If, like much of the world right now in these oddest of times, you’re beginning to grow weary of your own four walls and you quail at the thought of another miserable hour stuck indoors with two screaming kids, an increasingly distressed looking wife who might be standing just a bit too close to that kitchen knife and a smarmy moggy that you swear laughs at you every time it bounces out through the cat-flap, and if you’d rather insert a sharp spoon into your own eyeball to relieve the monotony of another mind numbing lock-down day, then spare a thought for poor ol’ Iratus, Lord of the Dead and master necromancer of lore, for his lot was somewhat less pleasant even still.
Defeated but not truly destroyed and condemned to an eternity locked inside a sealed sarcophagus, punishment for the heinous crime of attempting to extinguish life from the planet in a world-ending wave of half-dressed undead, boredom was the least of his worries.
If being dragged down into a deep Dwarven mine, wrapped tight in magical bonds then buried alive with no sweet death to bring respite and the never-ending mental replay of his untimely defeat wasn’t punishment enough, the sadistic bastard that plunged the stake through his heart thought it’d be funny to whistle the theme-tune to The Benny Hill Show as his coffin was sealed, condemning the poor sod to an eternity of nightmarish visions of an unbearably cheerful middle aged man chasing scantily clad, large breasted nurses around a stately looking hospital ground somewhere in rural England.
So when the Lord of the Dead’s eternal imprisonment is brought to an abrupt end by the timely intervention of four greedy and instantly doomed treasure hunters, he rises once again with burning desire for vengeance and to complete his unholy quest to drown the world in blood, sporting a thousand mega-tonne payload under his studded bat-leather codpiece and a skeevy itch he couldn’t quite scratch for several thousand years.
There can be no other explanation for the peculiar choice of minions that Iratus crafts from the fallen bodies of his foes: the guy is a raging sex-pest with a thousand year boner, and by God! does he make some beautiful monsters to kill people with!
Much like Benny Hill at the end of his prime, a genius clown who’d made a stunning career out of something that was, all of a sudden it seemed, deemed to be rather offensive and politically incorrect, Iratus is another dinosaur from another age thrust into a time and place that just doesn’t want what he’s selling.
His own foes are a tad more serious than the finger-wagging, sweater-clad feminists that toppled poor Benny from his dubious throne, but Iratus approaches his conquest in much the same way any geriatric, sex-deprived pervert well past his sell-by date would: by making himself a harem of big boobed zombies to take his revenge on a world that just doesn’t understand him. Cue Benny Hill theme tune.
Iratus: Lord of the Dead is a “hardcore tactical Roguelike” inspired by Darkest Dungeon and Dungeon Keeper, and whilst in my estimation being almost exactly unlike either the latter or any bona-fide roguelike I’ve ever played, certainly shares some of the hallmarks of that increasingly inaccurately named genre: permadeath for your minions, randomly generated dungeons to escape yourself out of and a savage difficulty, gradually tamed in line with your growing understanding of the game mechanics.
The gameplay itself goes a little like this: you, as the newly awoken Iratus (voiced brilliantly by veteran voice actor Stefan Weyte), start the game with four minions: The Bride of Iratus (lovestruck, sexy-zombie archer), the Zombie (cannon toting muscleman), the Skeleton (totally, utterly mediocre yet one of the better classes in the game) and the Dark Knight (tank with spooky powers); added to this you get a morbid collection of body parts, armour, rags and other bits and pieces for creating more undead soldiers to wage your eternal war with. He has a lab where these parts can be crafted and alchemised into new ones or into mana to feed your spells. Artifacts can be gathered which when equipped provide a general bonus or ability in combat, some one-use, some permanent.
Your roster is literally built from the bloody body-parts left in the wake of your destructive efforts to free yourself from the dungeons the game takes place in. Other wonderfully exotic characters can be unlocked as the game progresses, and include a monstrously strong headless warrior with a low accuracy to match, a bristling Bone Golem, a shrieking Banshee, a razor toothed Ghoul, a smart looking Vampire and one of my favourites, the Lost Soul, who not only has a rather unusual modus operandus of buffing your enemies and debuffing your own troops in order to generate more deadly attacks later on but also shows that Iratus’ abilities as a necromancer are so advanced that he can even perform a boob-job on a ghost.
Iratus has a graveyard too, where a series of buildings can be constructed and populated with minions to provide varying bonuses after each fight: a Mortuary heals any minions placed inside, the Library allows research to level-up Iratus himself, the Dead Lake gives a percentage chance to find an artifact, and so on. Still not sure how the graveyard escapes out of the dungeon with you, but let’s not ponder that too closely.
Battles are played out in series over five large dungeons, modelled almost exactly like Slay the Spire with each level laid out as a randomly generated set of branching paths populated with events, encounters, treasure chests and enemies to fight. The player plans a trajectory though the dungeon based on what he needs, and then picks four minions to fight with from a list of sixteen split over four groups.
These four minions do battle with up to four opponents, whose theme and roster-pick vary depending on the dungeon level. Battles ramp up in intensity until completion of an intense boss fight grants access to the next level. I say they’re large and I mean it: a direct route will be at least fifteen fights but in all likelihood you’re going to be fighting up to twice that many.
It is fortunate then that the games tactical combat is suitable impressive with a fairly deep, multi-layered system for you to experiment with. Your undead minions are defeated by reducing their Vigor to zero, whilst your enemies sport both a Vigor bar and a Sanity meter. Regular attacks to your foe’s Vigor are partially reduced by Armour, and magical attacks by Resistance, whilst Blocks and Wards are a one-shot hard counter to each type of attack respectively. Successful attacks to Sanity can cause insanity in the enemy, bestowing a randomly determined and substantial debuff and is often the best way to reduce the effectiveness of a physically powerful or well defended opponent. Better still, repeated Sanity attacks will eventually cause an instant death in the form of a horrifying heart-attack!
Each of your minions has a different set of six combat moves they can pull off in a combat round, the sixth being a powerful ability requiring the use of Rage points (one of Iratus’ own resources alongside Mana, and is generated by successful attacks on enemies) to activate. Each of these moves, which can be offensive, defensive or supportive in nature, affect a certain position in your ranks or the enemies. Some timed attacks target a location in the enemy rank rather than the enemy itself, and some allow you to move enemies about; an inventive player can chain up debuffs and killing blows with much variation. Throw Iratus’ own spells into the mix and you’ve got a whole lot of tactical choice.
And you’re going to need it! There are several types of enemy themed for each dungeon, from drugged up mining thralls and coin throwing dwarves to busty barbarian babes, dour elven warriors and more, all drawn and animated to the same superb quality as your own mouldy minions, and each with their own sets of combat moves.
A canny player can examine the heroes he will face prior to moving in to engage them, and with a little experience can throw together a team from his own roster to best counter the abilities he will be facing. The boss fights are tough, although I’d say their difficulty falls somewhat short of the ones in Slay the Spire and the first two I managed to defeat on my first time on Normal without having to retry.
Try not to grow attached to your minions: you’re also going to lose them in droves at first. Defeated minions are lost for good, although you can occasionally salvage some their body parts, or their brains, to quickly level up replacements to fill the gap in your squads. You can afford to lose the occasional minion because of this system, although losing too many can cause a death spiral as you struggle to field the correct minions for a critical battle, losing more and more of them until your pitiful remnants are easily cut down by a fresh squad of heroes.
In twenty hours of play-through, this only happened to me once, about half way through the third dungeon when I realised I’d missed out on half of the graveyard assistance (such as the mortuary) and not left myself with a team capable of defeating that level’s denizens, who are far more capable of killing than the previous lot. Later on, as I grasped the game’s relatively complex combat mechanics and learned to better build my teams, I really started to fall in love with it, and I made it through the first couple of dungeons with relative ease. The difficulty does scale nicely though: it’s not an easy game to finish!
Iratus: Lord of the Dead is a well polished, well executed tactical combat game featuring a wide selection of minions to play with, plenty of advancement choice for both those monsters and for Iratus himself (there are many skills and spells to pick from as the game progresses) and many ways to approach each battle because of the large variety of artefacts and equipment to pick from. The character design is exemplary, with unique looking, beautifully animated heroes to fight, armed with thoughtfully crafted sets of abilities that mesh more or less well with their peers and creating challenges of varying degrees to your own minion team builds.
The presentation here is top notch. The user interface, suitably gothic, looks great and everything you need is easy to find there. The voice acting from Stefan Weyte is solid and I found didn’t grate even after hours of play. I absolutely love the sound design, art and animation and I give a hearty thumbs up to the shamelessly sexy approach to the horror genre, something I find sorely lacking in the output of western studios in today’s increasingly intolerant, regressively prudish games development climate. The simple combat mechanics are underpinned with layer upon layer of attendant systems that create a varied and exciting game that demands exploration and experimentation, whilst the wonderful variety of minion builds and team combinations will keep fans of this genre happy for many many hours.
You Might Like This Game If:
- You’re a fan of turn based tactical combat with a strong focus on character build development options and squad combinations to face increasingly varied and difficult threats.
- You liked Darkest Dungeon but wanted to be the one inflicting insanity on the heroes for a change.
- You’ve an eye for great horror character design.
You Might NOT Like This Game If:
- You’re turned off by skimpily dressed, sexy characters in video games.
- You don’t like losing a lovingly nurtured character in a single moment from a lucky attack by some b*stard hero!
Our Review Policy
Benjamin played Iratus: Lord of the Dead for twenty hours on a custom-built PC: Intel i9700k, GTX 1080 TI, 32GB RAM, 2560x1440P monitor @ 165Hz
Otherwise known as BATTLEMODE, Ben contributes to eXplorminate via the eXplorminate Podcast and through his excellent writing! He’s a great asset to us here at eXplorminate, and we’re happy to welcome him on board! His Shadow Empire review is known throughout the internet for its depth and incredible detail!