The Ember Guardian Review: Kingdom Two Crowns, But You Finally Get to Shoot Back

The Ember Guardian, developed by Ratbit Games and published by Slug Disco, wears its inspiration on its sleeve. Reviewers reach for the same comparison almost without exception -- this is Kingdom, and specifically Kingdom Two Crowns, with a gun in your hand instead of a coin purse. That single change is doing most of the work in a review sample that's landed at 82% positive across 278 reviews, and it's also where the sample's real disagreements start.

A Roguelike Riff On a Very Specific Inspiration

Nearly every review in the sample name-checks Kingdom directly, often within the first sentence. "Like Kingdom, but you have guns," writes one reviewer, and another calls it simply "Kingdom with guns" in a review titled "Neat little game." A third, more detailed account frames the relationship as evolution rather than imitation: "As a big Two Kingdoms fan this game feels like a natural progression from their formula, but I personally enjoy Ember Guardian a bit more as the meta progression between runs feels a lot more meaningful." That's the sample's dominant read -- not a clone, but a specific, deliberate answer to one thing players wanted from the genre.

Personal Combat Changes the Whole Feel

The thing that answer provides, according to reviewer after reviewer, is agency. One writes that in Kingdom "I felt at times that I was just kind of standing around waiting, but here you are always pushing, defending, or exploring." Another puts it more bluntly: "I always felt frustrated by night to just stare at my troops fighting! I really like this kind of game and being able to shoot is so great." Combined with a companion dog and a skill-tree layer of unlocks, reviewers consistently describe the moment-to-moment loop -- gather by day, defend by night, personally fight alongside your workers -- as the game's clearest win over its inspiration.

A Meaningful Meta-Progression, With Real Grind Complaints Underneath

Where reviewers split is on how that progression actually feels to earn. Positive reviews describe genuine excitement at unlocking new weapons and base upgrades, with one writing "upgrading is fun and once you max a few out it makes a big difference and then the game opens up a little more." But a detailed negative review lays out the opposite experience in granular detail, counting "5+ different upgradable things, and multiple levels of each upgradable thing on top of that" -- weapons, companions, base structures, worker upgrades, shop upgrades -- and arguing that gem income per level is too low to keep pace, forcing repeated farming of early levels just to make later ones playable. Both accounts are describing the same system; they simply disagree about whether its depth is rewarding or exhausting.

A Short Campaign, and a Price Tag Some Reviewers Think Doesn't Match It

At roughly NZ$31, The Ember Guardian isn't a cheap purchase, and a vocal minority thinks the campaign doesn't back that price up. One reviewer who finished in about six hours calls the price "a bit tad expensive for something that after you are done with the campaign, you only have horde mode," noting the absence of co-op or challenge missions, and lands on "6.5/10. Alright but disappointing." That reading sits oddly against the playtime numbers elsewhere in the sample, though -- multiple reviewers log 20, 30, even 43 hours, suggesting the campaign's length is genuinely variable depending on how thoroughly a player explores and replays levels for upgrades, rather than a fixed six-hour ceiling for everyone.

One Specific, Recurring Complaint: Steam Deck Performance

Independently, across a three-month spread of the sample, reviewers keep landing on the same specific technical problem: Steam Deck performance. One writes on April 17 that they "had to deactivate reflections on the steam deck to win some frames." Another, in July, reports the game running at "30-40fps running at over 20 watts" and directly compares it to Kingdom Two Crowns' "locked 60fps at only 8 watts" on the same engine, adding "the moment it rains in this game, the frame rate plummets into the depths." A third reviewer around the same time echoes the exact rain-related frame drop. Three separate reviewers, separated by months, independently reporting the same specific failure mode is strong evidence of a real, unresolved issue rather than an isolated hardware quirk -- worth knowing if a Steam Deck is your intended platform.

A Detailed Critique Worth Taking Seriously

Beyond performance, the sample's most thorough Not Recommended review raises specific, mechanical objections rather than general dissatisfaction: RNG-based weapon sway that causes misses on enemies with exploitable weak points, "many, MANY flying enemies with tiny hitboxes" that compound the sway problem, and an inability to manually redirect defenders when the horde attacks from an unexpected side, leaving stationed archers "doing nothing" while the real threat overwhelms an undefended flank. None of these complaints are contradicted elsewhere in the sample -- they're simply outweighed, for most reviewers, by how good personal combat and exploration feel on a moment-to-moment basis. But they describe real, replicable friction rather than a one-off bad session, and are worth weighing seriously against the more enthusiastic reviews.

Final Verdict

The Ember Guardian succeeds at the one thing it clearly set out to do: take the Kingdom formula and make it feel active instead of observational, and reviewers reward that change generously. What keeps it from a stronger recommendation is everything layered on top -- a progression system some find rewarding and others find exhausting, a price that a vocal minority thinks outpaces the content, and a Steam Deck performance problem multiple reviewers have independently and specifically flagged since launch. On a desktop PC, for fans of the genre it's riffing on, this is an easy recommendation. On a Steam Deck, wait for a patch first.