No lost civilization is complete without deadly, mysterious, and logic-defying tombs; nor without a hoard of increasingly high level loot to nab as you make your way through it. Empyreal has all this and more. An action RPG with a Steam Next Fest demo I've been playing, it combines together elements from some of my favorite games to create something that manages to find its own fresh directions among them.
Coming from developer Silent Games (and published by Secret Mode), Empyreal is an action RPG designed with knowledge of the greats in mind. Not quite a soulslike, there are nevertheless elements of the poking and dodging in combat that definitely remind me of the cadence of battles there, but with the speed dialed way up, assisted by plenty of flashy powers on cool downs. Meanwhile, the repeating-yet-different structure of the levels within the monolith draw to mind the journeys to new lands in Remnant 2, yet with a much more bite-sized approach than the long diversions on offer there.
