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Iratus: Lord of the Dead - Honest Review
Butcher79
Save the princess, destroy the ancient evil and protect the kingdom.
Video games make players feel like a hero right from the start. While it's always nice to be the brave protagonist of a grand adventure, sometimes you want to be on the other side of the fence. There aren't many games out there that let you play the villain who's after the destruction of the world. V game Iratus: Lord of the Dead players can end this injustice by leading hordes of the undead through roguelike-inspired dungeons that will make fans Darkest Dungeon feel at home.
History of Iratus: Lord of the Dead
The game begins when Iratus, a powerful necromancer, is mistakenly released from his thousand-year prison when some clueless miners stumble upon his sarcophagus. Once he is freed, Iratus resumes his quest to conquer the world, using the body parts of the poor miners who found him to create the first minions to rebuild his undead army. Of course, in order to launch a full-scale attack of the undead on the whole world, Irat will have to leave his deep dungeon, so the first step is to go through the underground labyrinth and build up his strength along the way.
The game is divided into 5 cards, each representing a floor of the aforementioned dungeon. To go through each map, the player selects one of the nodes associated with their current position and resolves an event in it (as in Slay the Spire ). The player sees from the very beginning what awaits him in each node of the complex scheme, so that he can plan his course accordingly. Possible events include searching for cultists who provide items, a sacrificial altar that can be used to turn unwanted minions into useful body parts, quest events where Iratus himself is called upon to make a decision, and of course, combat encounters.
Fight in Iratus: Lord of the Dead
Fighting is meat Iratus: Lord of the Dead, and also the game has more similarity with Darkest Dungeon , but with a perspective twist. While in Darkest Dungeon the player must control the health bar and the stress bar of his heroes so that they do not die, go crazy or get sick, in Iratus: Lord of the Dead our favorite necromancer's undead minions wreaking havoc on both health and sanity.
In a combat encounter, a squad of 4 minions will be controlled by a player fighting 4 opponents at the same time. Minions will have abilities that can only be played from certain positions and will only hit certain enemies. This will make unit order of paramount importance for optimizing damage output. This time, the enemies are those whose resolve will be tested. Necromancer minions will have abilities that can deal physical, magical, or stress damage. Physical and magical damage affects the enemy's health and is reduced by various resistances. Stress damage will reduce the sanity of enemies and can make them insane (giving them significant debuffs) and even cause a heart attack if the stat drops to 0. In some cases, heroes can find an unknown power when their sanity drops and they become inspired, receiving instead a positive effect. Different units will of course have different abilities and damage specializations. Wraith and Banshees are a sure bet if you want to drive enemies crazy, while Irat's Brides, Zombies, and Vampires are more focused on inflicting physical pain.
The combat itself works quite well, and the system is intuitive and immediate. Managing the two damage types (and their relative stats) is certainly a challenge, but it also forces the player to think very hard about team composition, as there is no real benefit to having a team deal both stress and HP damage. It is also interesting that the necromancer himself can indirectly participate in battles using spells. He will also comment on what is happening on screen, mostly acting as a narrator.
Between events, Iratus will return to his lair to regroup, heal, and determine next moves. This is the part of the game where the player can raise new minions, level up the Irat itself, tamper with alchemy, and expand their lair.
The most important thing to do in the lair is to take care of the undead minions. V Iratus: Lord of the Dead the player does not have access to the carriage, which provides an infinite number of volunteers for his cause. The necromancer must raise his own horde of undead himself, using body parts collected from fallen enemies or obtained by card events. There are 18 different minions to build (most of them need to be unlocked first), each with their own main focus and mechanics. From basic skeletons and lost souls, to bloody ghosts and vampires, variety is no problem for Irata: Lord of the DeadEach minion can be more specialized as it gains levels, thus further increasing the variety of strategies that can be implemented. All of their abilities are unlocked from the start, and every 4 levels one of them can be upgraded in one of two ways, which in some cases drastically change how the skill will affect combat.
Minions can also be upgraded in a variety of ways. Crafting them with higher quality parts will give them bonus stat points, and you can also swap out their brain for a better one to instantly level them up. This means that, despite the stereotypes surrounding the undead hordes, minions are not necessarily consumable, as after a few play sessions, players will spend quite a bit of time and materials on some of them.
Our villain is also fond of alchemy. At the Alchemy table, the player will be able to spend extra parts on something useful, such as various materials, items for minions, mana or anger (a resource that minions need to use certain abilities).
While much of the gameplay revolves around combat and events, resource management in the lair is paramount to ensuring run success. Resource management isn't too much of a hassle given that at least on normal difficulties you'll have a healthy supply of materials for anything you might need once the game is cleared up, making a full graveyard upgrade just a matter of time. On the other hand, you need to be very careful when upgrading minions, as Irat only has room for four teams of four minions in his ranks. As the game progresses, different enemies will appear with different strengths and weaknesses, which means that having a varied squad is the key to success. It is for this reason that raising a new minion and improving its abilities must be preceded by careful analysis as the run moves to higher levels, since parts used and ability points spent cannot be refunded. A small downside to note is that all minions of the same species share the same portrait, making it difficult to distinguish between those you've specialized for a particular strategy. At least you can rename them.
Visualization " Iratus: Lord of the Dead" can be summarized as "good but not amazing". The style itself is dark, as you'd expect from a theme, and the artwork is of good quality with some pretty nice character designs and details. The same can be said for the array of 2D animations shown during fights. What the game can't achieve is the feeling of influencing the minion's actions. What succeeded Darkest Dungeon masterfully accomplished with just still frames and camera work, Iratus can't do it. The feeling of unfinished business comes when a gun-carrying zombie shoots a huge ball at the poor front fencer, who reacts with a slight stagger from one side to the other.
Don't get me wrong, the presentation is perfectly capable of getting what the developers intended, but I get the impression that it could have been much better.
Сonclusion
Iratus: Lord of the Dead - nice rotation formula Darkest Dungeon with some roughness around the edges that wears his inspiration. Despite some shortcomings, the game manages to deliver a fun experience thanks to an interesting combat system and undeniable charm, using its powers to locally raise an undead army.
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