Empyreal is an action RPG that blends dungeon crawling and exploration. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.

Empyreal Review Overview

What is Empyreal?

Empyreal is an action-adventure RPG set on a mysterious, uncharted planet located at the far edge of the galaxy. A failing expedition tasked to explore the mysterious Monolith, gets reinvigorated at the arrival of an elite mercenary.

Empyreal features:
　⚫︎　Three Main Weapons
　⚫︎　Customizable Abilities and Loadouts
　⚫︎　Strong Focus on Exploration
　⚫︎　Character Customization
　⚫︎　Asychronous Multiplayer Feature

For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Empyreal's gameplay and story.

Digital Storefronts
Steam		PlayStation		Xbox
$29.99

Empyreal Pros & Cons

Pros	Cons
Decent Character Customization Interesting Loadout Options	Story is Shallow Visuals Fail to Impress NPC Interactions and Quests Feel Unimportant Repetitive Combat

Empyreal Overall Score - 64/100

Empyreal is a game filled with ambition, but it struggles to transform that ambition into a truly captivating experience. Its core concept of exploring a mysterious Monolith filled with ancient secrets has undeniable potential, yet the execution falters. The story is weak while the combat—meant to be a highlight—often devolves into repetitive, attrition-based encounters. Visuals that should have captured the awe of ancient civilizations instead feel bland and uninspired, and the lack of a map makes exploration a frustrating ordeal. There are some redeeming qualities, like the creative character backgrounds and the intriguing apparition mechanic, but they aren’t enough to overshadow the game’s more significant flaws.

Empyreal Story - 6/10

Empyreal’s story has an intriguing premise but it quickly loses its impact due to a lack of compelling narrative and characters. The main plot feels like a series of disconnected tasks, with NPC quests that are more like errands than meaningful interactions. While the setup promises mystery and discovery, the narrative never capitalizes on this potential, leaving the player feeling more like a wandering mercenary than an explorer of ancient wonders. The creatively named character backgrounds add some flavor, but they barely influence the story. It’s a missed chance for a world that should have been filled with lore and intrigue.

Empyreal Gameplay - 7/10

Empyreal’s gameplay hinges on a mix of dungeon crawling and skill-based combat, but it never fully delivers on its promise of depth. Combat feels more like it relies on consumables instead of skillful tactics, and the lack of a traditional RPG progression system makes character growth feel shallow. On the positive side, the weapon-based skill system and creative backgrounds offer some flexibility, and the asynchronous apparition mechanic is a unique touch. However, repetitive encounters and clunky movement hinder the experience.

Empyreal Visuals - 6/10

Empyreal’s visuals are serviceable but uninspired, with environments that feel like a collection of generic sci-fi tiles lacking any real sense of wonder or artistry. Character models are bland and awkwardly animated, while NPCs suffer from stiff, emotionless dialogue scenes that fail to bring them to life. The lack of a map makes traversal frustrating, with each identical section of the Cartographs blending into the next. Despite the game’s attempt at an ancient, mysterious atmosphere, it’s more of an aesthetic backdrop than an immersive world. It’s not outright ugly, but it never rises above forgettable.

Empyreal Audio - 7/10

Empyreal’s audio design is functional but lacks any standout elements. The music provides a decent backdrop, setting an appropriately mysterious and tense atmosphere, but it rarely leaves a lasting impression. Sound effects are clear but basic, and while voice acting is present, it ranges from passable to awkward, with certain lines delivered in a stiff manner. There’s enough here to keep you immersed, but nothing that elevates the experience. It works, but it won’t be something you remember after you stop playing.

Empyreal Value for Money - 6/10

While Empyreal offers a sizable amount of content, its overall value is diminished by repetitive gameplay and a lack of meaningful progression. The core mechanics can quickly feel monotonous, and the absence of deeper story or character development limits replayability. For those who enjoy experimenting with different combat styles and equipment, there’s some fun to be had, but it’s unlikely to hold attention for extended periods. Given its relatively average execution, the game might be worth playing during a sale but doesn’t justify a full-price purchase for most players. The lack of post-launch content or significant updates further impacts its value proposition.

Empyreal Review: Lost in a Monolith of Mediocrity

I was intrigued when I first saw Empyreal, it looked like a good game and as someone who loves action RPGs, especially those with rich lore, deep combat mechanics, and expansive worlds to explore, this game sounded like it had everything I was looking for. Set in the distant future, you play as an elite mercenary tasked with exploring the insides of a colossal, mysterious Monolith on an uncharted planet. The promise of uncovering the secrets of an ancient civilization, battling dangerous automatons, and engaging in a complex web of NPC quests sounded like the perfect setup for an unforgettable journey.

But as I started to dive deeper into Empyreal, I couldn’t help but feel like something was missing. The excitement I felt from the initial premise quickly faded into frustration. While the game promised a mix of skill-based combat and RPG mechanics, it became clear that it struggled to deliver on many of those fronts. What was meant to be a thrilling adventure quickly turned into a tedious and uninspired experience. The combat lacked the finesse I was hoping for, the story felt flat and disconnected, and even the visuals left much to be desired.

In the end, Empyreal turned out to be a case of "too good to be true," where the promise of a groundbreaking experience didn’t quite match the reality of what was delivered. Let’s dive into the details and see where the game faltered, and whether it’s worth your time or better left alone.

An Ambitious World with Shallow Mysteries

The concept behind Empyreal has all the makings of a compelling sci-fi adventure, an expedition to explore a colossal Monolith, built by a long-lost civilization. It’s a classic setup—ancient ruins, hidden secrets, and the promise of unraveling humanity’s forgotten past. The idea of exploring a mysterious structure, battling automatons, and discovering life-changing revelations is one that easily grabs your attention. I was ready to immerse myself in this world and uncover its many layers.

Unfortunately, that initial excitement quickly gave way to confusion and frustration. The game opens with an ambitious cutscene meant to set the tone. Then, we’re thrust into the middle of an expedition sent to the Monolith, with high stakes and high hopes for uncovering ancient technologies and knowledge. But right from the start, there’s a disjointedness between the narrative setup and the actual gameplay. The opening cutscene sets the stage for something grand and mysterious, but as soon as you step into the game, that energy dissipates. The transition from story to gameplay feels abrupt—like the game never quite figured out how to smoothly bridge the gap between the cinematic world and the interactive one.

What follows is a story that feels flatter than it should have been. The central plot about exploring the Monolith and facing down its deadly inhabitants lacks emotional weight. The stakes aren’t clearly defined, and there’s no real sense of urgency driving the narrative forward. You’re just… there, exploring. It feels like the Monolith is more of an obstacle to overcome than a mysterious entity to understand. The potential for a deep, engaging story is completely wasted here. And when I think back on the story, nothing stands out—no twist, no moment of revelation, just a series of bland encounters with not much narrative payoff.

The NPC side stories fare no better. You’d think the game would offer rich, character-driven narratives to help flesh out the world and give the player something to care about. But instead, these side quests feel more like mundane errands than meaningful narrative threads. You’ll spend most of your time inside Cartographs, retrieving an artifact, or killing a few enemies—all in the name of fulfilling an NPC’s quest. There’s no real depth to these quests, no real connection with the characters, and no emotional resonance. Instead of getting to know your companions, you’re just checking items off a to-do list. The questlines never feel like they’re part of a greater whole—they’re just there to pad out the gameplay.

Empyreal misses the mark on what could have been an engaging and thought-provoking story. The setup is there, but the execution is flat, and the NPC side stories are nothing more than busywork.

A Struggle of Attrition Over Skill

At its core, Empyreal follows a familiar formula of dungeon crawling, boss fights, and incremental progression. The Monolith, a labyrinthine structure filled with dangers, serves as the game's primary setting. As the protagonist and saving grace of this expedition, you explore the different civilizations inside, battling automatons, collecting loot, and—of course—defeating powerful bosses that guard the deeper secrets within. The overall gameplay loop sounds engaging on paper, but the experience quickly becomes sluggish.

The core loop revolves around venturing into the Monolith’s various levels, defeating enemies, finding powerful loot, and eventually facing off against a boss. Each of these areas is randomly generated, and the difficulty scales as you progress. But here’s the catch: Empyreal’s combat feels painfully shallow. The game touts its skill-based combat, encouraging you to time attacks, deflects, and parries with precision. In reality, though, the combat rarely demands this kind of finesse. Instead, you’ll often find yourself spamming attacks and relying on consumables—health potions, buffs, and other items—rather than mastering the mechanics.

Empyreal offers three main weapon archetypes: the Glaive, the Mace & Shield, and the Cannon. Each is supposed to provide a unique combat style—the Glaive for fluid, sweeping attacks; the Mace & Shield for a tanky, defensive approach; and the Cannon for long-range, high-damage output. Here’s where Empyreal falters in its attempt to innovate on RPG fundamentals. In many traditional RPGs, players invest points into attributes like strength, dexterity, or intelligence, building their character's progression. Empyreal abandons this familiar system and instead, your stats are mainly determined by your equipment—what armor, accessories, and weapons you're wearing. The weapons you choose also unlock skills tied specifically to that weapon. While this setup tries to push a new direction for RPGs, it ends up feeling limiting and overly focused on gear instead of character growth. The absence of a traditional RPG progression system leaves you with little sense of personal growth beyond your gear and chosen weapon.

While this means you can easily switch up your playstyle and adapt to new challenges, it also means that your character's growth feels more like a series of superficial tweaks rather than true evolution. You’re not building a hero whose abilities and strengths reflect your choices over time—instead, you’re adjusting your loadout and hoping your stats are enough to handle the next wave of enemies. For some, this flexibility might be appealing, allowing for quick experimentation without being locked into a rigid build. But for those who love the sense of progression that comes with traditional RPGs, it may feel like a design choice that lacks meaningful depth.

It also quickly became apparent that combat isn’t as skill-intensive as the game wants you to believe. Instead of feeling like a true action RPG, it often feels like a battle of attrition, one where your survival is determined more by how many healing items or buffs you have in your inventory than by your actual skill. The one saving grace is the ability to time attacks or execute special moves, which can offer brief moments of satisfaction. Perfectly timed deflects or well-placed counterattacks hint at a more nuanced combat system buried beneath the surface. But these moments are too few and far between, often drowned out by the repetitive grind of slashing through waves of enemies who keep healing once you stop hitting them.

Instead of feeling like a warrior overcoming the odds, you’re left feeling like someone desperately trying to outlast enemies with an ever-dwindling supply of resources. The combat lacks the depth and finesse needed to make it feel truly engaging. Even against tougher foes, the strategy rarely evolves beyond the basics of "hit, heal, repeat."

A Maze of Missed Impressions

If Empyreal’s combat didn’t already dull the senses, its visuals will gladly finish the job. The environments come across like a preset pack of sci-fi dungeon tiles slapped together with all the elegance of an asset flip. The "ancient civilization" vibe is barely sketched in. Instead of awe, you’re met with the aesthetic equivalent of visual white noise. The game is exhausting to look at, there’s a flatness to everything, a lack of visual hierarchy or focal points. And to make matters worse, there’s no map. Navigating Cartographs becomes an exercise in frustration, with each run feeling like a desperate struggle to remember which identical hallway you’ve already explored.

Character models fare no better. The NPCs wouldn’t be out of place in a character creation screen from five years ago—bland, awkwardly animated, and emotionally vacant. And speaking of NPCs, let’s talk about those conversations. Every time you engage in dialogue, the camera locks into these bizarre, rigid angles that make it feel like the game is trying to be cinematic but has absolutely no idea where to point the lens. It’s the visual equivalent of someone trying to take a portrait photo with a selfie stick taped to a ceiling fan.

Movement doesn’t help either. Even outside of combat, running around the main hub feels like wading through molasses. Your character lumbers forward as if dragging fifty pounds of regret, with every step feeling like a chore. There's no sense of momentum, no fluidity. Jumping is floaty, dodging lacks snap, and simply turning your character can feel oddly delayed. It adds an unnecessary layer of friction to everything you do, moving from point A to point B shouldn’t feel like an endurance test.

Ghosts of Help and Hope

Let’s not be all doom and gloom, there are some aspects of Empyreal that have potential, and for certain players, they might even be enough to overlook the game’s numerous flaws. One place Empyreal manages to add a touch of intrigue and a flicker of hope, it’s in its asynchronous mechanics. While these features are certainly more of a side attraction than the main event, they offer a small but noteworthy silver lining in an otherwise lackluster experience.

For starters, Empyreal allows players to trade items through a Mail system and Trading Post, enabling a degree of cooperation, even though the game is primarily single-player. This mechanic isn’t a game-changer, but it provides a layer of interaction with the broader community.

Another saving grace is what happens when you fall inside a Cartogram. Instead of simply respawning or restarting, your fallen character can appear as an apparition in another player’s game. As a ghostly presence, players are given the chance to lend a helping hand, offering the other player a chance at a second wind. There’s a sense of camaraderie here, a subtle reminder that you’re not exploring the Monolith alone, even in this predominantly single-player experience. It’s a fleeting connection, a moment of shared struggle, and for a game so focused on isolation and survival, this feature adds a surprisingly hopeful touch. While it’s not a novel mechanic, the apparition system stands out as one of Empyreal’s more creative ideas.

I will also say this, Empyreal’s character customization does try to stand out, even if it doesn’t fully succeed. Rather than the usual selection of classes or archetypes, the game offers a range of colorful and creatively named backgrounds for your character. Instead of simply being an Acolyte or a Knight, you might start as an Alluring Coquette or an Excitable Tattletale. It’s a fun twist, giving a touch of personality to your character from the start, even if it doesn’t have much impact on the gameplay itself, since everything is eventually available to you.

The customization extends to your appearance, with a decent range of options, and while the stat system is mainly tied to your gear rather than traditional leveling, it does give you some flexibility to shape your mercenary’s combat style. Unfortunately, that flexibility feels more superficial than meaningful, as the reliance on consumables and the shallow combat mechanics undermine any sense of true player mastery. But at the very least, the game does let you experiment—adjusting your gear, picking new abilities, and tweaking your setup to suit your preferred approach.

Still, for all its ambition, Empyreal stumbles when it comes to making your character feel significant in the world. The lack of a strong narrative foundation means that even the most creatively designed character can end up feeling like just another faceless mercenary in a hollow world. Empyreal could have benefited from more depth, the visuals could have been more inspired, with better attention to environmental design and smoother performance. And the story? It desperately needs a more coherent structure and characters with deeper motivations to make players feel connected to the world they’re exploring.

Is Empyreal Worth It?

Not For All

Empyreal is a game that aims high, promising an expansive, feature-rich RPG experience set in a mysterious, ancient Monolith. On paper, it has all the makings of a compelling adventure: complex combat mechanics, a wide range of customization options, an ever-shifting dungeon system, and even a touch of community with its asynchronous multiplayer features. For some, this ambitious blend of ideas may be enough to make it worth a try—especially if you’re the kind of player who enjoys experimenting with different builds, navigating randomized challenges, and piecing together a fragmented narrative.

But for others—especially those who crave a refined combat system, a truly immersive story, or a sense of meaningful progression—Empyreal may be a tough sell. Its combat, while promising skill-based depth, often feels reliant on consumables rather than player mastery. The story lacks cohesion, with characters and narrative threads that never quite come together. Even the game's striking concept of Cartograms, which should add strategic variety, feels like a repetitive grind.

Ultimately, Empyreal is a game that reaches for greatness but stumbles in the execution. It’s a game of fleeting moments, occasional glimpses of its potential buried beneath a layer of inconsistent mechanics and a narrative that struggles to leave an impact. If you’re patient, willing to overlook some of its flaws, and enjoy the idea of tinkering with builds in a dangerous, ever-shifting world, you may find some enjoyment here. But for most, Empyreal is a reminder that ambition alone isn’t enough. A great game requires not just bold ideas, but the polish and finesse to make them shine.

Digital Storefronts
Steam		PlayStation		Xbox
$29.99

Empyreal FAQ

What Is Empyreal’s System Requirements?

Game8 Reviews

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Empyreal Product Information

Title	EMPYREAL
Release Date	May 8, 2025
Developer	Silent Games
Publisher	Secret Mode
Supported Platforms	PC (Steam), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S
Genre	Action, Adventure, Indie, RPG
Number of Players	1
ESRB Rating	RP
Official Website	Empyreal Website

Allisandra Reyes

I find joy in the adrenaline rush of horror games, but my thrill-seeking doesn't stop there. Beyond the digital realm, I like to take on the role of designated GM in TTRPGs.