Withering Realms

I guess I never realized how much I didn't want to play yet another souls-like until the sequel to one of my surprise favorite games of all time takes every mechanic that made it great and scrubbed it for standard, toe-the-line souls-like BS. If you played the first game, get ready to throw away the strategic item management and upgrade systems for spending generic 'souls' to level stats. Get ready for tired, sweaty dodge and poise-breaking mechanics. And enjoy that there's no longer ammo... and your guns drain your magic bar, so many builds are going to be extremely unviable with so many things sharing the same resource. That's just bad design. And if you didn't play the first game? Uh... It's just another souls-like, but this one has a fixed camera angle and there is no penalty for dying, so I'm sure you'll love it... right? Yeah. No thanks.

I'm giving this a not recommend simply because I bought this hoping for more of what made the last game good, and what made the last game good is only partially here. What's good about this game is the vibes, the music and the puzzling and sense of exploration. Similar experience to the first game. What's bad is everything else, especially the combat. You'll be spending a lot of time engaging with the combat and it's just not good. They went with fixed camera soulslike combat this time around and it's worse than your average bog standard souslike. The combat is very clunky and I don't see it getting any better unless they do a complete rework of it. It's EA so that might happen, but in it's current state the combat is NOT good. Some big issues are: 1: The dodge has a long wind up before you get i-frames so dodging is super late. The timing is to actually press dodge the moment the enemy begins their attack, not time it with when it's about to hit you. Because of this it's both easy to dodge everything but also kind of unsatisfying because the timing is pretty much the same every time and not too in line with when you'd think the dodge should be. 2: Single enemies are trivially easy to fight, multiple enemies overlap their attacks in such a way that getting a hit in without trading is either very tedious to set up or impossible. At the same time it's very easy to just go in and trade, enemies will melt if you just brainlessly spam your attacks, you can tank the hits you end up taking. It's got the veneer of soulslike combat but most of the time it plays like a brainless hack n slash. But not a fun one. 3: The hitboxes are terrible. The worm boss is the worst example of it, I was by it's side and constantly got teleported in front of it so it could chew on me. There's a lot of stuff like this where it doesn't look like you'll get hit but then you do. It's part of why you end up just deciding to attack spam rather than play with finesse, it doesn't feel like you can rely on the hit detection to work so you just go "Well I'm probably gonna get hit anyway I may as well just maximise my damage while I'm at it." 4: You revive as long as you've got a healing flask, so there's really no point in not just being greedy and spamming your attacks. Due to how weird all the hitboxes feel on a lot of the attacks you'll honestly just have an easier time bashing your head against enemies than trying to get hits in damagelessly and this mechanic makes this approach a doddle to pull off. I don't understand why they ditched the combat and movement from the first game and switched to this, it's a huge downgrade. There's a tome you get later on which ramps the difficulty up big time as part of a secret questline and the flaws of this game really become apparent when you die in almost one hit. You can tell the combat is scuffed from the get go, but when you can't just shrug off all the weird hitbox moments, the enemies chain comboing you moments, the poor attack signalling moments and so on, you really appreciate just how poor the combat is. All this being said the game is cheap, the vibes are immaculate, when this game leaves EA a lot of the above might get fixed, as long as you go in accepting that the combat is bad and you'll be stuck doing it the entire time you can still have a good time. I personally would wait until it leaves EA to play but if you're willing to accept this caveat you can still enjoy this game.

As a fan of Withering Rooms and thanks to the Demo, I know I'm in for a treat in playing this game, It works fantastic on the steamdeck as well!

I love the atmosphere and everything about this game, except the combat. The combat is so ludicrously bad that I cannot recommend. Enemies are unbelievably spammy, aggressive, have bad telegraphs, and are usually in pairs of three or four [i]on top of[/i] dodging feeling extremely unresponsive. Everything feels like fighting a group of Royal Revenants in Dark Souls 2 without Adaptation levelled. This paired with the very low stamina and strength weapons being extremely slow, the end result ends up being facetanking and a numbers game, which is laughably easy. Just stand still, spam attack, and let Clover heal you. It's not fun at all. Even when using dexterity weapons, the enemies are so aggressive that during a punish window, even with a [u]single, quick swipe[/u] the enemy will likely attack again even during that extremely short window of time. What the hell? There's no going into a hard area early because you want to learn and outskill things. If you can't afford to facetank something, you can't beat it. You either grind, or you come back later. It really, really sucks. It seems like positioning is the way to go then, but on mouse and keyboard, WASD being locked to eight directions and the camera being at an angle means dodging around the enemy will just result in bumping into them most of the time, and [i]even if you do get behind them[/i], the janky hitboxes will probably result in you getting hit anyways. You truly cannot ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ win. I really, really love Withing Rooms and the atmosphere of these games, but the combat is so horrid I just don't want to continue unless it gets fixed. The build variety and freedom of playstyles is exactly up my alley, but when actually fighting enemies it all falls apart. I really want to like this game but I cannot overstate how much I LOATHE the combat. Easy bandaid fix? Just add a parry/deflect or something. Being locked into an animation where the former half is invincible and the latter half is vulnerable does not work at all for enemy attack spam this egregious. Don't even get me started on the dodge having a "wind-up" to the i-frames for God-knows-what-reason. Some kind of major changes are needed. I'm tempted to say this sits within the top 10 worst combats I've experienced in gaming.

I loved Withering Rooms and completed all of its achievements, so I did not come into Withering Realms looking for reasons to dislike it. Unfortunately, after playing it, I think the sequel has taken a major step backwards in the exact areas that made the original memorable. The first game was strange, oppressive and genuinely punishing. Death mattered. Resource management mattered. You had to think about what you carried and what you preserved. The shifting environments, limited security and survival-horror structure gave the game tension and identity. Realms has replaced much of that with what feels like a much more generic modern third-person Souls-inspired action RPG. Death currently feels meaningless. I tested dying to a boss, respawned at the nearby altar, kept my items, and simply went back in. Even items in the environment had respawned, meaning resources could immediately be collected again and potentially farmed. That completely changes the psychology of death compared with the first game. Instead of fearing failure or making difficult decisions about resources, death starts feeling like a free reset button. Enemy AI has also been extremely weak so far. Enemies often feel brain-dead rather than threatening. When death already carries no consequence, enemies being this easy to manipulate removes even more tension. The progression and loot pacing also feels far too generous. The map also feels overloaded with ? markers. I understand they represent unexplored or potentially interesting locations rather than revealing exact loot, but there are so many that exploration starts feeling like checklist cleanup rather than organic discovery. I am discovering equipment and items at ridiculous speed. The first game made resources and useful equipment feel meaningful because you had reasons to value what you found. Here I am being showered with things so quickly that discovery already feels less important. All of this feeds into my biggest problem: the sequel has lost a lot of the original game's identity. Withering Rooms had an unusual formula. It mixed survival horror, RPG systems, a hostile shifting world, exploration and consequences for failure into something that genuinely felt different. Withering Realms so far feels much closer to the modern template I am already tired of: fully 3D third-person combat, dodging, bosses, loot and Souls-style action-RPG progression. The setting and art still have personality, but the gameplay underneath feels significantly more conventional. Bigger and more modern does not automatically mean better. In this case, I think the old formula was far stronger. Performance has also been disappointing. I tested both the demo and the actual Early Access release on an RTX 4090 at native 3840x2160, Ultra settings, without upscaling. With Volumetrics set to Max, I consistently saw roughly 19-29 FPS across the demo, and the Early Access release still exhibits the same issue. This was not one unusually demanding room. I then tested DLSS Balanced while leaving Volumetrics at Max. At 4K output that drops the internal resolution to roughly 2228x1254, yet even that was not enough to reliably maintain 60 FPS. That was what made me isolate the volumetric setting itself. Returning to native 4K and lowering Volumetrics from Max to Ultra and then High produced an enormous performance improvement. High can run much better and can reach 60 FPS in lighter areas, although I have still seen heavier sections struggle. I understand perfectly well that volumetric lighting is expensive. That is not the criticism. The problem is that Max has an absurdly disproportionate performance cost compared with the settings directly below it, and the visible improvement does not appear remotely proportional to that cost. DLSS is decent technology, but "just use DLSS" should not be an excuse for graphics settings that scale this badly. A 4090 paired with a 4K display is exactly the kind of hardware on which native 4K performance should be evaluated. The developers also said the game had already received hundreds of hours of community testing before Early Access. Given how quickly I encountered and reproduced this behavior on a 4090, I genuinely wonder how much of that testing involved native 4K and the highest graphics settings. I found the volumetric problem within minutes. And unfortunately, optimization is not even my biggest concern. Bugs and performance can improve during Early Access. The design direction is harder to fix. Right now I see a sequel that is more forgiving, less tense, less resource-driven, less consequential and considerably more generic than the game it follows. Death barely scares me, resources can be farmed, equipment arrives constantly, enemies have been unimpressive, and the distinctive survival-horror structure has been replaced by a much more familiar action-RPG formula. But I cannot recommend the current version simply because I loved the original. For me, Withering Rooms was the better game because it knew exactly what it wanted to be. So far, Withering Realms feels like a sequel that gained a third dimension and lost part of its identity in the process.

The creepy vibes, story, and sound design is so unique. I'm in love with the series! I was a beta tester for the game but I can't wait to see how this game grows more through out early access.

I almost never buy games on day one, but as a huge fan of the original Withering Rooms game, I made an exception in this case. So far the game feels surprisingly fleshed out for the early access stage, and I've been enjoying it a lot. The Victorian horror art design and haunting music is a rush. Combat is satisfying but it can also be tough as balls. The story/characters are intriguing and deal with themes like the occult and witchcraft. If you appreciate a spooky RPG with soulslike combat, great art/music, and a memorable story, this one is definitely worth the price of entry. Forgot to mention, controller support is super. It's 100% playable on controller and feels great, haven't used keyboard or mouse at all.

Withering Rooms is a modern masterpiece, and so far the sequel doesn't disappoint. there's a bit of inevitable early access jank, but like, it's day 1 so that's fully forgivable. the vibes alone are perfection but the mechanical diversity, potential for build options, and dress-up features are all amazing too (especially the latter i can't wait to glitz out my flesh golem). like the first game it's horror themed, but not focused on scaring the player, which is perfect for me, a giant wimp who loves horror aesthetics. ain't easy to find games that cater to that but these games deliver. honestly this has been my most anticipated game in ages, i'm just so thrilled to explore this world once again and see what wonderfully charming horrors are in store for me! if you've played the first game and crave more - and how could you not - i definitely recommend trying this early access sequel. if not, try Withering Rooms first. it's not required to get the most out of this game, but it's maybe required to get the most out of life? EDIT NOW THAT I'VE ACTUALLY PLAYED THE GAME: yes. yes, the game is great. this but even more of it and polished up a little and this game will actually, against all odds, live up to or exceed my expectations.