I have always been a fan of combining genres with the aim of trying to innovate or to set oneself apart, so thankfully developer Phantom Compass and Atlus have tried to do just that – for better or for worse – with ‘Rollers of the Realm’.Combining two distinct types of games into one, the best way to describe ‘Rollers of the Realm’ is to call it a role-playing game in which the combat system is effectively a pinball game.
The game begins with our heroine simply titled ‘Rogue’ who upon coming into town to steal for some food, encounters a drunken ‘Knight’ being bullied by the blacksmith’s henchmen. After rescuing the drunken character, the henchmen kidnap the Rogue’s dog leading the Rogue and the Knight to team up to rescue it. What begins as a rescue mission slowly turns into a save-the-world-from-three-evil-knights-hell-bent-on-ruling-the-land mission. The game’s story changes its direction multiple times throughout its five chapters and it’s unfortunate that the big bad boss of the game is only revealed in the last chapter.
The story itself is presented quite well. All the story sequences are fully voiced, and outside of a couple of characters the voiceovers are solid. The game’s music score is very impressive, too, leading me to think that I was playing a Lord of the Rings game. Graphically the game is not much to write about, your party members are represented as pinballs while the rest of the characters, including enemies, are fully rendered in 3D. The maps don’t pack much of an impact and most are open and barren. The character art on the other hand is impressive, with colorful and detailed portraits that appear during conversations.
As I mentioned earlier every encounter in the game is presented in Pinball style. Each character is represented as a solitary pinball. The character pinballs each represent their respective classes. The "Knight" comes as a big slow moving but powerful ball, while the "Rogue" is smaller and faster; players are able to even shift the pinball’s left and right with the left analog stick. Each character also has their own unique skills, the "Rogue" will do critical damage when striking enemies from behind. Along with their passive abilities the characters all have a mana ability, the "Rogue" is able to summon her dog to aid her which essentially launches a second pinball to use. While the "Knight" is able to use his shield which saves the pinball’s from being lost for a short period of time.
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The game plays as you would expect a pinball game to play, each level and map is presented as its own pinball table. You have access to the left and right bumper that you use to move the pinballs around. The environment is littered with breakable crates filled with gold and loot, and enemies will begin to fill the map as obstacles that have to be defeated, with some even being accompanied by bosses. These enemies will deflect attacks and sometimes clutter the map making it almost impossible to keep the pinball alive and it leads to some very frustrating deaths.
Instead of earning points like a regular pinball game, players will earn mana points to regenerate their skills, experience points that increases the party level and unlock new gear to equip, and gold to buy that gear from the local shop. You may even recruit extra characters to help you in your quest, too. As you would in an RPG you are able to buy gear for your party increasing their stats and enhancing their abilities.
‘Rollers of the Realm’ is a unique title that tries to blend to different types of games together. Although I give developer Phantom Compass points for trying, ‘Rollers of the Realm’ doesn’t succeed in everything it sets out to do. The pinball mechanics work well but are hindered by open unremarkable maps that become cluttered with enemies, leading to some unfair deaths.