger in a truly meaningful way, leading into every single encounter to be very similar to the previous - the Player holds down the LMB, walks around and waits for the enemy to die, which wait is a bit longer than it needs to be to not feel tedious.
That acts as an incentive for the Player to look for a solution - and those solutions often revolve around buying in-game Currency with real money and using it to get power. Naturally, there are means of getting power without paying, but it requires a lot of time and a lot of knowledge. It requires knowledge of what to do, where to go, what items to get… Which is stuff that is either done through ludicrous trial and error - lots of time invested - or through wiki scrounging.
Fortunately, one means of getting stronger - doing Dungeons - becomes apparent via normal gameplay. Killing enemies has a chance to leave behind a portal that leads into a Dungeon, and in Dungeons the enemies drop items more frequently, on top of which the boss in the dungeon drops very strong items of the UT variety… But only sometimes. So, grind Dungeons for better items - as the items dropped by enemies in a Realm tend to not go higher than T5 in variety, whereas UT is better than those.
However, there is one very key aspect of it all - if the Player wants to do anything, they need to be ready to spend insane amounts of time doing it. Alternatively, they can buy some of the premium Currency - Gold - then buy some of the most obtusely powerful items that can be found in the game for Gold, they can buy keys and pets and means of making their pets stronger, which make the PCs stronger… Just buy Gold and have fun playing the game.
Now, onto Classes: At the start of the game the Player is given 1 Class, picked, at random, out of 5. There are 18 Classes in total, but unlocking any, other than the one that the Player is given for free, requires reaching a certain level on a certain Class or a combination of Classes - as an example, to unlock the Knight Class, the Player must reach level 20 with the Warrior Class.
Each of the Classes is, essentially, a different Character, with different statistical values and equipment slots, though, in general, Classes have 4 equipment slots - 1 for a weapon, 1 for an accessory, 1 for armor and 1 for a ring. Weapons increase the damage of the
As previously stated, items come in different varieties - those are Tiers. Items go from Tier 0 to Tier 14, then there are UT items - which are Untiered and can be either weak or insanely strong - and then there are ST items, which are the most powerful in the game - those are the ones the Player can just buy.
If the Player wants to get ST items without paying for them, there is a way. The Player can engage in item Crafting, which requires a chunk of a resource that’s obtained daily (300 per day) or by using items that are purchased with real money. In addition to that, though, each item that can be crafted requires a number of other resources which can not be obtained by any means. The only way to get them is to dismantle other items, but…
Well, dismantling only happens at the moment of crafting the desired item. The Player can’t collect items, bring them to the forge (where crafting takes place) and dismantle them for the resources they are worth, to then use the resources whenever necessary. No, the only way to craft an item is to have all the resources required for its creation IN the Player’s inventory in the form of other items.
Already, this is ludicrous, because the Player has 8 spaces in their inventory (can be expanded by paying, but the expansion is lost upon Character death so as to make the Player may more) and the cheapest item to make requires at least 3 items to be dismantled… But that’s the basic items. There are other items that can be crafted, but the ability to craft them must first be unlocked by obtaining a blueprint for them. Naturally, the Player can buy blueprints with real money, otherwise they are left to the mercy of random chance.
There is also enchanting, which works only on high tier and UT items, and requires a special resource (dust) to use. Enchanting is interesting, because it allows for some funky options - such as increasing the PC’s rate of fire, giving the PC a chance to do something when hit, making the PC’s attacks boomerang back to them… But this is all walled off by a humongous amount of grinding for dust, which is, as can be expected, bothersome, due to the fact that the Gameplay itself is bothersome.
Then Pets, who show up from pet eggs, which drop randomly (good luck with getting one to drop), or are bought from the shop for real money. Pets have rarities that determine whether they can be had by the Player, with the higher rarities of Pet requiring fat playtimes or wallets (as they require a higher tier Pet pen, which costs Fame or Coins), so there is already a measure of extra restriction.
Though the reason to have a Pet is that the pets provide power, making the slog more manageable.
That’s the game, really. That’s it. Just walk around and endlessly kill things until they drop something nice, make use of that thing and hope it is actually useful. The process of doing this walking around and killing things is so uninspired - as previously stated it is just pressing the WASD keys and holding down the LMB - that there’s nothing new, ever, following the Player’s first 30 minutes.
The game is made and designed with the goal of extracting currency from the Player, and even though the complexity of some of the systems is neat - particularly the Pets system and the Enchanting system - everything just falls apart due to the poisonous design employed by the game. 0/3
Presentation
RotMGE is a top-down game that relies on pixels and looks as though it is 2D. On top of that, it is functionally 2D, however it winds up actually being somewhat 3D - or at least featuring 3D environments in which exist 2D Characters.
As soon as the Player enters the game, they will be shown an advertisement that is urging them to buy some with with the game’s Premium currency - that comes before absolutely any gameplay can be done and even before the tutorial can start taking place. From that it becomes evident that this is less a game and more a means of making money, or, rather, that the goal of this game is less the provision of an experience and the delivery of enjoyment, and more the extortion of money out of the Player. That leaves a bad impression.
Regardless, the game does feature a tutorial that does teach the Player the basics of the game, but at the same time it fails to teach the Player some very important things - as an example, the Player is taught that they can rotate their camera around, but due to the nature of the rotation it is almost impossible to reset the position via the rotation. The game does not tell the Player that there is a particular button meant exactly for the resetting of the camera, which is simply bad.
Via the camera’s rotation, the Player gets to see that the world is somewhat 3D. Via everything else, the Player is provided with some information, though it is never enough. There is an indication that an item is equipped in the Player’s Quick Slot, but there is no indication how to use that item quickly. There is information about resources that are available, but there is no information about how to get more of those resources or even what they are called.
The game features a “Journal”, which can be read by the Player and is supposed to provide information, but it winds up not being useful at all, as it does not contain information on many of the things that the Player needs to find out. In fact, it contains so little information, aside from a very broad overview of what is found in the game, that it serves only as a means of making the Player open up a wiki article.
Back onto its visuals, RotMGE is a very, very simple game, featuring pixels that are worryingly large, and resolutions that are worryingly small. It does not look bad, on account of it clearly going for a very stylized appearance, and some things actually look very nice, but it is very difficult to call it beautiful or even pleasant to the eye. The same applies to the sound effects - they do their job, but their absence could be more pleasant than their presence.
The only exception here is the music, which has some very nice sounding tracks that almost throw the Player into vibing immaculately with the game’s fantasy setting. Aside from that, though, RotMGE struggles greatly with its presentation, depending on not informing the Player sufficiently and barraging them relentlessly with advertisements and calls to action to buy things, rather than ensuring the Player’s experience is enjoyable. 1/3
Story
There is a mad god, Oryx, and he is very angry, and very mad. The Player Characters winds up in his realm, kill his servants and then fights him… And then they do it again and again, ad infinitum.
It is hard to say that there is a coherent story in RotMGE, but then it is hard to say that there is no such thing as a story in RotMGE. There are some logs and notes that can be found in the game’s world, there are interesting things that somehow jive together and create a bit more than just a setting and a premise.
As a result of that, I feel as though it would be wrong to not be at least a little kind to the game in that regard. There are some very interesting things - such as the records of the Lost Halls or the Realm Eye - though they are not quite enough to warrant more than a single point, as the whole continuity of it all is very… Odd. 1/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the Legendary Point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? Unfortunately, NO, it does not. RotMGE has some charm, however due to the dreadful monetization systems and the restrictive gameplay systems it loses any steam it might have had.
Not only that, but it also has issues with the Player logging out of an account or deleting their account, thus making it very difficult to start fresh. I want to be able to start fresh - I like growing from zero to hero, and when games do not let me even attempt it, it’s just bothersome, especially when those games are infinite grind fests that stop being very fun after reaching the maximum level. 0/1
Conclusion
2/10. This is a game that could be entertaining for some people. Who they are is unknown to yours truly, but perhaps kids with very low-end machines can find some enjoyment in mindlessly clicking away at stuff. I would not recommend it to anybody, though, as the game is built around taking the Player’s money, and not only does that cause innumerable flaws with the game’s design, it is also bad for the Player’s Experience.
On the wall of shame, it goes. A game like this clearly showcases what not to do, and it ought to serve as a reminder for the future.