Empyreal

An Expedition to a colossal alien Monolith

Empyreal, released 8 May 2025 by developer Silent Games and publisher Secret Mode, drops players into a far-flung corner of the galaxy where an Expedition arrives on an unexplored planet to find a colossal Monolith built by a lost civilisation. It's an ambitious action RPG that blends Souls-adjacent combat, a status-effect and casting-bar system for enemies, and generous, Diablo-style loot into a single package built by a comparatively small AA team, and that ambition shapes much of its reception from the outset.

Several reviewers frame the game explicitly as an achievement worth celebrating given its modest development scale. One detailed reviewer, reporting 40 hours of play, states "I consider this to be a shining example in the AA development space and was impressed at what such a small team managed to create," specifically praising its "unique status effect system" and "casting bar" enemy mechanics as "a welcome break from memorizing attack patterns." Another reviewer frames the achievement in blunter terms: "Is the combat the most polished it could be? No. Are the graphics the best ever? Also no. Are there some janky bits? For sure. But all in all, it is really good fun."

Combat that rewards patience, once it clicks

A recurring, specific pattern across the positive review sample describes Empyreal's combat as requiring real patience before it becomes genuinely rewarding, a structure several reviewers frame candidly rather than defensively. One reviewer states plainly, "it's a AA game, so don't expect AAA," adding "the combat feels awful at first and then in a couple hours it clicks (or at least it did for me) and then it becomes pretty fun," while specifically praising generous loot and dense exploration in the meantime. Another reviewer compares the combination favorably to established genre touchstones, describing it as "If Remnant, Hellgate: London and Firefall were mashed together," specifically praising how "dodging feels visceral" and calling it "a sleeper hit."

That loot-driven exploration loop draws consistent, specific praise as the game's clearest strength. One reviewer frames it as close to a personal dream design, describing wanting "a game that has you go into a instanced section, kill things to get loot and come back and upgrade to keep getting stronger" from a first-person or over-the-shoulder perspective, something few other action RPGs in the genre currently offer. Another reviewer echoes the sentiment more simply: "Silent Games heard you like running maps so they made a game that's all about running maps... you actually get generously rewarded for exploring."

Unfair difficulty spikes turn engagement into frustration

That goodwill has real limits, however, and the review sample's single most heavily corroborated complaint concerns specific, unfair difficulty spikes built around excessive enemy stunlocking in the game's later hours. One detailed reviewer describes a specific boss encounter in vivid terms, reporting an enemy that can summon "drones that heal," alongside "elemental darts that follow you, mines that can't be destroyed... totems that pulse debilitating status effects (like completely stunning you or not letting you heal) and this is ALL AT ONCE," concluding it's "quite literally impossible" to handle fairly. A second reviewer independently corroborates the identical underlying problem, reporting "endless stunlock from every type of enemy (random mob, elite mob or bosses)," describing it as their "first negative review" ever written despite having given the game "a lot of chances."

A third reviewer frames the same escalation with dark humor but genuine frustration, reporting the game was "fun up until the 1.5 / 2 hour mark at which point every other enemy gained a 3 hour long stun, guarantying death if they so much as breathed on you," adding that tutorials unhelpfully "occur after the moment they'd be helpful." That level of specific, independently corroborated detail across multiple reviewers elevates this beyond ordinary difficulty complaints into a genuine, substantiated balance problem.

Repetitive missions and rough performance compound the frustration

Beyond combat balance, a second, widely corroborated complaint concerns the game's mission structure, which several reviewers describe as repetitive due to reused, non-randomised maps. One reviewer states directly, "this game is a repetitive mission game... Like go do this map 800 different times with different enemies and different starting points. It makes the game boring and seem to not progress," specifically noting the story "doesn't flow when it is just mission after mission like this." A separate, more detailed critical reviewer corroborates the same structural issue, summarizing the game as "a promising Monster Hunter-Diablo hybrid that starts strong but quickly unravels," citing "non-randomized levels" as a key reason the experience feels like "all premise and no depth."

A third, separately corroborated complaint concerns real performance problems. One reviewer states bluntly the game "has massive performance optimisation issues that need to be solved," specifically noting combat and performance "ruin what COULD BE a good game." A separate reviewer, despite ultimately enjoying the game on a capable RTX 3080, reports it initially "ran extremely bad" out of the box due to demanding default settings, requiring manual intervention before it ran acceptably.

Verdict

Empyreal is a genuinely ambitious sci-fi action RPG that earns real, specific admiration as an impressive achievement for a small AA team, offering generous, rewarding loot and exploration that several reviewers describe as a genre sleeper hit once its combat learning curve is overcome. But unfair, heavily corroborated late-game difficulty spikes built around excessive stunlocking, a repetitive mission structure reliant on reused maps, and real performance issues leave a meaningful share of its review sample unable to recommend it without reservation. Fans of Souls-adjacent looter combat willing to push through a rough opening should find real reward here; players sensitive to unfair difficulty or repetitive structure should wait for further balance patches.