Empyreal Review

There’s a first time for everything, and 2025 is turning out to be one hell of a year, but a little chaos goes a long way. Silent Games isn’t your everyday garden variety game studio, though, founded in 2018 and based in the UK, this studio set out to reach for the stars as a fresh AA developer. However, lofty dreams can go either way if you’re not prepared, but with two former Ubisoft devs at the helm of Silent Games, there might be hope for their first release.

Seven years is a long time to spend on a first release, but much like a fine wine, it does take time and care. Silent Games broke their ‘silence’ with the release of Empyreal on 8 May, and while it shows a lot of promise, care, and intrigue, it’s not quite what you’d think it’ll be once you jump in. So, buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy ride as we explore an Action RPG that wants to be so much more.

Empyreal starts off with what seems to be a decent opening cutscene, detailing a final letter to Morys. Initially, a young boy with big dreams, he’s eventually reduced to a drunk who still somehow leads an expedition to explore ‘the Monolith’, an enigmatic and alien building that’s said to hold the secrets of existence. Sadly, Morys is now a broken man with shattered dreams who works for someone else who gave up on him…

Now, as can be expected, there’s always someone even higher up, and while Reinald Du Cane might have given up on Morys and the expedition, the Crown still wants to send an auditor to make sure the operation is clean. Du Cane’s assistant insists on sending a mercenary ahead to clean up any messes, and this is where you come in.

Before we jump into that… Yes, the whole cutscene is about someone you’ll barely interact with, and you simply take on the role of a willing mercenary sent by someone else. Sadly, it only gets more confusing from here. Jumping into character creation, there’s at least a surprising level of freedom when it comes to customizing your character. It’s not quite Cyberpunk 2077 or Monster Hunter’s level of detail on the character creator, but there’s enough detail to keep things interesting.

Granted, once you’ve created your mercenary (or bearded lady, it’s possible), all that’s left is to choose your starting background, and this is where things take an odd turn. Your starting background is essentially your starting class, and at first glance, the options you’re given seem unique and interesting for the gender you pick.

This changes very quickly when you create a new character with the opposite gender, only to find that only the first background is unique between the two genders. Though that’s beside the point, each starting background will come with its own set of weapons and armor to get you started, and while some weapons are actually pretty good, others are just downright unwieldy or clunky.

As mentioned before, your objective is to explore the Monolith, though this is easier said than done, and where things officially start going completely off track for Empyreal. So, Empyreal is supposed to be an Action RPG at its core, but it also tries to be a Roguelite and Souls-like.

Starting with the roguelite aspect, Exploring the Monolith is not just a case of walking in and starting to explore; you’ll need Cartograms. However, it gets a bit more complicated as the Monolith is divided into four quadrants, and you’ll need Cartograms to access each one.

Now, this is where it gets a little confusing, so keep up. Each cartogram is technically unique up to a point, and they all have their own loot drops, revives, and boss fights. Though this is where things become even more confusing, you’ll start unlocking new quadrants and the respective cartogram drops as you progress through the story.

This isn’t entirely bad, but each cartogram is a unique run, and running out of revives means you fail the run; you get teleported back to the hub, and you don’t take any loot with you. That’s the cold and harsh roguelite side of Empyreal, but there’s still the other side to look at, too.

Everybody loves a good Souls-like game, mostly for the challenge but also because they scratch that itch some of us crave. However, Empyreal has a slight identity crisis in this regard, mostly because of one glaring issue on the combat side of things. The issue – Endless stuns. The bane of any good action game is a severe lack of balancing, but what’s worse is stun-locking.

Empyreal, unfortunately, suffers from enemies you face off with being able to essentially stun you for what feels like forever, while everything else gets to absolutely annihilate you. Your options then are to poke your enemies to death while dodging, or become amazing at parrying and dodging attacks.

Now, life in Empyreal isn’t all gloom and doom; there are a few upsides to look forward to. The biggest draw is the loot system; almost everything you kill will drop something, but you can also find some in random chests scattered throughout each area. Granted, we can’t forget about boss drops either, where you’ll usually get the best loot.

However, it doesn’t mean you’ll always get what you’re looking for since each cartogram will also have its own set of loot and difficulty to match. Two things set Empyreal apart from others like it: while it is technically a single-player game, there is a slight multiplayer aspect to encourage cooperative play and maybe some community dynamics.

The first one is that each cartogram has a set number of restore charges (Revives), and running out would normally mean that your run is over. However, you can call out to the void in the hopes that someone will share their restore charges with you to give you another chance. You can do the same thing if you come across someone else’s spectral image.

As for the second thing, and this is where it gets so much better, item sharing. This is where things become a bit more interesting because while you can’t join your friends on their runs, you can send them items through the mail system. Alternatively, you can also sacrifice an item to the Aether at the end of a boss fight that someone else might receive with the ‘Aether Touched’ prefix for some added bonus.

Empyreal has so much going on, but there is a glaring issue that stands out above everything else: how stats work. The way stats are displayed technically works, but it can become extremely confusing when you pick up a new Glaive and see that it has 1000% attack power, a 400% difference when compared to your currently equipped one.

This seems all good and fine, but that same 400% is actually not much of a difference… Sticking with simpler numbers for the stats would make an improvement actually feel like an improvement instead of a dressed-up pity reward.

Now, with all that said, Empyreal might have some balancing issues and the aforementioned problem with how stats are displayed, but there’s at least a redeeming quality. As can be expected with any half-decent action RPG, combat is par for the course. This is a bit of a double-edged sword, though.

Combat can feel somewhat snappy and fluid, but that changes very quickly when you’re actually fighting something. The same can be said about abilities when you spend more time dodging and parrying, while trying to use any ability, which can come with the risk of it getting interrupted and thrown into cooldown.

There’s so much more to explore in Empyreal, and there’s an endless amount of potential, but between the hub and the Monolith, both feel somewhat underwhelming. It’s almost as if the atmosphere just needs some extra flair to make it shine. The character and enemy models are well designed, and everything runs quite smoothly. There’s just something missing that makes the gameplay feel very placid.

Visuals aside, the sound engineering and voice acting balance things out a bit more, but not entirely. This might be Silent Games’ first release, and it is an impressive feat; it’s just a little concerning how close to finished everything seems. Empyreal seems to be a very nearly completed release that just needs a sprinkle of flair to tie everything together.

Overall, Empyreal has endless potential to be a great game, and it can go quite far. The story does come off as a bit messy at first, but there is a solid plot. The rest of the gameplay could use a bit more work, but a little extra flair can go a long way and would definitely put it out there in a much nicer way. For now, we’ll have to wait and see if the developers are going to add more to their first release or move on to the next venture.